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he’s albanian…albanian…that’s for sure…(part 4)

day 3…

tuesday…april 6th, 2004…an early morning…we woke up, had breakfast and jetted down to the main square of durres at about 8am to catch a taxi van going into tirana…we were heading to jeff’s church to meet up w/ the rest of the group for a morning bible study at 9am before we went out into the streets…today was the college day…at the bible study jeff had me lead everyone (mostly just people from our group and a few albanians who would be translating for us that day) in a few praise songs and then launti (an albanian who is the assistant pastor there at jeff’s church) got up and preached to us…it was very good getting to hear from an albanian and he spoke to us in great english which was nice…we then went on a short walking tour of tirana led by jeff…after that we had lunch back at the church…then half the group took off for the train station…they would be riding on a train bent for durres that carries mainly college students who commute from durres to the university of tirana…the rest of us just passed the time there at the church…chad/derrick/cam and i continued our ongoin euchre tournament that we started on some of our various layovers on the trip over (cam and i won that tourney 9-6 by the way)…

at around 4pm or so…our group took off for where we would be talking to people that day…i was in the group goin to the “student city” (university dorms)…this once used to be a very open place to share the gospel…but has since closed up due to many different reasons…the majority of jeff’s church consists of college students and young married families…most of these people were won to Christ through evangelizing done at the university a few years back…but now it seems that things are closing up there…jeff still wanted us to go there and see if we could get anyone to talk to us…it was about an hour’s walk from the church and when we arrived a good bit of people from jeff’s church (mostly people attending the university) were waiting there for us…this time they put just one american to a group of 2-3 albanians since there were so many…i was put with yovohn and bledi (i’m sure i butchered those spellings…) and one other guy but i can’t remember his name…first we went to the dorms for economy students…we started on the top floor because those were the first year students and bledi (who translated for me most of the time) claimed they were more receptive…basically all we did was walk up to their door…knock and then ask them if we could come inside and talk with them…most people would let us come right in unless they were studying…the first room we went in had two guys in it…one sat and listened to us very intently while the other acted like he wasn’t interested…yovohn talked for most of the time (in albanian) and bledi would give me little capsulizations of what he was saying…i then shared my testimony with the kid (he understood english but couldn’t speak it well) and he seemed very interested but “wanted some time to think about it”…i made sure to tell him not to put it off because that’s just what the devil wants…to say “well there’s always tomorrow”…

we went to a few other rooms but nothing really got rolling and alot of kids were busy…we went down to the dorm for law students…not alot of kids wanted to talk to us there…we did end up in the room of a devout muslim…we stayed in there for about 45 min. or so and i was completely lost the whole time as yovohn and him duked it out in albanian…bledi kept me somewhat informed as to what was happening…the kid didn’t speak any english and we were late to meet back up w/ the rest of the group so i didn’t get a chance to talk to him…but he thanked us for coming and for sharing our faith with him…what a difference from american culture…even though they debated pretty heavily about some intense issues he still thanked us for coming and talking with him…how kool…

we met back w/ the rest of the group and talked for awhile about what all happened…we then stopped off at a cop-off of mcdonalds restaurant (they don’t have any real mcdonalds there at all)…the burgers weren’t that great but the fries were to die for…they also had a little ice cream stand that had some pretty great ice cream as well…after that we headed back to jeff’s church where derrick and i convinced cam to let chad spend the nite w/ us at sazan’s…so cam/chad/derrick and i jumped in jeff’s car and he drove us out to our home in durres…

how good it felt to be at home…

tune in tomorrow afternoon for part 5 as we turn the corner to the last two days of our time in albania…

p.s.- if you’d like to hear from jeff bartell, the missionary we worked with in albania…he is the featured speaker for my church’s bible conference this week (first baptist church in new phila)…the evening sessions that jeff is speaking in start at 7pm mon-wed nite this week…if you get a chance to come please do…you won’t want to miss hearing this guy…


######Note: This post is from a very old Xanga blog of mine. A very, very old blog. In fact, it’s practically a museum. Be sure not to touch any old references or links. You won’t break them, they are most certainly already broken.

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Ryan Straits


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