Christmas Time

There is snow on the Mountains, its raining outside, and our kids wear five layers of clothes to bed. It must be winter. Not only that, but Christmas is already here. This past week has been a busy one for us. It has been full of some great outreach events with both our youth group and our church at large.

Youth group Christmas Party:
This last Saturday, we had our fourth annual Christmas party. The students love this time together. When we started this party four years ago, we had it in our home with about 15 students, we introduced them to the game White Elephant with Gretchen and I organizing and planning most of the party. This year we had 90 students, and three games of White Elephant, and our student ministry team of 10 people organized and ran the entire party. Our youth center was filled to capacity. We sang songs, had some skits and dramas, watched a movie on the meaning of Christmas, had some testimonies from students and heard the gospel. It was a great night together. We had many students there from camps, this part summer as well as friends of our youth group students. We are thankful that so many got to hear the good news! Please pray for us as we are doing a few follow-up things to this event, pray for good connection and conversation to happen and for lasting fruit.

(Below: Majlinda helping with one of the White Elephant game)

(Below: the other two White Elephant Games)

(Below: Fation sharing the gospel)

(Below: Nestor and Ina giving their Testimonies)

(Below: Fation and Rozi doing a funny skit)

(Below: the group that fit into the picture)

(Below: Elio (Santa) and Jona doing the opening skit)

(Below: Justin and Fation doing the welcome)

John Blanchard Christmas Outreach:
On Sunday morning and evening, we had the opportunity to host John Blanchard, he is probably most well known for writing the book “Ultimate Questions” however his ministry in England is quite extensive and impactful. We first hosted Dr. Blanchard back in September. He enjoy his time here in Albania so much that he wanted to come back, so we asked him to do a weekend Christmas outreach.

On Sunday night, we rented out a room over at the Tirana International Hotel in the main square. It seats around 320 people, going into the event we had no idea how many people would come, but we had been asking church members and other church leaders to invite as many non-believers possible. It was a cold rainy night, which usually means that few people would want to go from their homes and walk to an event like this, however, the house was packed, we had standing room only. There were lots of non-believers who were there, many of whom were Muslim and had never heard the gospel before. Dr. Blanchard spoke on the theme of Christmas and content of his new book “Why on Earth Did Jesus Come?” It was a wonderful time, and there has been some great follow-up conversations with many non-believers.

(Below: some of the staff with Dr. Blanchard at Dinner)

Please pray that through both of these events that God would save many and call them out of the kingdom of Darkness this Christmas season. May you have a blessed Christmas!