Among All Nations: Update JV Camp #1 with Grace Church of DuPage Team

The last time we updated our blog was the beginning of the summer, and here we are approaching the end of the summer, so there is a lot to say. As you may know when we were entering into this summer, we were praying that the Lord would give us a greater impact on this next generation throughout Albania this summer, especially through Josiah Venture (JV) English Camps. Well HE did just that!

This summer we did three JV Evangelistic English Camps. One was for our youth group at Grace Church of Tirana. The other two were in conjunction with two Albanian church planters to help them reach the young people in their neighborhoods.
The theme for this year’s JV camps was called Stories. Or The Story of God. We walk from creation to redemption, telling the story of God each day. It was very powerful and very applicable to how information is passed long here in Albania – by word of mouth (story form). We asked students in small groups summarize to us the entire story that they heard for the day, and many of them could re-tell it word for word!

Here are some updates on these camps:

JV Camp 1
(July 13-18)
Location: Babbru, Albania (a suburb of Tirana)
Team: Grace Church of DuPage (GCD)
Church: Albanian Church Planter, Astrit Allushi

Going into this camp, we had no one officially signed-up. We knew it was going to be a challenge going into this camp. We also knew that this region of Tirana has never had a church before so what we are trying to do is trailblaze.

The GCD Team got into Albania the Thursday before camp started. That Friday we all got into a van and made our way out to Babrru to start doing advertising for the camp. We did the same thing again on the Sunday evening (the day before camp was suppose to start). I think every young person was out wandering the streets at that time. We got to talk to a lot people and even parents and invited many to camp.

By the time it was Tuesday, the number of students that we had for camp was around 30, it was the perfect number for what we had to work with, and the Lord gave us students that had soft hearts towards the Gospel. This camp was a day camp, so we had the students from 8:30am—3:30pm.

The GCD team was awesome. They were super flexible and very Godly, although it was a challenge at times to drive early every morning to Babrru, and work in very poor conditions in the classrooms, and with a soccer field that was locked and would only be open to us one day, they did a great job. We told them going into camp, that for those students that would come, this would be the best week of their summer, and I believe it was.

Each morning would start with the chapel time, then there would be a small group time, where we would break everyone up into their English classes and they would have a discussion about the Story of God that they just heard. The morning chapel was actually held in a restaurant next door to the public school where we did classes and games. The restaurant owner was a Muslim (or at least he came from a Muslim family and went to a Muslim school), but each morning he heard the Good News. In fact most of the students would have come from very similar families. We actually had one student who had to walk his grandfather to the Mosque on a Friday morning (the Sunday for Muslims)to get his prayer in and then come to camp. Please pray for Babrru that the Gospel light would shine in this dark corner of the earth that few know about.
Finally, just this last Sunday morning at church we had about ten students from Babrru show up at church. You can pray for us to follow-up well out in Babrru, and that by God’s grace we would see a church plant born from these efforts and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Thank you GCD team for your service to the Kingdom work in Albania. And thank you GCD for sending them!

(Above): Astrit tells his story to the GCD team of how he became a believe in Germany and then felt the need to bring the Good News back to his people in Albania. He is the church planter that we worked along side of to do this camp.

(Above): Every Morning about 17 of us smashed into two cars to make our way over to Babrru (about a 15 minute ride)

(Above): Our first day out in Babrru before camp. We were on the roof of Astrit's house praying over the city (literally).

(Above): Advertising for camp with the neighborhood kids.

(Above): Singing and dancing to the theme song, WAKE-UP WAKE-UP!

(Above): Pastor Ray Glinski teaching and Fation translating for the daily morning chapel.

(Above): English Class

(4 Above): All the English classes

(Above): this was the gate to the field right next to the school. Some tough guy came in and put a fence around it and made it his own so no one can use it. We only got to use it once which was more than expected.