Albania #3

So I decided to post the rest of the trip in parts. And I figured I would wrap up Albania first. It's amazing to me to think about it being a month ago that we arrived in Albania, not knowing what to expect. We've talked non-stop about the connections we've made there and have already enjoyed getting to talk to some of our new brothers and sisters over facebook and skype. Thank goodness for today's technology!
Here's the story of the rest of our trip in Albania:
This is a picture of the outside of the church building and the church van. Now, the Americans (Brian and I) argued that the van was blue, the Albanians argued that the van was green. We finally settled on that the van was blue-green. Brian decided that the van needed a good name, so he named it the Blue Bomber. They argued it couldn't be that name because it isn't blue, but after talking to Flori last night, the Blue Bomber has stuck, at least for now...


On our last Sunday after church, we took the Blue Bomber an hour away to the coast town, Durres. It was a lot of fun and reminded us of the beach in Texas. It was very relaxing and I'm never going to hate a trip to the beach.
Vjola & me
The group that went to the beach
That day was actually our sixth anniversary. It is so hard to believe that 6 years ago we were just starting out on our life as a married couple. We talked in Durres how we never would have expected to be spending our 6th anniversary in Albania of all places...God has a plan.

After church Wednesday we went to a bar/cafe to watch a soccer/football championship game between Manchester United and I already forgot the other one...I'm sure it's in my journal. We had a lot of fun and just enjoyed extra time spent with our new friends.
Koli & Brian at the game

Thursday Koli & Flori took us on a trip around Albania in the Blue Bomber. They took us to the castle not far from Tirana up in the mountains in a town called Kruja. It was really awesome, neither of us had been to such an old castle before and the view was incredible. Brian says his favorite part of the entire trip was driving in the van with everyone and the great talks we had.

Brian, me, Flori & Sokhol
Koli, Flori & Brian in traditional Albanian hats

During the day on Monday, Wednesday and Friday we spent time with our students that came for English through the Bible studies. It was such a great experience to be reading God's word with these young people. It was pretty amazing that they just would accept the word as truth since it was in the Bible. The kicker was the Word requiring a life change to follow God, I wish we had more time to spend with them, but we look so forward to talking with some of our readers over Skype and look forward to hear about how God will water the seed planted.
Two of our readers, Enida (top) and Mina (bottom) were roommates and reminded us so much of two of our favorite University students back home, Lauren and Kaycee. Hopefully we can keep in touch with them over Skype or email.


The last night Brian taught the youth class (the 20 year olds) and we had snacks after class in the basement. We are going to miss the great discussions we've had with these Christians and have learned so much from their genuine sincerity for the Lord and their love for each other.
Ellen, (the resident missionary) and us. We learned so much from Ellen, this was the purpose of the trip, to shadow a missionary and see if God would want us to ever be missionaries. She is truly a servant of God and has a great heart for the people of Albania. And they have a great love for her too.
Vjola and me
Bledi & Brian
Brian with our favorite drink in the entire world that we can only find in Albania, Fanta Exotic. Man I miss that stuff.

After the snacks we went out again with some of the youth to the same music club that plays 90's American songs. It was fun to be spending more time with them again, we are really going to miss them, though we kinda started feeling old in the idea of partying every weekend. But hanging out with our friends would make it worth it.

Vjola, Ridi & me

We had an amazing time in Albania. We didn't know going there that they were looking for a young couple to come and work with the youth. As we were leaving, we were asked to consider coming there to work with the youth. There is a lot to take into consideration about this decision, we have always wanted to do mission work, but we weren't thinking of it being right now. We have just recently moved to Granbury and settled into our new house. We both have great jobs and are knee deep in fertility treatments. But we keep telling ourselves we are not going to be a couple of Jonahs. If things keep falling into place, we cannot ignore God and will just trust that this is the right decision. Please pray for us as this is a huge decision and we are going to go ahead and finish with treatments this month and next. It will definitley be a summer for God to move in and we hope that at the end we will have a clear picture for what God wants from us.