It has been a few days since I have been home from Albania, but I think that part of my heart longs to be back there. Last night I had a long, distinct dream set in Albania. I don’t know if that is common for other people in similar circumstances, but I am experiencing the short term foreign mission trip after-shock. Its a good thing so no one worry.

Where to start? Well, from a practical point of view, the main reason that our team went to Albania in the first place was to help with the construction of the church building for Bible Baptist Church in Shkoder. When we got there, Rick DeHaan (a missionary partner who is working with David Hosaflook overseeing the construction of the building) set out three projects for our team to accomplish during the week. 1) We were digging a 40cm ditch to lay water pipe and connecting the church plumbing to the city water line and installing a water meter. 2) We were putting up a tongue-and-groove ceiling under the main porch balcony. 3) And, we were framing out the main auditorium, an adjacent room, and two bathrooms with metal studs and getting it ready to be sheet rocked. Monday, the main pipe from the city broke. We spent eight hours trying to level firring strips on the porch ceiling to get it ready for the tongue-and-groove, but the only thing that we accomplished was coming up with a list of techniques and theories how it wouldn’t work. However, the men working on the metal stud work made good use of their time. They had good start and got a lot accomplished. By Tuesday we had finished the plumbing, by Friday we had finished the ceiling and by Saturday (the day that we left) we had finished about 95% of the stud work in the auditorium. We left very little to be done before they could begin insolating and sheet-rocking. So, by God’s grace, we had a very successful week as far as the construction was concerned.

I will continue telling about my week in Albania in following posts. I will focus on different areas of the trip and try to cover the majority of the events of the week. This will give you, the reader, smaller portions to digest. And, it will give me the opportunity to share more amongst my busy schedule.

Thank you again for your prayers and e-mail support.

This is “grace at work.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 30th, 2006 at 3:07 am and is filed under Albania. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.