he’s albanian…albanian…that’s for sure…(part 5)
day 4…
wednesday…april 7th, 2004…woke up early once again because we were meeting the rest of the group for our morning bible study in tirana at 9 am…we went in to wake up chad in the living room and found sazan sleeping there on the couch next to him…here he stayed up late studying (he was teaching at our bible study that morning) and so he just crashed on the couch w/ chad…sazan would later tell jeff and cam that chad “slept like a lamb”…we all got a good kick outta that…
we did our daily routine of eating breakfast together and then heading down to catch a van in the town square…we got into tirana a lil after 9 am and i got up and led us in a few tunes once again…after the worship, sazan got up to talk with jeff translating…what would follow was one of the most real, relevant and insightful messages i have ever heard…and it came from an albanian…we were all blown away…it amazes me how we americans are so closeminded to other cultures and ways of doing things…just because this guy wasn’t trained in the states to preach, didn’t look or act like a typical preacher, or most of all, didn’t speak our language…didn’t mean he couldn’t bring it just as well as anyone else…and boy did he bring it…this officially sealed it for me…sazan was the man…the power of God was working through this guy…and it was definitely evident to all of us there that day…it was then that i realized how much of an incredible privilege it would be to go to albania for the 10 month trip and lock shields with guys like sazan and help them build God’s church there…
after the bible study we hung out for a few hours around the church…some of us played cards n stuff…early in the afternoon we headed outside tirana to a mountainside restaurant that overlooked the city…it was an awesome view so we all snapped a bunch of pictures…we then had lunch and got in groups and prayed for the city of tirana…one of the koolest things for me was getting in groups praying like this with some albanians and some americans…everyone would pray in their own language…how kool it is that God hears all our prayers no matter who we are or what language we speak…it doesn’t matter the cultural flavor because it’s all a sweet smelling fragrance to him…
we then headed back to the church and derrick and i went back to durres for dinner with sazan and laura…we stayed up late and talked for a good bit about how sazan and laura met, their marriage and all that…sazan had prayed about asking laura to marry him for over a year…he then asked her 5 times and 4 times she said she wasn’t sure…how bout that for confidence…the dude kept coming back…so she prayed about it and she finally said yes…after that, apparently sazan had many flattering things to say about his wife but she was too embarrassed to translate them for us…they then asked us if we had girlfriends and all that…we said no and they asked us if we had the gift of singleness…haha…sazan was quite the comedian…
we all had some good laughs that nite and it was just how i imagined our last nite with our host family would be…
tune in tomorrow (or shortly thereafter) for part 6 and my last day in albania…
quote of the day: “she’s hot…she’s nice…and she reads her bible occasionally” - chad “chi-chi” south
p.s.- if you go back to a few of the previous albania entries you will see some text in blue…those are the parts i got mixed up so i went ahead and just changed them…make especially sure to go back and check out monday nite’s cuz we had the bomb of a time at our host families house…
######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.