Ministry Update

When I first started writing this blog, I thought I wanted to share the testimony of my host from our time in Shkodër, Albania. I still think her story is amazing, but I think she can do a better job telling it, so here is a link to a YouTube video of her testimony. https://youtu.be/MfXOyWWGTeE?si=8B1J12meywyosV9p

After praying about it though, I feel like I need to share my testimony. I had never shared my whole testimony in front of anyone before the World Race and now I have done it 3 times. What I have realized is that sharing the story of what God hasdone in my life is powerful. So, I want to share it with you all too in my next blog.

For now here is a quick update of what has been happening the past month. My time in Shkodër was amazing. I go to work with kids everyday and just love them. I also got to spend my mornings praying, studying my Bible and reading Christian books. At the church we stayed at there was a huge library full of books in English, and that was a blessing.

After two weeks there, we travelled by bus to Turkey and had 9 days of debrief with the whole squad in Istanbul. It was super busy.We had several teachings from our Squad Leaders, coaches and mentors. I even got to teach the squad about what I had learned in Durres,Albania about sharing the gospel with people who are Muslim. Along with hanging out with squad mates we hadn’t seen in a while, site seeing and attempting to catch up on sleep we had team changes. This is a picture of my new team; Team Alabaster! I get to be the treasurer for this team too.

Currently I am in Avanos, Turkey which is located in Cappadocia. It is absolutely amazing here. The landscape is beautiful, the people are so kind and hospitable and there is so much history here. He coolest thing about this area is all of the cave dwellings and underground cities because they were built and used by early Christians to flee persecution from the Romans. Ministry has looked like many different things. On Sundays we help with the church service (I am on the worship team with my ukulele). Mondays we have adventure days which have been full of hiking, exploring and ht air balloons. Tuesdays we have our Sabbath day of rest. Wednesdays we go around town meeting new people and building relationships. We have made a few
friends and have really connected with one girl at a poetry
shop who is our age. She even taught us how to tie our heads scarves so they don’t fall off when we go to visit mosques. Thursdays we do cleaning and maintenance at the church building, and Fridays we hangout with more people we have met around town. Saturdays we spend the day with a family from church to help their kids learn more English and to build them up and encourage them. They have been so generous to feed us lunch and cake and tea and take us on hikes to see the old churches and monasteries.

Within planned ministry we have also learned to be flexible and interruptible to spend time with our hosts or anyone else we meet. We have been invited up for tea numerous times during our stay in this apartment. Our housing hosts live right above us and are so kind. On our very first night here she invited us to come upstairs to drink Turkish tea and have cake. They don’t speak much English so many of our conversations happen over Google Translate, but we love talking with them. They also have been teaching us some Turkish and we are slowly (very slowly) learning. That night, the daughter who is our age invited us on a hike with her and her friend. It was a lot of fun, we even got to see a castle that is built into a rock formation. Her and her friend then also invited us to a barbecue the next day. We got to meet more of her friends and eat delicious food. Hopefully we will get to see them all again before we leave. On Easter we were able to invite our host family down for an American breakfast of pancakes, eggs and fried potatoes. They said it was good, I wonder if they really think that or not.

That was a very quick recap and I have so many more stories I could share. If you want to know more feel free to email me [email protected] or text me (719)-722-4055 or ask a question in the comments below. I would love to chat with you!