It is nearly 9AM here, which means that it is around 3AM where my friend Stacey lives and around Midnight in Seattle, where all of you are.  I made many attempts to get online to write last night, but I think God must have known how tired I was.  I have fresh fingers and a fresh mind this morning.  Today at noon I will be riding with Kurt and Stephanie Plagenhoef to Fushkruje.  There we will meet Alban, Edvis, an engineer from the city, and the primary contractor for the site where the church is being built.  Next Monday will be my first day on the job.  I am nervous.

Yesterday was a very encouraging day.  Astrite and Emily from Smile International hosted a conference here at the school.  The key note speaker was a man named John Verwer.  I’m certain you can find information both on and from this man online, and I recommend you do so.  He has been travelling as a Christian speaker for 55 years.  

Just go ahead and sit with that statistic for a second.  

Mr. Verwer has about a dozen engagements a month, somewhere in the world; anywhere really.  He was honest, funny, and warm and he challenged the men in the audience in a special way.  Mr. Verwer brought to mind an idea that I had never considered before, and I will get to that in a paragraph or so.  Before I do, let me offer a piece of my world view.  I believe in God.  I do not believe in luck or chance, but in a plan that God has for His people and His world; of which we are a part.  I believe that you, yes even you, were in the plan of God since before the beginning of time.  You are His child and He intends to prosper you.  So, that’s where I’m coming from.

Mr. Verwer offered a complement to that perspective, a rational conclusion stemming from the reality of a fallen world.  That complement is that there is an evil one who also has a plan.  He has a plan to unravel what God has interwoven.  He is like a malevolent dog who waits until twenty minutes before Thanksgiving dinner is served to tear the entire banquet from the table-top by taking the tablecloth in his teeth and ripping the entire course violently to the hardwood floor below.  This act of anti-harmony takes no small amount of foresight; the dog is a planner.  In the same way we have seen how the dog waits until there is a great and beautiful work being accomplished through an individual by God.  He then takes advantage of that person’s lack of vigilance, their humanness, their broken nature and leads that person to destroy their families, their careers, and themselves.  People who work in the church needn’t fear this animal, but they do need to respect the sharpness of his teeth and the strength of his locking jaw.

Read Ephesians chapter 6.

I am loving life more with each day.  The next time I see you I will be able to sing you at least two short songs in Albanian from memory.  I have been welcomed into this house like a man attending his first family reunion.  I hope that you will visit me here.  I pray you are well.

It is said that there was a great immigrant to America in the late 1930s.  This man had numerous ideas and theories including the idea that time is relative.  If anyone reading this has lost a full day this week, then you and I are experiencing this phenomena first hand.  I’m so glad I’m not alone.  I suppose I could view it as a blessing to have one less day of sitting at my desk shuffling bytes and making certain that I was copied on all of the email traffic to other people within my firm.

Email chains are important.

Tomorrow we are hosting a conference for both students and missionaries in Italy, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Albania.  A man named Astrite has put it all together through an organization called Smile International.  Astrite and his wife Emily are students here.  Astrite has the only stories I’ve heard so far about first-hand beatings by Serbian soldiers during the Serbian occupation of Kosovo in the 1990s.  He said that the beating on his bare feet with police batons was the worst, and I believe him.  Unlike so many people who have suffered at the hands of faceless, nameless, uniformed men sent to murder in the name of nation; Astrite shows no sign that he has any anger around what happened.  “The war,” may as well have been a natural disaster like the tsunami in Japan last year; no one to blame.  I am challenged by his ability to forgive.

Astrite takes his instruction from Jesus Christ.  I still remember the time you did that thing.  No, that other thing.  You never apologized for that.  I am blessed to have a man such as this to be a living example of what Jesus was trying to convey to people in Matthew 5:44.

Albania is a nation of people who could conceivably have a grudge against any one of two dozen nations and nationalities.  Its location on the Dalmatian Coast of the Adriatic Sea has made it an inviting target for both foreign settlers and the armed forces of neighboring nations since the beginning of historical record keeping.  What most invaders didn’t realize, however, is that the Albanian race has operated a lot like the United States Marine Corp for most of that time.  You are more than welcome to take a shot at a marine battalion, but it will end badly for you.

There are a dozen students here from Italy for a two week class.  For the past few years the school in Albania has been working on an alliance with a Christian school in Italy; this visit is a sign that a new relationship is taking a big step forward.  

You would love these guys.

I have met about half of them and I know a few by name.  Salvatore seems to be the one I’m closest with, he and I have a similar ignorance to the other’s language.  It is fun to stumble through a conversation with Salvatore because he is so expressive.  He seems unaware of his mannerisms, or at least unaware that I would find them to be so entertaining.  I don’t know if you’ve ever had the chance to talk with someone from Naples, but you will understand the smile on my face while typing this if you ever have a chance to.  It is almost like his hands are delivering the sounds from his mouth.  Sharp movements of wrist and lots of circular motions are key.  

Step 1: Begin with an open hand just below your chin, fingers pointing up.  Elbow should be at about 20 degrees, tucked in close to your rib-cage.  

Step 2: Now, in a smooth motion bring your fingers together while drawing your hand down to the height of your navel; elbow ending at 90 degrees.  

Step 3: Complete the phrase “Ma che dici?” in the time it takes to perform this motion.  If you are having trouble with pronunciation, just think of the capital of Somalia.

Congratulations.  You have just told someone: “I don’t know what you are saying,” in Italian.

I really like the spirit of these men.  They have an almost black-and-white-television-era-Beatles vibe going for them.  What do you call hipsters without body-ink who don’t drink alcohol and seem to have no political agenda?  

Seated, serious about the work

Intent, intensely gathering to my left fist

What I pluck adroitly

With the fingers of my other hand

The cylinders crunch and line my palms

With a milk-like sticky

I am a freckled boy in a field of dandelions

Red fireman’s hat composed of plastic; sharp-thin

Curly red-red, Irish red hair in a mass

Makes the hat seat unstable

Leaning out, pulling another yellow bud

The wind again pushing my hat

The sky is blue

A few wispy clouds

Like God hasn’t finished mopping

Look at what I brought you mom

Look at what your baby boy has done

Football is a big deal in Europe.  One of the third year students here at school is doing his practicum in Skopje, but is here in Sauk to take a special two week course on Islam.  Dardajan is in his early twenties and was considered a professional soccer player until 17 years of age.  I didn’t know this before, but from age 12 or so on, soccer prospects of a certain level of ability are groomed for a life in cleats and are called “professional.”  It sounds a little like the process Olympic Athletes go through; they aren’t given a wage, and have to fund their own uniforms and coaching.  Tonight Dardajan’s favorite team since childhood was competing to stay in the hunt for the Series A Title.  When he asked me if I would like to accompany him to a local place with televisions dedicated for soccer viewing, I had to accept.

Associazione Calcio Milan has been a force in Italian football since 1899.  After watching the game tonight, I can understand the excitement not only around Milan and championship football, but around the game of soccer as a whole.  Any sport has the capacity to hook a viewer when they are compelled to follow the actions of a specific competitor.  No one roots for swimming, or even for United States Swimming, but millions of people root for Michael Phelps.  The most interesting person on the television tonight was a man named Zlatan Ibrahimovic.  The most interesting people aren’t always the champions.

In the morning, Pastor Bill Bates from Centralia Washington will be flying to Dallas Texas for some time with his family en-route to his home church.  It has been a blessing to have him here and I do hope you look him up for a cup of coffee on your way to Portland sometime.  

 It is morning here in Albania and the birds are loving every blessed second of it.  There may be a territorial war going on over housing in the gutters, I can’t be sure.  The activity of life where city meets farm is fascinating.  From the view provided by my window I can see a team of three earth-movers working on a culvert installation.  Not fifty yards away there is a family working to keep their cattle and sheep from taking too much initiative.  The crest of the hill in view shoulders the burden of the majority of Sauk’s traffic.  

When I was a child you could go into Puyallup and pick berries from Love’s Farm.  Most of Puyallup is like a postcard from Sprawl these days.  It will be interesting to see Sauk in a generation or so.  I can’t help but feel like the Albanians won’t regret to some degree this time of progress.  Cell phones, automobiles and access to high calorie food, while sure signs of progress and growth toward the Western ideals which are promoted through television and the internet, are hollow substitutes for the cultural inheritance which is being exchanged for them.  

Facebook does not promote community just as McDonalds does not sell food.

The micrommunity of the Ballard Church in Seattle is definitely on to something.  A visit to Hannah McHugh or the Lansdownes will shed light on what I am talking about.  I always had difficulty appreciating what was happening there before I left the states.  Here at the school there is a common kitchen where everyone eats together.  Bathrooms are shared.  Everyone has tasks assigned to them which benefit the whole place.  They have Foosball and ping-pong for playing together.  It is like family, only bigger.  It is like God’s family, only smaller.  

There is a guitar in the common room on the second floor of the school I am living in.  I don’t know who owns it, but there are about six students who will pick it up over the course of a given day to either strum, sing, practice or relax.  This school is designed to prepare the leaders of Churches.  The guest professors travel here from the United States, Italy, Britain, and other parts of Albania.  Typically a class will last for two weeks.  Currently one of our guest professors is a man named Rick.  He is the pastor of an Albanian church in Philadelphia and is quite a musician.  Rick is teaching an introductory course on Islam which I have been sitting in on.  Rick knows a dozen or so Albanian praise songs and probably a hundred or more praise songs and ballads in English.  This evening at around 9PM I got to listen to him singing with Riza, one of the second year students.

I have been struck in the past with the power of worship in a language I don’t understand.  There is of course the old wisdom which teaches that worship is primarily for God.  The human participants are to be totally tuned in to a communion with Him.  The fact that I may or may not understand the words is irrelevant.  God understands.  That is where the power of the experience comes from.  Energy from the heart of the people is poured out to the creator of Heaven and Earth and a way that feels is both indescribable and undeniable.  I find myself doing my best to mirror any repetition in words or phrases with blurting, sputtering, babel of my own.  I want so badly to participate but all I can muster is my best.

Tomorrow morning I will be going to Qender Stefan with Pastors Rick and Bill.  I am going to be treated to an American breakfast; the definition of which I am anticipating only through my impending experience.  “American Breakfast,” sounds exotic.  Perhaps those reading this can visit a local IHOP or Denny’s, Sherries or Cracker Barrel, and think of me over some salt infused animal protein.

I hope you do.