I am still surprised by how disorienting life can be, even in a familiar place.  I am still surprised by how comfortable God seems to be while I am stretching, reaching, tipping, overcompensating, readjusting, and landing awkwardly; afumble on my feet only to curse my hard breathing and weakness before praying a word of thanks.  I used to fear what God would use me for if I gave my life to Him.  My fears were warranted.

If you were to read the story of your life, would it be a book you could not put down?  That is where God calls us to be.  

In my Junior year at Eastern Washington University I was a pledge for a fraternity.  We were pledges for all of that Fall quarter.  Every two weeks or so, the members would hold a secret vote as to whether or not one pledge or another should be eliminated from consideration for membership.  My Pledgemaster, a man named Matt, sat me down one afternoon to tell me that I needed to show the members of the House more respect, that I had done some specific things to anger certain people.  I glibly replied that he need not worry about it, that I was well liked and that I was certain I had not offended anyone.  I did not find out until months later that I had been one vote away from being kicked out of the House for good.

On my crew I have a man who does not take instruction from me.  I will go to any length to explain what it is that I want done, and how I want it done.  Consistently I can count on this man to go his own way.   I have explained that I need him to listen more closely to what I say, to which he nods and offers an “I know, I know,” response.  He is one vote away…and I can not seem to communicate this to him.  I fear that he will disregard an instruction which will result either in the injury of a person or damage to the church property.  It may be time to cast that vote and to end my anxiety about having him around.

The concrete floor which we poured on Friday is very nice.  My crew and I spent the day doing some miscellaneous concrete prep work and some light excavation around the existing adjacent cafe building.  Pastor Scott from Illinois came by to lend a hand for a few hours.  We are ready to begin installing the steel superstructure for the building.  Tomorrow I plan to discuss how this is done with Sajmir and some other specialists.  Steel construction is not something I have a great deal of experience with.  Washington State is tree country, and wood construction is the most common type.  I am looking forward to seeing how steel is erected here.

In two weeks, my time here will be at an end.  God is moving in my life and throughout the world in exciting ways.  I am honored to be a part of His plan.

I had the opportunity to spend last Easter in Rome, where I got to see Pope Benedict the 16th give the annual blessing in person.  I felt at that time like I was a part of something important; a participant in an event outside of time.  Today I felt that way again.

The church in Fushe Kruja, the church I worked on for eight months, opened today, holding service for the first time.  I was there out of respect for the people of Fushe Kruja, but my heart was elsewhere.  I would have loved to spend another day in Saint Peter’s Square and to hear Pope Francis give his inaugural Easter blessing.  I spent the first half of an hour roaming about the building, avoiding lengthy conversations, and eventually I wandered outside to take some photographs.  While outside I saw Sajmir and his wife and daughter coming up the church driveway toward the building entrance.  I followed them inside and stood near Sajmir as service began.

About five minutes into Pastor Kurt’s speech, I felt a tap on my shoulder.  Begrudgingly, I turned to see who it was, certain that my attention was not really required.  To my delighted surprise I was face to face with Osman, the blacksmith who has a shop about a block away from our church.  I gave him a big hug and heard him say “Per respectu per Joshus.” (Out of respect for Joshua)  Osman brought two of his associates with him.  All three men are Muslim, and very dear.  And that was when I knew that God had me precisely where I needed to be.  Pope Francis will just have to wait.

My friends stayed for the entire service; an experience they most likely have never had before.  I would give every day for eight more months to know that three more of God’s children are seeking him in new ways.  I am so honored to have been a part of God’s plan in Fushe Kruja.

The Albanian word for floor, that is, the floor you walk on, is shtresë.  The Albanian writing system was developed recently enough for most of the written words to be pronounced phonetically without deviations like we have in English.  Shtresë sounds exactly like the English word stress, at least is does to my ear.  I suppose it would be most proper to pronounce it like a combination of the beginning of the word shock, the middle of the word strafe, and the end of the name Hermann Hesse; but if you say the English word stress, every Albanian will know you mean “the floor you walk on.”

I had planned for us to place the concrete for the floor of the remodel we have been working on at the International Church on Friday.  Every one of my crew’s actions throughout the week led up to this day, this single activity.  Concrete pours for flatwork, i.e., floors and other slabs, usually take place on Fridays in the States.  This is because there is a built-in, two day break afterword for the concrete to set properly before the workers return to the site.  It was raining Friday morning, but it has rained five out of every seven days since I returned to Tirana six weeks ago.  I have heard that in Hawaii the people only work when the weather is comfortable.  In the lower 48, however, we work in any and all conditions.  Albania is more like Hawaii than I knew.

Friday at 8AM I was at the kafe in Tirana that I always meet Sajmir at.  He did not come.  At the church at 9AM, Sajmir apologized for standing me up, but I was happy to see him none the less.  The other three workers, all men who desperately need money, did not make it in until around 10:30.  Although no inquiry needed to be made as to the reason for their late arrival, one of the men indulged me with the universally accepted reason for tardiness, slow work, or choosing not to work at all: “Shi sot, shi.”  (Rain today, rain)

Sajmir has been an anchor for my sanity throughout the process of getting this phase of the project built.  He has a good sense for when to talk, and when to work, for when to laugh, and when merely to smile.  All day long our standing joke was repeating that magic, earth leveraging, timeless, all-wisdom encompassing mantra: “Shi sot, shi.”  To which the proper reply was always “Po, shum.” (Yes, much)

Thank you God for my good friend Sajmir.  Without him I would think that insanity was my only sane choice.

I have tried to keep this blog like a journal.  In the beginning, it was not my intention to make blogging a daily habit.  Now, however, when I don’t have a bit to post at the end of the day, I feel like I am missing a part of what keeps me healthy; like brushing my teeth or working out.  Yesterevening I sat down to compose the day’s recap and found that I was losing a fight with my ever-closing eyelids.  In construction, it is common to spend the first hour following a long, previous day’s work, tearing out everything you accomplished in the last hour you worked the day before.  I do not want my writing to be out of square.

As superintendent, I do not get to make many decisions on my own.  All of the work to be accomplished has been decided, and I merely ensure that it is accomplished.  Thursday offered a rare moment for me to make a critical decision.  Only three of us were at work on Thursday.  We did not have much earth to move, and there was not a substantial amount of busy-work to occupy idle laborers.  Idle workers do not merely absorb monetary and caloric resources, they impede the work of everyone around them; they are a drain in every sense.  Alban visited the site in the morning, and asked about work for him.  I told him we would have work on Friday, but that he needed to take Thursday off.  I was determined to pour the slab-on-grade in our addition on Friday, and I would need every worker I could get.

So, at the end of work on Thursday came the moment.  Sajmir told me that he did not think we would need Alban or Mosi for Friday, because we were not ready to pour the concrete slab.  I was disappointed, and at a loss for what we still needed to do in order to ready our worksite.  When I asked him what it would take to get ready for a pour on Friday he answered simply “shum beton.” (much concrete)  “Sa shum?” I asked.  “Shum me shum.  Katër thas.” (much and much, four units)  “E the keni pun per gjith puntori naser?” (and then will we have work for everyone tomorrow?) I asked.  “Po,” he said.  And so we worked for two more hours in order to be ready today to move ahead on the pour.

While Mustafa and I were mixing the last batch of concrete,  Sajmir was working inside to bring the concrete we had mixed previously to where it needed to be.  As I worked, I was sweating heavily, my heart was pumping, and I was very thirsty.  I thought “I should get some water, I’m not used to this.  Man I’m tired.”  But then it occurred to me that Mustafa and Sajmir must certainly be as thirsty as I was, and they were not about to take a water break.  Sometimes I take liberties as a missionary, convincing myself that I am unique in some way.  An hour later, standing at the bus stop, I had my water.  A few hours later, I had my sleep.

Christianity has a practical side which appeals to me a great deal.  As a child I enjoyed number games.  Even today I like to pass idle time by filling in the blanks of Sudoku puzzles.  For me the appeal lies in the fact that puzzles have a beginning and an end.  Puzzles are solvable; their challenge is a matter for the will to overcome, and nothing more.  The puzzle of Christian living, for me, has been one I have endeavored to solve like a math problem.  I have done this without understanding how my brain thinks.

According to my limited understanding of things, the Christian puzzle was answered most simply by Jesus when He quoted Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18.  That is the “how” to be a Christian.  He answered the great question of what God’s purpose is for our lives; how God hopes we will live.  But, beyond the “how” lies the how, i.e., how do we accomplish the combination of loving God with everything that we are, and loving our neighbors as ourselves?  For the answer to this, again, I looked to Jesus.  “…you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (NIV, Acts 1:8)  And so, I am here in Albania to be a witness for Him.

I realized today that my service has been dead in many ways.  I do not seek the LORD at all times, and I feel especially frail in my witness when I am frustrated with a situation, another person, or myself.  Being the superintendent of a crew which communicates in another language and is rooted in a foreign culture is challenging for reasons beyond counting.  I have yet to find a task more taxing than the placement of concrete.  Working in the rain will compound any and all frustrations.  And so, I am feeling weak in God.

I thought that I had solved the puzzle; that being a Christian was a simple matter of doing.  I am finding that the complexities of my walk are as numerous as the terrain of this world.  If I am a servant, but lack the heart of what it means to be Christ-like, then how can I truly be a witness for Jesus?  Unless I seek after God with the same passion that He is seeking me, how can I know how deep for me His love truly is, or how deeply I am to love my earthly sisters and brothers?  I am going to bed now knowing that there is time enough to knock; time enough for a door to open.

I was in my home city of Seattle over the holidays recently.  While I was there, my sleep patterns graduated from waking and rising at 5:30 or 6AM, to getting up sometime closer to 8AM.  Being in the mission field brings a greater amount of focus to the work I am trying to accomplish for God’s Kingdom.  Sleep has less to do with what I want, and more to do with what God is asking of me.  If only I felt as called to my work back home as I feel called to the work out here.  My mentor and good friend Norman Elder has somehow mastered time in a unique way.  He treats sleep like fuel, requiring neither too much nor too little.  It may be that part of my time in the field is being used by God to make me more aware of how I abuse sleep in my normal life, or how unhealthy my American life is in general.  Here I wake up when the light of morning reaches a certain crescendo; refreshed, encouraged and ready.

The weather forecast for today called for thunder-showers.  To generalize grossly: in Albania, people do not perform outdoor work during times of rain.  Last night I prayed for workable weather today, which is not my custom.  However, I would have dressed in tight-fitting, bead-fringed, calf-skin pants and danced around a fire yelping at the sky if I thought it would give my crew and I a chance to get some more concrete in the ground without having to worry about the world collapsing around us.  Whether my prayer was heeded or not, I was thanking God at the end of the day for how orchestrated everything seemed.

Rain began to sprinkle sometime around the lunch hour.  We had already placed 40% of the day’s concrete by that time, and so I was not worried.  We were down to two wheelbarrow -loads of concrete to complete the day when the rain really hit.  It came down in a quantity so heavy that the sidewalk in the back of the church appeared to be a rushing, muddy stream.  There was not a place to stand out of the weather, but by that time I was singing and dancing for joy.  My crew and I had hit our mark with precision and purpose.  We are becoming a team.

If the work yesterday was a frustrating misery, today’s work was like aloe vera on a pink-hot sunburn.  We worked for ten hours, and in that time not a single drop of rain fell from the sky.  We were able to complete all of the areas we had begun filling with concrete before today.  Buttoning-up areas of work is good for the mind.  Every time one looks at points of completion, there is a glimpse of the satisfaction that will come when the construction site has been transformed into a is someone’s office, or sanctuary, home or cafe.

Yesterday we had areas caving in.  After today’s work there is not an earthquake on record that would bring those same areas down.  Last night I could not help but think about the job site and all that we needed to do today.  In my dreams last night I was mixing concrete by hand, trying to avoid some looming catastrophe.  Now, thankfully, that catastrophe is buried under a few tons of steel-reinforced concrete.  Rest in peace; I will tonight.

At the end of the day I gave everyone the option to work a few hours past the usual quitting time.  I did not promise to pay any extra money.  Two of the four men stayed with me.  Sajmir was one, which did not surprise me in the least.  The other person to stay was Mosi; the youngest of the three brothers who are working on the site.  I was very impressed by this.  I don’t think Mosi has any idea what his decision could mean for his future.  Now, both Sajmir and I know who we can count on when it is time for sacrifices to be made.  Mosi unknowingly proved something about his character today.  Well done sir.

My day was full of frustration.  We opened up a trench near the property line of the building behind the church, and it was our hope to have that trench filled with the concrete of a footing by the end of the day.  Around the noon hour it began to rain as hard as I have seen it rain here in Albania.  Hurricanes bring more rain than what impacted Tirana in the early afternoon today, but not much more.  We were having lunch when the first cave in occurred.  

It was not a lot of dirt, a little less than two wheel-barrows full.  However, Sajmir and I knew that the entire area could collapse at any moment.  Water was seeping through the wall of earth we were working to reinforce and every minute that passed was a minute we did not have.  Here is where being a missionary is challenging.  I want to show kindness, and love to all of the people I meet and most certainly with the people I am working with.  Rain and concrete are in direct conflict with a man’s sense of patience.  I was trying to explain to my crew “we need to work faster, let’s go, let’s go.  Its raining so hard, we need to work faster.”  While they were telling me “we need to work more slowly.  Can’t you see how hard it is raining?  We need to stop working if we are going to do anything different.”

How do you instill a sense of urgency in the people around you when a wall of earth is about to collapse on top of you?  I do not know the answer to that question.  Perhaps I got a taste of how Paul, Peter, and the other authors of the Bible felt as they wrote their letters to the early Church.  “Come on, work harder, move faster, love better.  Can’t you see, the wall of sin is about to collapse on top of these strangers, and swallow them up for ever.  It is our job to reach them with the message of Jesus’ love for them.  Go, go, go!”

As I was running with one wheel-barrow load of concrete after the last back to the problem area, I knew that the pace of work was unsustainable.  I also knew that my crew lacked a point of reference for what was so very urgent about today in juxtaposition with all of the days we have worked together before now.  So, how do you get the people you are leading to mirror your sense of urgency?

Although the church job site is technically a commercial construction site, this job feels more like a residential construction project.  Today we installed the only waste pipe into the only sewer-box we needed to access.  Unlike working at a project at the University of Washington or Shoreline Community College, this jobsite offers little or no opportunity for repetition, which makes getting into a rhythm very difficult.  We are finding our stride, however.  Sajmir and I and four other workers made up and placed 6 cubic meters of concrete today.

An interesting feature of the construction we have unearthed during our excavation for the footings and columns is the presence of an excess of empty plastic bottles in the ground.  It seems that these 1-liter containers were placed for the purpose of saving money on legitimate structural fill, in the same way that rocks and other excavation debris are often used as filler in concrete.  Sometimes it is alright to laugh at the idiosyncrasies of another culture; this is one of those times.

And so, this is the work.  Before today, Ledi had never been on a jobsite for the mixing and placement of concrete.  I explained to him that everywhere in the world, be it the United States, El Salvador, or Albania, concrete work is the most physically demanding work there is.  I think that made him feel a little better about being so wiped-out by the end of the day.  We were all ready for some calories and rest by the time we ran out of materials.  Praise God.