This afternoon I caught Hector and Pariti playing their guitars together in the common room on the second floor of the school.  The students at the Bible College know only worship and praise, study and fellowship.  Nearly every waking moment, the halls of this place ring with the sound of one of these endeavors.  I imagine that the discovery that took place amongst the youth in the United States in the 1960s is much like the discovery that is taking place in Albania today.  This Christian idea is new, like post-modernism must have seemed to those boundary-breaking baby-boomers.

Here, all people want to talk about is God and how He called you, what He has called you to do, how He has blessed you and where you saw Him last.  The energy is contagious.  I have never felt as connected to God through his creation as I do in this time.  How blessed we are to walk a path so thoroughly prepared.  Perhaps for the first time in my life I can understand much of what Paul is teaching to Titus and Timothy through his letters, where he was coming from when he interacted with Peter, and how joy-filled he was in prison.  Fearless, but truly without fear, not merely reckless for the sake of nothing, that is the by-product of Christ’s sacrifice.  Death has no power here.

Now is time only for song and laughter, building and building up, dreaming of flight with friends nearly forgotten.  Learning a new song need have no other purpose than to take joy in the singing of it.

This morning I was faced with a difficult choice early on.  Would I face the rains and take the three-leg bus into Fushekruje, or accompany my friend Marian to the bus stop in Tirana and then go to service at the International Church?  I decided to go with Marian.  It was good for me to stand at the bus stop with him, to talk a bit before he headed home to Fushe Arez.  Marian was my roommate for my first two months here in Albania.  He knows more of my story than most people.  He is one of the school translators and so I needn’t say that his English is excellent, but it is.  Last night I had a dream about a woman I used to know.  He helped me process my thoughts about it as a pair of young shepherds drove their flock and small herd past our bus stop.

We had gotten to a point in the conversation where he was filling in my words for me with his own thoughts; the way people do when they think they have a handle on what your truth is.  It was at that point I realized how content I am in fact with where I am in my life, regardless of what my sub-conscious may try to convince me of when I am not awake.  I miss companionship, true companionship, the way God intended.  With God we are never alone for long.  None of the relationships I’ve made over the past six months would have been possible had I not been free to travel here as a missionary.  Nor would have been a witness to the sun breaking through clouds over the alps on this cloud-rich morning.

Staying in Tirana this morning netted me an additional four hours of time.  Without making the commute to Fushekruje it was as though I had time to do anything I wanted to.  I spent an hour before the beginning of church journaling and writing poetry, people watching and conversing with my waiter.  The sermon was the first sermon in English I have sat through in six months.  I hadn’t realized how much I have been missing the spiritual food which is given when a disciple of God is administering directly to me.  I took time after the service to thank Pastor Barry personally.

As I sat in the service, I wrote down the following thought: As Michelangelo chipped away at the raw marble, did the marble know how beautiful it was becoming?  You are raw stone.  As God chisels away at you, do you recognize how beautiful you are becoming?

Fall has come to Albania after a drought-like summer season.  The days are getting shorter and lately, days are made short by the chance that rain will begin falling at any time.  To cap the work week I arrived in Fushkruje at about 11:30.  My morning Albanian language lesson had gone twice as long as scheduled and the forgone I had boarded sat for about twenty minutes at Zog U Zi before getting underway.  The first I saw of Visi was at Cafe Bushi with our two electricians.  We sat and talked about life and work and how expensive gasoline is.  Petrol costs nearly double in Albania what it does in the States.

After our coffee, Visi and I went to the jobsite.  The savatim (stucco) was nearly complete, and it all is looking very good.  I helped Visi out with the task of cleaning up, which took the better part of three hours.  As we worked, it would rain a bit and stop.  At the end of our cleaning time, the rain started and did not stop until sometime after dark.  

This morning I slept past 6AM and into the hour of 8.  It was nice to get up at my leisure.  Had it not rained to convincingly yesterday I might have put off the task of painting the benches outside of the school until a later time.  One of my favorite quotes is not from the Bible, but from Mark Twain.  “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.”  This statement has kept me from procrastinating more effectively than any of the verses in Proverbs.  What I do not do today, I may never have another chance to do.  And so, the school has five freshly painted, wrought iron bench seats.  Now all they lack are wooden slats for sitting.

Depression has been a constant in my life since I was very young.  I would not describe having depression as “suffering” as in “I suffer from depression.”  I would rather say that, for me, without extraordinary emotional lows I would have no notion of the extraordinary highs of living.  There is a balance over time.  When in a low, it is good to be around people and to avoid making important decisions.  When in a high, it is good to give people their space and to avoid making important decisions.  One of the wonderful things about living as a missionary is that I have broken with almost every pattern I had established previously.  The breaking of habits has taught me that it is not those habits which lead to depression.  For the first time since I can remember, I don’t blame myself for how I feel.  I have no guilt.  It is really quite a lovely place to be.

Did you see the sunrise this morning?

Did you watch the sunset?

Were you surrounded by people you love?

Did you witness genius?

Sing out loud?

Dance in your heart?

Eat like the child of a king?

Celebrate the road you are on?

Lovely little lavender buds have once again washed over the fields of Sauk.  The wild flowers here have budded and blossomed three times since I arrived in April.  What is it about these tiny points of joy that feed the cattle here and brush against my boots as I climb toward my morning bus?  Maybe it is like seeing the snow coming down out of the air for the first time in a winter season; some gifts feel like magic.

Boy

Twelve years

Eleven

Boards the bus beside me

Leap

Up to the best seat

A perched alcove

Glass back

Turtleneck

Deep ribbed and earth tan

Mutter mutter eyes down

The care collector let you

Observer

Quiet as a hanging portrait

Grim eyed oil casting

Motionless save eyes, mind

The faremaster forgot you

Pretty girls never even glanced

No one would miss you

No one even saw you there

Joshua Hughes

9.October.2012

There is a term I hear over and over again in this ancient nation; “avash, avash.”  When translated literally this term means “slowly, slowly.”  What it meas in practice, however, can be one or more of the following things: be careful, take your time, don’t be in a hurry, everything will work out, don’t worry about it, it is under control, comfort is more important than speed, quality is more important than speed, you are not behind, we are not behind, it will happen in time, don’t concern yourself, I trust that I will have your answer soon, there is nothing that we can do about it, and there will be time enough for you to complete what you have begun.

The work on the church has been characteristic of the Albanian approach to construction as I have witnessed in Albania in general.  I will describe it as: avash, avash.  The tallest building in Albania, a structure which is within a few meters of the main bus station near the centerof Tirana is incomplete.  It has not seen a single day of improvement since I arrived here in April; avash, avash.  The hotel that is being built near the school I live in in Sauk has had dozens of unopened pallet-loads of brick stacked on the second floor for weeks; avash, avash.  My jobsite was atypical of Albania today.  The church jobsite in Fushekruje had three full crews working today.

Kole and Edmund were installing mermer.  Mermer is the granite windowsill material that goes down before windows are installed.

Yli and Miri were installing and grouting the tile in the bathrooms on the first floor.

Visi and I worked on the savatim for the gabina.  Savatim is composed of the same material as sprutso, but is has a more finished look.  Savatim is what English speakers might call stucco.

At the end of the day I went by Fatjon’s house to pay his family a visit; it had been too long since I had come by.  I was greeted like a dignitary, and given the seat next to Fatjon’s grandmother.  Fatjon is the oldest of the nine grandchildren to his father’s mother who live behind the green gate which demarks the estate of his family from the road.  One of his little cousins was sick.  She had been tied down to her cradle.  The children here are long suffering, resilient, inquisitive and beautiful.

I enjoyed my time catching up with Fatjon’s family.  Sajmir is out of town.  He has found work up north for the next bit of time.  I was assured more than once that my membership as part of the family is not contingent on where Sajmir works or whether or not I was formally invited to come by.  My presence is expected, it is my absence which causes people to wonder.

There have been times since coming to Albania when I have had to bend like a reed in heavy wind to the will of others.  I suppose this has brought me to a place of greater flexibility and resilience.  The wind will push the reed in a direction of its own choosing.  I only need to have the willingness to dance with bellowing bluster as it sweeps over the land.  I like the wind, it carries me to the place God wants me.  Yesterday I was invited to have lunch with a man from church named Bashkim.  He wanted me to come over to his house today at noon.  Without Christ as my example this is an invitation I never would have considered accepting.  Please allow me an author’s discretion to demure from giving the reasons why.

I arrived at around 11:50, mostly because I misjudged how long it would take to walk from the church job-site to the Rama home.  Yesterday afternoon Fatjon and I walked to within a few blocks of the house so that I would be properly oriented for today.  I knocked on the gate, waited, and then yelled “O Bashkim!”  I learned early-on not to cross the threshold of a persons’ gate or house without their leave.  Bashkim let me in, and then I sat in his living room, attended by his wife Eva.  Neither of them had expected me to come, which I found curious.

Bashkim’s aunt Halla and his daughter Samantha sat across the coffee table from me so that I would not be without company while Bashkim went to the store to buy groceries for his wife to prepare for lunch.  Before long the house was alive with the aroma of food frying; potatoes, salcicha, and peppers.  Bashkim joined me on the couch and asked me some questions about what I did and did not like about the church and the work I was doing.  Soon he brought out his laptop computer to show me photographs of his and Eva’s wedding; an event which took place about two years ago.  Before long I found myself genuinely engaged in conversation with a man I have never been entirely comfortable speaking with.  For a moment I thought “what is happening here?”  Nothing is impossible with God.

Lunch was a lovely affair.  Eva, Bashkim and I each had a bowl with hardboiled eggs, salciche, and potatoes.  In the middle of the table were the peppers, a bowl of sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, home-made bread, and byrek.  Bashkim poured me some of his home-made wine.  When juice spoils and gets that funky smell, coupled with effervescence, that is what home-made wine is like.  They apologized a number of times for the lack of food, ignoring the fact that between the three of us only about half of what Eva prepared was consumed.  Bashkim explained why he had thought I wouldn’t come, and I explained to him why it was obvious to me that I would.  We laughed, and there was a sense of ease and satisfaction around the table.

When Bashkim and I meet again, it will be as friends.

Mosaic remnant a nameless dream

Red standards a promise protecting

Six kings a rubble mountain

Kneeling son a soil foreign

Another beautiful sunrise greeted the land of Sauk this morning.  It will get light here about an hour-and-a-half before the sun finally shows from behind the nearby, low-lying alps.  Like every place on earth, Albania has beauty to spare daily.

I had the day entirely to myself.  All but two of the students returned home for the weekend, and our visiting professor flew back to Italy this morning.  I intentionally stayed in and knocked out most of a list of home-related tasks.  Around 4PM I decided to go to TEG to get my groceries.  Carrefour is the most American style supermarket there is in Albania.  They sell muslix in bulk so I end up going there once every three weeks or so for another 2 kilogram bag of my morning fiber fiber fiber.  While at TEG I sat down to study a little Shqip.  The waiter at the coffee shop brought me a sweet cup of chocolate pudding to go with my dopio espresso.  I found myself doing more people watching than study, so I walked around and found the bookstore.  I purchased an alphabetical, picture book with the words for things in four languages.

Once I got back to the school I found that Hector, one of the new students, was here alone.  Hector loves to play guitar and sing and so it was no wonder that he was feeling lonely.  Loneliness can bring the mind to plague, so I decided to join him in the common area just outside of the kitchen.  He and I began talking at each-other, but we were conversing before long.  His English is not as good as my Albanian so we had to agree to have grace and to lean toward understanding when the other option was frustration.  We cooked dinner together and had potatoes and spaghetti about an hour before midnight.  Hector is my brother and we are learning each other.  Soon we will know the friendship God intends for us.

I awoke early after another cool evening.  Although the bus was overcrowded I was not sweating profusely which takes away from the self-consciousness I already feel in public.  I’ve been here for six months and I still draw long looks from children and whispers from teenagers; most adults seem to look through me.  It is a good day to be alive.  While crossing a busy street this morning I turned back to allow for the passing of heavy traffic.  As I did so I froze just off the path of a speeding, black SUV.  The mirror of the vehicle slapped into on of the buckles on the shoulder of my backpack.  Another inch and I might have had a broken shoulder.

Vissy was throwing sprutso when I arrived.  It is nice as a superintendent to arrive on a work site where tasks are being accomplished without you having to be there.  Tile is being laid in the bathrooms and it looks very professional.  This church will have a total of four banjos, each of which will have a dush (shower).  The window sills will be a grey and white marble as will the thresholds between the showers and the bathroom floors.  It is my hope that my crew will complete their work before Fisnik’s workers have completed their’s.  Of course it is difficult to fight the feeling that all of the work should have been completed by now.  Life is bigger than us.

At the end of the day Fatjon came by to deliver a message and to ask a few questions.  He is maturing into a fine man.  As we walked from the work-site to the highway we were intercepted by Pastor Alban and our friend Alban Daci.  Fatjon did not join the four of us for coffee.  It was nice to have a chance to catch up with Pastor Alban about his sons David and Abiel.  It is good for a pastor to have a family of his own; this attribute adds depth of character and understanding.  Fushekruje has been blessed by God to have a team of Christians such as these assembled there.  The spirit of the city has been lifted in recent years.  Now there is a sense of hope in what was formerly the murder capital of Albania.  God moves.