Video from Nato Day in Albania

NATO Day

As we mentioned before, Albania has officially been inducted into NATO. Today was the big celebration day, and we took in all the sights. As you can see....it's a really big deal....


Evangeline really enjoyed her time in the Mei Tie. She was tied to Justin for a long time... :)

Big concert with wannabe rappers...

We're not sure about this one...it's really creepy...a pregnant belly bursting through all those flags...?

The NATO nations' flags...
The Boulevard with the University at the end...
a sleepy girl...
two pretty cute kids!





The Center of Tirana...
The very spot where the huge statue of Enver Hoxha (the former communist dictator) was toppled by university students at the fall of communism in '91. We don't know why they don't put something else here that looks a little nicer. This is in the center of the center of Tirana!

Dramatic statement...


The classic shot of the Albanian flag next to Skenderbeg (national hero):

Albania Officially Joins NATO

Read the Fox News story here.

I know this was probably on page 17 of your local paper, but this is a big deal here! Albania has made great strides in democracy in the last decade. That doesn't mean they don't still have a looooong way to go, though.

Prison Nation

This is a video that was put together by one of our teammates Rose Dosti. She made it to raise more awareness of the political prisoners of Albania (a country that is often forgotten, and few know that the regime in Albania was far worse than that of Stalin, just on a smaller scale). Rose is an Albanian that grew up in in New York and married into a family that were the main resistance against the communistic regime in Albania. Rose's husband and father-in-law were exiled from Albania, Rose's mother-in-law and all the children (I think 7 or 8 of them) on that side of the family were left in Albania and taken into prison camps (similar in some ways to a Nazi camp) and left there for almost 45 years. It is an amazing story. Watch the video and learn about some of the oppression of Albania.

(Rose was also a well known LA-Times food critic for many years)

Back to the grind of things...

Well we are back in Tirana. We arrived on September 1st with Justin's parents. They stayed for about ten days and helped us transition back into life in Albania. We are SO thankful for their help over the summer, and it was a huge blessing to have them travel with us and help us settle in back here in Tirana. While they were here we showed them some of the sights, got our house organized and moved back in, sold our old car, got our documents for our new car, among many other things. We are thankful that they got to see where we live and have a frame of reference of what goes on around here everyday. The time with them was too fast, and saying goodbye was hard, but we are thankful that they came.

Now we are back to the grind of things. With many meetings, and much to catch up on we have been happily busy with life and ministry. Our first Sunday back in the youth group was wonderful. We had many new faces from the Josiah Venture English camp that we did this summer, most of the students that came are still non-believers. We are still praying that the seeds that were planted at that camp would grow and God would save at least ten students. Right now we know that two girls got saved, and there are many young men who are coming regularly to church who are very interested in the gospel. Please pray with us and for us as we long for them to know Jesus Christ as their LORD!

We are looking forward to a very busy fall! Here are some things that you can be praying about!

• Pray for Gretchen as she transitions into life in Albania being the mother of two small kids. She has the hardest task, pray that I (Justin) would love and serve her!

• Pray for our youth group as we are growing in numbers every week it seems. It is hard to stay in contact with all the students all the time. We just had a student ministry team meeting last weekend, and we have divided up our leaders and are starting small group Bible Studies led by students for the first time in our group. Pray that God would move in the hearts of all these young people. This is an exciting time!

• Justin is taking five students from our youth group to the Josiah Venture fall leadership conference from September 20-29 (Fation, Andi, Bruna, Xhili, Majlinda). These students make up most of our student ministry team. They are such a blessing to us and the ministry. This will be the highlight of their year. Pray that we would all come back changed and ready to apply what we learned.
  

• Justin is taking two classes at the seminary here, you can pray that he will work diligently in the midst of many other responsibilities

• We have important board meetings October 5-10 to discuss a building project for our church and potential camp site among other things. Please pray that God would lead us and that we would have clear direction on what we should do.

• November 1-10 we have Rodger Oswald of Church Sports International coming to Tirana to help us launch a sports ministry for our church and to also lead some seminars for other church leaders throughout Albania. Please pray for Justin as he is heading much of this up.

• November 11-18 Justin & Fation will be in Chicago for a Josiah Venture event. Pray that this time would be profitable, and that we would have some great meetings with groups and individuals about what God is doing among young people in Albania.

• Finally in December Wayne Grudem & and and an investment group is coming to Albania to do a Christian Business conference. We are working through the details of that, you can pray for our team leader as he is overseeing much of this. This will be a wonderful opprotunity for the Albanian people to hear from a theologian like Wayne Grudem and from a some top investors about how to run a business without corruption.

Well I think I will stop there for now. Thanks for your prayers. We long for Jesus Christ to be made famous in this land!

For lots of pictures go to the links below. They are pictures that I posted on my FACEBOOK photo albums.

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(Right) The first Sunday we were back we had a fellowship lunch at the youth center.

We brought my parents up the Djati Express which goes up the Djati Mt. right next to Tirana (above).


(Above) Dad and Justin as we went out driving one day looking at different pieces of property.


(Above) "The Block" or Party central in Tirana. This is the road that the church is located.

Below are some other random pictures from my parents time here...