Shkodër pt. 2-More!!!

 

I left off with our meeting with the pastor of cornerstone church here in Shkodër. After that meeting we met with some of the leaders for CRU or campus crusades. There ministry is geared towards reaching the youth in the community. They talked about how they have a pretty good mix of students that show up, ranging from 16 to 24. They talked about their mission statement; which is to WIN students through relationships, BUILD them in their understanding of the LORD, and SEND them out in the continuation of that vision. We got to tell them a little bit about the organization we were with and how we fit into it as missionaries. After we got to know each other a little bit they started sharing some of their ideas on how we could partner with their ministry! They said they had a sports event later on in the week that they would like us to go and be apart of and they also asked if we would be willing to host an “American night.” The vision for the American night was for us to share some of our culture through food, games, and questions from the students that showed up. It was awesome!! Getting to see the LORD lead us into interactions and being to reveal some of the things that we could do as ministry in the town of Shkodër. Right after our 2 meetings with the pastor of the church and the leaders of CRU we went to our Airbnb and prayed over our encounters and praised God for the way He was working and allowing us to be apart of it. We began planning how we could fill our week with ministry and talked spending the rest of our day translating verses onto some paper and handing the verses out to beggars that we had been seeing as we walked. We contacted the girl we had met leading worship and asked if she would be willing to translate for us. She agreed and even offered to help write some of the cards we were planning to hand out. We also had the idea to attach the verses to a flower to add to the whole gift.

Here are some of the cards 

The next day did not start as planned. I got locked in the bathroom for 3 hours in our Airbnb!!!

3 hours later

Praise God the locksmith was able to get it open before we had planned to leave to hand the gifts out. The little hiccup this morning reminded me of something that we would talk about when I was apart of camp ministry. Before the summer their were usually some issues that would pop up that would cause some struggle for the camp. The people that had done the ministry for longer noticed that the more serious the problem that would occur the bigger some of the ministry would be for that summer. I have taken this idea into my own life and chose to see hiccups and things that don’t go as planned as places where I expect to see the LORD do big things. So I am freed from the bathroom and we set out to hand out flowers and scripture and to minister to the people we encountered.

We handed out the first set of flowers to some women that were begging and we were able to talk to them about Jesus. Telling them that the LORD is a provider and that if we look for Him the scriptures say that He will reveal himself to us. One of the women invited us to their village to go and play with the kids, which felt like the LORD was opening up yet another door!

After the women we came across a man that had a hunched back. We were able to talk with him and hear his story about how his father had died recently and he needed help providing for himself. So we were able to speak with him about our God being a provider and prayed with him. As we walked we came across person after person getting to speak with them and share the love that our LORD has given us. We ministered to a couple of Muslim people and some Catholics. During one of our encounters when some of the team was praying over a man some children looked at what was happening in curiosity. My first thoughts were I don’t know if I should give these kids the flowers, because they might just throw them away. BUT the verse were Jesus reprimanded His disciples for doing the same thing came to me. So I thought well Jesus says the kingdom is for them, so I gave the kids a couple of flowers, praying that Jesus would touch their hearts. Once we were coming to the last of our 25 flowers we had made our way to the center were there were people going about their day. We were approached again by a different set of children, this time I didn’t second guess the action I gave the rest of our flowers to the 5-7 children that were gathering around us. We also had taken some evange-cubes which were some little toy type cards that shared the gospel. We gathered the children up and told the story to them using the card and gave the card as well as the flowers to those kids.

Really a fully pact day of ministry were the LORD allowed us to do so much. I look back on it and I am amazed by all of our encounters and the lessons that we shared and that were shared with us.

Luke 18:15-17
Luke 12:48
Genesis 22:14 Jehovah Jireh

Please continue to pray for me and my team.
Pray for the LORD to continue to use us and that we would be able to hear HIM clearly.
Please pray for Gusti the head pastor of this church and for his ministry
Pray for MORE faith for me and that He would align my will to His!!!!