20 years later

On December 8th the Albanian government held a rally in the main square of the city to remember on that day (20 years ago) the university students began their revolution into freedom from communism. What a day that must have been! For over 50 years Albania had been in complete isolation. Few know about the history of Albania, most think it was just another Eastern European country controlled by USSR, however the type of communism that the dictator of Albania held too made the rest of Eastern Europe look like a walk in the park (and I don’t say that loosely thinking that the other communist countries didn’t suffer much, they did and many suffer for Christ during those years).
During those 50 years of ruthless dictatorship of Enver Hoxha and his regime (often referred to as the butchers) mercilessly imprisoned, and killed thousands of people. Anyone who disagreed with anything was often put to death and their entire families imprisoned (we know families who were imprisoned for the entire 50 years). Amidst all of this intimidation, and murder, perhaps the most devastating thing that happened was the complete annihilation of all religions. This was done through publicly killing all known religious people and therefore instilling a fear in everyone that the only religion in Albania is Albanianism and nothing else or the worship of the dictator. Before this Albania had little or no known Christian influence so as a result there wasn’t any underground church movement like what we heard about in Romania or Russia. There were few places darker than Albania during this period in history.

20 Years Later

As I walked through the crowd of thousands and thousands of people peacefully gathered on December 8th I couldn’t help but wonder what this was like only 20 years ago when not such a peaceful crowd was in this same spot rioting and ripping down statues of the former dictator. This is truly an amazing turn of events in a short history of freedom. However, even in the midst of this new freedom, it has not come without cost and pain. Albania’s transition into freedom has likely been the hardest in all of Eastern Europe. At one point in the mid-90s it was ranked the 8th worst place to live…on the planet, struggling through civil war, financial ruin and the Kosovo crisis, this place was broken down and soaked in blood.

What has changed?

There has been a lot that has changed in Albania since those early days and yet there hasn’t been that much that has changed. There is peace, at least for now, the people are tired of war, and they wear it on their faces. The greatest change that has occurred is the freedom of religion that we currently enjoy. This has been both good and bad just like anything else. The good is that the gospel has been going out without too much threat, the bad is there have been missionaries of all religions bringing their junk in with them. But we are thankful for the fact that we can share the gospel without the threat of being put in jail!
Even in the midst of some of those changes, much is still the same. The government is mostly run by very corrupt former communist leaders, who are so concerned with self that they have crushed the dreams and visions of this next generation, just a few weeks ago I had been talking to a guy who works outside of the capital city. He works with primarily high school students and he was telling me that the leadership of the country has crushed the dreams of this generation. I would agree with him, 90% of the students that I have talked to said that if they could get out, they would, there is no opportunity, unless that is you want to get your hands dirty with the wrong people. This is the unfortunate reality of freedom, the fact that only a few enjoy it because they are greedy and taken it all for themselves making everyone else suffer. I could share story upon story of some of the hard realities of growing up in Albania, things like university students having to pay bribes to their professors to get a passing grade (even if they did work that was worth a passing grade), or young girls forced into prostitution.

The reality is, this isn’t just Albania, this is the world, and the world needs Jesus!
All in all, the only thing that will totally change this society is the gospel of Jesus. There might be a physical appearance of things getting better around here and people might have a little bit more by way of materialism than they did 20 years ago, but there is still a great darkness that covers this land, and that darkness will only be lift when the light of Jesus in shined into it. May this little light of ours shine forth with the glory of Jesus, and may it be very bright!


Below are some blurry pictures that I took of December 8th, as well as a video of the fall of communism in Albania. Sorry for the lame music at the end of the video...