Udhekryq

Mountains Outside Erseke

Just over a week ago Nancy and I were saying goodbye to friends in Ireland. We vacated our home in Cahir on Sunday morning and headed north to Dublin to see friends at Adelide Road church. After the services there we went out to the airport and flew to Bologna, Italy, for the night. The next morning we flew to Tirana, Albania, where we were met and taken directly to the town of Erseke and the Udhekryq (Crossroads) Bible School. My first class on The Parables was that night and Nancy’s first English class the next day.

Co Teacher Jack Dabney

Now we have been here for just over a week. In that time we have renewed relationships, made new friends, taught numerous classes, enjoyed wonderful food—and Nancy even managed a couple days of English seminars in the Albanian city of Berat. Since coming the rains have been falling most of the time and the roads have turned into flowing streams, but the school is comfortable and dry, with all the amenities of a school at home.

School Cooks

Albania is very different from Ireland and Greensboro. In the architecture and infrastructure it bears the unmistakable marks of its communist past—marks which are not very pretty. But it also has an air of newness and life. In the midst of decaying apartment buildings there are new buildings popping up, and the roads are bit by bit being smoothed, straightened, and expanded. It is a very beautiful place, with unspoiled Adriatic white sand coastland giving way to incredibly rugged Balkan mountains. Where we are these mountains rise just outside of the town, separating us from Greece, and the beginning of winter has started to cover them with a dusting of snow. Sunsets are dramatic and the air is clear and clean (except when the cheese factory just outside the school belches out its daily dose of smoke). Buildings in the town are often not heated, so their doors are left open even in these cold days, but in the school a modern and innovative system keeps everyone comfortable and the water always hot.

Street Leaving Erseke

All this is to say that the world in which God has placed Nancy and me continues to be an interesting, challenging, and rewarding one. We are blessed to be here in Erseke once again, and are grateful to God for the opportunity to serve and be served. As I experience the road on which God has placed us, I marvel again at how good it is—and thank him for the place and the people, and the chance to continue with the adventure of following him. Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song… Psalm 95:1,2.