A 'RESPECT'ful Rollercoaster

Week two in Albania had it’s trials and was certainly a rollercoaster week. For myself personally, I started it off with being sick – only a cold but still finding myself sucked of energy that was certainly needed. However, I wasn’t the only one this week. After a few days a few more of us caught various ailments with one from our team being out of commission for a couple of days. Thankfully on the whole we have all found healing as the week came to an end.

Our theme for this week of camp was on ‘Respect’ with a side of love and compassion. It certainly was a needed theme as it was something we dealt with in various ways during the week. For some reason this week, things were definitely more chaotic, children extra hyper and not as attentive. We changed the layout of our day twice, trying to fill in any extra time that found us standing around, which coincidently happened to be when things became most chaotic. A few personalities changed, we were certainly out of the honeymoon stage – within our group and for the children as well.

It made you really wonder what was happening at home for some of these children. One of the boys who were so helpful last week seemed to have a massive amount of ants in the pants, rarely finding him able to sit for a moment, running this way and that, screaming and rarely following direction. On Friday, another one of our boys (Gjino) strongly acted out, slapping another child and kicking another, meanwhile in the girls group his sister was clingy, emotional and just not at all her smiley self. We found out after one of our guys and our contact had a sit down with the boy and he told them about the horrible nightmare he had gone through the night before. There are 5 in the family and Gjino, the oldest, is the only one with a different father. That night he was on night patrol – trying to be protector, trying to keep his family safe – no sleep for him. His step-father had come home drunk and beat his mother to a pulp. Here is a boy having to watch his mother get beat up by a man that isn’t his father and yet he can do so little. It is so hard to hear and see the consequence of these times in these beautiful children. Gjino is a good boy and so far he has not become completely hardened from his childhood but it could be a matter of time before that changes. I pray not.

On Thursday afternoon, on our way back from camp we sadly came across four of our students already out at the graveyard across the street, having probably been sent out as soon as they arrived at home by a parent or family member. The purpose of being there? To beg. It is cultural practice here when someone passes away that you are suppose to give to the poor, so often children can be found outside of the gates waiting for the families to leave and give of their ‘good deed’. It was so heartbreaking to see our children there. At first we were so dumbfounded we didn’t know how to react, finally making up some sandwiches and just spending what would have been our down time to relax from the long day with these beautiful children. It was certainly worth the trade-off. I gave one of the sandwiches to a girl named Sona, who is not from our camps, gave her a hug when she appeared receptive to it and then found her locked to my hand and side for the next hour. She was so shy at first but as we began playing games of Stella-Stella-Ola and thumb wars, she came alive.

Friday evening we headed into the mountains to visit another area where one of the families lived. These three girls only started coming to camp this week and already I have fallen in love with them. So shy to start as well they too are quick to give and receive a hug and smile. The family they come from are considered to be the bottom of the barrel and they know it too. They are the poorest of a certain collection of related families and it was rather apparent as they hadn’t had a bath in quite some time. One of our team helped give them bathes and pick out the many lice that had found home in their tossled hair. The area where they come from is quite the walk away and has no running water and only two porta potties for 6 families (in the past there were 20 families). We visited in their ‘house’, which was a room no larger than a typical classroom inside of a large concrete building with very few working windows to keep out the cold. I was somewhat surprised and thankful to see that this room wasn’t as awful as I had imagined it could be but to say the least, still completely unsatisfactory for living standards. They did have a number of couches that were their beds as well. Not sure how they were able to afford them (outside of begging) but am thankful to know the girls are not sleeping on the ground. Another gave a short testimony, we shared a time of prayer, thanked them and were on our way.

Today, on our day off we had the wonderful opportunity of traveling to Macedonia and enjoying the beautiful town of Ohrid. What a great day, though I am thoroughly exhausted now. It was so wonderful to experience this vibrant place, of many contrasts to Pogredec and only approx. 30 km away. It was wonderful to see, smiles and laughter all around, men and women together, hand holding and just plain respect for one-another. Surprisingly, many spoke English as well, which was helpful. I’m thankful to God how he has blessed us to see the many good things amongst the not so pleasant.

We only have one week left of camps, two weeks left total. Tomorrow we will be moving out to a different spot as others are arriving Sunday night to stay where we have been. It will be sad to move from this spot as we have gotten to know the faces of the people of this area, grocery shopping amongst the same store owners each day. We will be clear across town near to where we hold camps, so I doubt we will find ourselves out this way too often again, unless we have an urge to go to the gypsy market which is right around the corner and of course the neighbourhoods we visit are out this way too. Well, I guess we will see 

Thanks again so much for your continued support in prayers and in love. I hope you are all doing well at home too. Love you all!