I am at the disposal of the Plagenhoefs, the missionary family who began serving here back when their now 18 year old daughter was learning to walk.  They have placed me on site in Fushekruje, which is not something I would have chosen for myself.  I have also been put along side people there whom I would not have chosen to work with.  God knows what He is doing.  My friendships with the people of that city have started to blossom, and it is a very neat thing to be a part of.

There is Buyar, a man who owns a bar-cafe in Fushekruje.  The first time I met him was over a sit-down in regards to his property.  Buyar needed to renegotiate the church’s contract with him.  Kurt and Stephanie were very gracious, which is their way.  Instead of feeling anger or betrayal, they simply moved forward in Christian friendship with this man.  Buyar is not a Christian, but he has met Jesus in the Plagenhoef family.  Since that time he has gone out of his way to show us every courtesy.

There is Fatjon, my 14 year old translator.  The first time I met him was at Alban’s church in Fushekruje.  It was obvious immediately that this intelligent young man was not only curious about God, but also about the world.  He has been my help unquestioningly over the past few weeks, and I am in his debt.  Though he works hard for me and handles my impatience unflinchingly, he will not hear of being compensated for his trouble.  Our exchange is equitable in his mind without the exchange of currency, and still he makes sacrifices to help me every day.  He has been one of the laborers on site, and today was his the first pay-day of his life.

There is Siamir, Fatjon’s father and the most skilled worker on our job-site.  The first time I met him was on June 1st.  I remember because this was the Albanian Children’s Day.  He is a quiet, hard-working, intelligent, thoughtful, honest and sincere man who has seen much of south-eastern Europe.  He makes every effort to show the people he comes into contact with the honor of respect.  His concern is your comfort.  Today we took his son to Tirana after work to buy a cellular telephone.  Afterward we went for coffee on the top floor of the tallest building in Albania; the Aba Business Center.

Lastly, is Veesy.  Ervis and I first met on my first visit to Fushekruje about two months ago.  That day he told me that Pastor Kurt had said he would be working side-by-side with me.  We are slowly getting over our communication barrier, and he now speaks to me as though I understand it all.  The cross I wear was a gift from him.  He has honored me by inviting me to be his guest at the wedding of his wife’s brother, in her home town this Saturday.  I am slated to meet him downtown at 6:3AM tomorrow.  I am very excited.  I will have photos and a full report on Sunday when we return.

Love you.

I am a boy.  I have always enjoyed equipment and especially what some machines are capable of accomplishing when the right person is dialing the toggles.  We had a fadrom on site today, technically a scavator is an excavator, something we might call a trackhoe in the States.  A fadrom is principally used as a bulldozer, although the one which Salvator was operating for us had a backhoe.

As I was saying, the right operator can take a simple machine and make it do extraordinarily precise things.  In Albania, the price for hiring man and machine is 3,500 lek per hour, which is around 120 times what a puntor, or laborer makes.  In 3.5 hours, this machine had filled our sewer trenches, graded the site, and loaded six kamions worth of earth into trucks to be hauled away.  Tomorrow we will begin work on the rain water handling system.  

This will be the first church built in the history of the city of Fushekruje.  I am so blessed to be a part of it.  

Many forms a variety

Of Rigid resistance to

The pull, pushing liquid

Stone over evacuated earth

Devices devised over rusted 

Nails harvested from green 

Treated wood scraps scattered

About the naked churchyard

Fishnets make fingers obsolete

A river’s rush cold

Back bent in the 

Dry of the bank

Policing the site may

Have robbed our minds

And cheated our hands

From creating like God

This morning I rode into Fushekruje with Pastors Kurt and Stephanie.  We picked up pastor Alban on the way.  Driving through Tirana we passed a section of road where crowds had gathered on either side and in the median to gawk and give opinions over a woman who may have been fatally hit by a van.  Eyes closed, her head bobbed as two people tried to lift her by her arms to clear her from the road.  Immobilization of the spinal column was not a consideration.  We are encouraged to avoid these kinds of crowds.

Later, heading into Fushkruje, the exit ramp off the freeway into the city was blocked by police.  An oil tanker had overturned on the off-ramp.  After finding a back road into town, we arrived on the job site without incident.  It was good for me to have my handlers on site to see our work first hand.  They are pleased, so I am pleased.  Any carpenter will tell you that having happy clients is the equivalent to an additional two or three hours of sleep every night.

Today we set the first five cement poussetes over the plastic ones.  This is all just part of the sewage handling system.  We should be finished with sewer and on to the rain handling system early next week.

There is more to the ground work on a project like this than anyone might guess.  In a few months no one will be able to tell we had done anything at all to the grounds here; that is the hope anyway.  On one of my runs for materials, I paid a visit to the tile man across the street.  His name is Shpatim Llula, and he would like to learn more English.  He asked me what I was going out to get, and I told him “Tubat.”  “Tubat is Albanian, what is the word in English?” he insisted.  “Pipe,” I told him.  “Pipe,” he said putting his hand to his mouth like he was smoking tobacco.  I then spent the next few minutes giving examples of uses of the word pipe.

Shpatim picked up a piece of paper and started to sketch my face as we conversed.  He told me that he is a painter and that some time in the future he would like to do an impressionist portrait of me in color.  I don’t have to say how flattering these types of gestures are, do I?  By the time I got back with the pipe I had headed off to purchase and retrieve, it was nearly quitting time.  The fifth poussette top was soon placed in concrete, and we all headed home.

After a post-work coffee with Ervis and Fatjon, I headed back to Tirana.  The sun has been a strong presence in the sky for every second of the days since last Thursday.  I am getting used to being soaked through with sweat as I ride the bus from the center of Tirana to Sauk.  Each afternoon I look forward to walking the field near my home.  It is no wonder the Ottoman Empire would stop at nothing to conquer this place.

Good night.

This morning I left the school to head to the bus station at around 7AM.  On my way I saw Chimmey who yelled down from the third story of his home “Cafe vola?  Haitha!”  Which means “Would you like to join me for coffee brother?  Come on up!”  At the top of the stairs I was greeted by Chimmey, his wife, her mother, and three men who were unknown to me.  By the end of our interaction I still had no idea who these men were; friends or family of Chimmey’s.  The coffee I was given was Turkish style which is like unrefined, sweet, thick espresso served scalding hot.  A number of the men were also taking sips of raki between sips of coffee.  Raki is the Albanian equivalent to Irish or Canadian whiskey.  The smell alone will open your eyes, but I couldn’t speculate as to how effective drinking a shot of it for breakfast might be for motivating one to a higher level of productivity.

I enjoyed as much time with Chimmey and his entourage as I thought I could before letting them know that I should be going.  The bus was a long time in coming, which put me in the center of Tirana a little behind.  I finally made it to the job site at about 9:15.  The men are good about not ribbing me too severely for coming late.  I have become something of a curiosity around the city of Fushekruje.  The woman I purchase bottled water from everyday had an important question for me today.  I had her write it down so that I might have Fatjon translate it for me.  The note turned out to be a letter encouraging me to hire one of the woman’s contacts to be the head of the school we are building.  We aren’t building a school.

At the end of the day I was invited for coffee by Fatjon’s father.  I still do not know his name, I call him Baba, which is the Albanian word for father.  We took some streets which I had never seen before to get to his house.  Instead of going to his personal property, we went next door to his neighbor’s house.  That family is away for some amount of time and has left Baba with a key.  Baba’s wife joined us to be the person who would serve the coffee.

I’m going to pause for a moment and invite you to walk with me, to put yourself here.  It is Mediterranean hot and humid.  You have been up and “working” since 7AM.  You are a sweaty mess.  You have been invited to the home of someone you have only recently met which, it turns out, isn’t actually their home.  You are tired, and hungry.

At the steps leading to the front porch, everyone removed their shoes.  While unlacing my boots, Baba touched me on the shoulder saying “Yo, yo, ska problem.”  Which meant “Please leave your boots on, you are my guest.”  At the door, Fatjon translated his father’s next hospitable extension: would I like to take a shower before we continued our time together?  I demurred, saying that I would however like to wash my hands.  After washing, I came into the family room, and was given the seat furthest from the door.  Baba brought in a bottle of raki.  Although I declined, his insistence that I try it was an argument I didn’t feel I could overcome without causing serious offense.  Raki burns all the way down, and the burn lingers all the way through.  The conversation which ensued was one of great honor to me.  Baba explained some interesting Albanian history and then expressed a wish that he and I will continue down the path of a strong friendship together.  I agreed that that was my wish as well.  Fatjon’s mother expressed her joy at having me around her son.  I likened Fatjon to pure gold, an image which both of his parents found to their liking.

As we left, Fatjon’s mother picked a pair of pink roses for me.  After handing them to me she said that I could have red ones if I preferred.  I assured her that pink was perfect.  I will leave you reader with a single word: blessed.  Blessed be the name of the LORD, blessed be this place, blessed be God’s children in Fushekruje, and blessed is the author of this page; so very blessed am I.

Today Pastor Kurt and I drove down to Shkoder for church.  Shkoder is a city about 2 hours north of Tirana.  There we attended service in an old performing arts theater.  We met up with a team there from Convoy of Hope.  Six men were in country from Maryland, and we spent the rest of the day with Peter, their leader.

Peter is an impressive man.  He is 35, and has been a pastor since he was 22.  His passion is church-planting and equipping new leaders to plant churches.  At the end of the day today, the three of us went to the city of Fier.  The name Fier is pronounced like the English word Fear.  Fier is the home to some 500 gypsy families, which is the target demographic for Pastor Fatjon and his family.  First we visited their church in town.

From the outside, the only thing that would cause you to wonder if this building were anything but vacant is the sign. Kisha is Albanian for the English word church.  This church has grown from 3 to 25 over the last 3 years, which is an impressive statistic.  There is quite a bit of work to do in another part of the city.  There is an old abandoned factory complex with a railroad running through it a few miles away.

It is in this area that an unknown number of Gypsies have come to live.  There are two main types of Gypsies in Albania.  There are the Roma, and there are the Egyptian.  I couldn’t tell which of the two these people were.  The Egyptian pride themselves on having a higher culture than that of the Roma, so even among a people group who might otherwise be united in their nationlessness, there are strong divisions.  The Gypsy has never known the love of Jesus, has never been accepted by anyone.

They are a lovely people.  Their beauty and social structure remind me of the people of El Salvador.  Poverty strips away any masking of the likeness of God.  Created in His image, people in desperate need reflect the beauty of God in a unique and honest way.  These are God’s children.

Please pray for Fier.  I love you.

Today I slept in and allowed my mind some morning dream time.  This is the first day I haven’t had to prepare something for school in a long time.  I didn’t quite know how to handle the freedom that has accompanied graduation.  I am sure I will get used to it.

I have been given the task of designing and building a gazebo here at the school.  I decided to spend some time working out a design today.  After measuring the concrete pad which the structure will act as shade for, I walked to my favorite little bar cafe to sketch out some ideas.  While I was there a few people deployed a chess set at a table near mine.  I went to the index of my Albanian Phrasebook to find something, and on the second to the last page was a section on Chess, right after a section on Swimming.

I have found it interesting that while the television and the internet are available here, neither of those two forms of distraction have replaced futboll, dominoes, chess or just hanging out in groups of three to five people.  Maybe that sign of “progress” is on the way, but it doesn’t seem to be.  The Albanians I interact with are happiest with a small cup of coffee in one hand and a friend close enough to touch on the elbow or knee at the other.

After spending a few hours at this cafe, having two coffee drinks for a total cost of just under two dollars, I decided to see if a nearby road led where I thought it might.  I was hoping to end up at a lumber yard near the Jamiya where my bus terminates every day.  It was a longer road than I anticipated, but it did lead exactly where I had hoped that it would.  On the way I passed a sickle-toting herdsman with his cattle.  The roads here handle all forms of traffic; from vehicle and human, to sheep, goats and cows.

After about a forty minute walk, I finally arrived at the lumber yard.  I needed to measure the lumber here to find out what was available to build my gazebo project with.  The United States is one of the few places in the world which uses inches and feet when describing the dimensions of things like wood.  Here is a funny digression:

I met a man on an airplane who had been in Bali for a time.  A family there had given him a plot of land.  This man designed his dream bungalow, and began construction on it for a short time before he was called away to the States.  He had left his plan-set behind, and construction had continued in his absence over the next several months.  When he returned, he was surprised to find that everything had been built to roughly three times as big as he had intended.  His bungalow had become a mansion.  He had designed in feet what the natives had built in meters.

My favorite discovery at the lumber yard was the ready availability of rough-hewn, white-wood slabs.  There is the potential to make some nice table-tops or some really nice bench seats from the materials I found.  The blue paint on the ends of these boards makes me think of William Wallace.

Won’t you come and build with me?

Today was very full of Fushekruje related work.  I met with Pastor Kurt at 7:30 to get 35,000 lek, about 350 U.S. dollars.  We need to have cash on hand for everything.  Today we took delivery of cement and gravel and we also needed to pick up some sundry building supplies.  God treated me to a few things today.  The first was that I was able to have Fatjon with me all day.  He is 14 years old, and he is my translator on site.  He has also become someone I dearly trust.  Secondly, his father was on site for the second time today to help with the installation of the church’s sewer system.  I couldn’t have known how talented and careful this man is without having had the privilege of working beside him.  He has a solid knowledge base and a work-ethic I respect.  He is a builder.

Being a builder isn’t as common as one might suspect.  If you know 100 people in construction, likely 5 or fewer of them are builders.  Greg Vammen is a builder.  Jeremy Culver is a builder.  Being a builder requires a person to insist on excellence in all phases of construction.  It also requires that they can do it themselves, and are eager to perform their duties well.  Meeting a builder in construction is as rare as finding a house-cat worth feeding.

The third blessing of the day came at the hands of my pastor, Alban.  He was supposed to handle the final payment of Astrite, our former guard.  However, Alban was delayed today with a church-task-gone-awry, so he asked me to handle it.  At 4PM, Fatojon and I walked less than a block to Astrite’s house.  I briefed Fatjon as well as I could before we headed over.  Mostly, I wanted him to translate exactly what I was saying, and for him not to leave out anything that Astrite was going to say to me.  Often times Fatjon will not translate something which he has assumed that I will take offense to.  At the base of the stairs to Astrite’s house Fatjon said “Joshua, will you please stop here and call to him?”  “I don’t know if he’s home,” I replied, my instinct to press ahead.  “Yes, I know but you will please stop here and call to him?”  Fatjon was insistent.  I understood some amount of danger at summitting the steps uninvited.

“Astrite, oh Astrite,” I called.  “Po,” soon he was out of doors and down the steps to greet us.  He invited us inside to talk.  Fatjon and I were told to keep our shoes on.  We were seated on an overstuffed couch in the living/dining room.  Before any real discussion had begun, there were eight people from his family in the room with us.  Some were sitting, and some stood.  All of them were intimate members of his family.  All of them were silent and very attentive.  Astrite and I exchanged our feelings through Fatjon.  There were grunts of accord and satisfaction as I explained our relationship with Astrite.  Our relationship is good, and it is an important relationship to us.  Soon Fatjon and I left, having accomplished something good for God.  On the way home I felt empowered and encouraged.

On the walk from where the forgon terminates in Tirana, to the bus stop in Qender where I take my final bus home, a crowd had gathered.  Near the Skenderbeu statue, about 120 people stood in a circle.  It was to protest the violence in Syria.

In the center of the crowd, 9 children were staged.  They were lying on the ground with their faces painted as though bloodied.  They were covered with Syrian flags as though martyred.  The future of Syria lay dead in the center of Tirana.

Please pray for Syria.

Today I took the usual three bus route to Fushekruje, arriving at around 9AM.  En route, we passed a gathering crowd of protesters and police officers in the town of Nikel.  There have been demonstrations lately in some towns over access to electricity.  Thankfully all of our tools are fed by carbohydrates, fats and proteins.

We were told by Fesnik, the general contractor, that he had two specialists to help us get the pussets and pipes in place today.  I would have thought that these two specialists would be different from the two specialists he hired to cover the electrical conduit with mortar.  Eduard and Colly are good guys, and very hard working men.  Colly talks to me like I understand him, and Eduard rarely speaks at all.  With their help and guidance we laid about 80 meters of pipe today.  I learned how to install basic drain systems from my Uncle Norman, back in Seattle.  They skin cats differently here.

Making a heap of one shovel-full of cement to four shovel-fulls of rur (or finely-crushed, clean rock), mix and adding a little water will result in concrete, ready to place.  This takes two grown men about seven minutes to prepare.  Getting concrete from one place to the next in a wheelbarrow is heavy, precarious work.  Doing this around a job-site with around 90 meters of deep, wide, pipe-trench is artistic, skillful dance.

After work ended, four of us went for a coffee.  Coffee, or going to coffee, symbolizes connection with a person who is important to you.  Going to coffee is about checking in, leaning back, and talking about not work.  It is a way to honor a person you admire, a way of making time together lasting.

On my way home I stopped in at one of the markets in Sauk for half of a kilo of cheese, a bottle of kos and a three-pack of salcica.  I think the word is out on the hill about the guy who doesn’t try to run you off, and feeds you stabilized, pink, ultracooked, beef in a cylinder.

Hopefully word won’t reach the next generation of disposed of canines.  But I have always been a sucker for a fur- wrapped face.

This morning we had a field missionaries’ meeting at Pastor Barry’s house in Tirana.  Pastor Barry is the lead pastor of the International Church in Tirana, which is located directly across the street from the Iranian embassy, and next door to the residence of the Albanian Premier.  These meetings are held either monthly or quarterly, I can’t be sure.  In attendance were 11 people: 6 Americans, 2 Brazilians, 2 Romanians, and a man from Trinidad.  I will not go into details on what we talked about.  After we adjourned, I asked Pastor Kurt if I could accompany him later in the day to an important meeting.  He agreed, saying that he would pick me up near-by in two hours.  On my way to my next meeting, coffee with my roommate Marian, I passed a rotisserie stand.  This place had something for everyone.

If you didn’t want a whole sheep’s head, you could always settle for an entire chicken.

I met with Marian who had brought a friend of his along.  The man’s name was Salim, and he had just returned from 12 years in the United Kingdom.  He told me I looked Irish.  We found a nearby ice-cream parlor and had byrek.  Salim said it was the thing he had missed most overseas.

In Albania, there are about three things to eat, all of the time.  There is chofta, which is like a roughly-ground, grilled sausage; suflatcha, which is like a Lebanese schwarma with chicken instead of lamb and french-fries covered in ketchup and mustard instead of shredded lettuce in cucumber sauce; and byrek.  Byrek is filo dough stacked about ten shells deep with cheese or another filling halfway through the layers.  This is comfort food.  The food items I have missed the most since moving here are: #1, the entire menu at a Thai food restaurant (Albania doesn’t have Thai food), and #2, pho.

Kurt picked me up near the statue of Skenderbeu at 3PM and we headed out to Fushekruje.  Our work in Fushekruje has been postponed since Monday, pending a meeting and accord between Pastor Kurt and a man I will call Steven.  Steven’s son has threatened to kill two of the men who work with us, and so until that threat is removed, we are in a holding pattern.  I was not invited to attend this meeting, but I asked to be a part of it out of curiosity.  This entire process has been a true learning experience for me.  None of the decisions on how to proceed thus far have been decisions I would have made.  I was not raised in Kalashnikov rifle territory.

We met at Steven’s father’s home first.  Steven’s father, mother, brother, sister-in-law, and nephew were there.  They were very kind.  We were all served cold Coca-Cola and a hard candy while this preliminary discussion took place.  I said only hello.  As we left I said good-bye.

Then we met with Steven and his son.  Steven’s wife was also there.  We will be returning to work tomorrow.

After this meeting, we met with Fesnik, the architect and general contractor at the church.  He is a well polished man with serious, shimmering eyes which can feel both threatening and kind.  With him we went over tomorrow’s procedures for installing the church’s sewage handling system.

Tomorrow will prove out the progress we made today.  It is good with me, anyway it goes.  Pray blessing for Steven and his son.