Albania!

Hello Friends and Family,

I was in Albania for about two months, and I am excited to update you on all that we did while we were there.

Albania is a beautiful country surrounded by mountains. We were personally stationed in the capital, Tirana, so let’s just say Mollie got to live out her city life. However, we did get to leave a couple of times outside of Tirana to visit and serve other churches. Surprisingly, Albania is mostly an Islamic country. I wouldn’t say it’s heavily practiced here among most of them, as many don’t actually understand why they believe what they do. I’ve been told that, for some, it’s a form of identifying as Albanian, and they want to be known for that because they are proud of their country. Albania is also still recovering from communism since they’ve only been out of it for 30 years, so it is still developing a lot. There is a lot of new construction happening, and slowly, well-known franchises like Burger King are making their way in.

Our host’s name was Erion, and he is amazing. He and his wife are in the center of the group picture above. Erion has such a big heart for the Lord and is so passionate about church planting. He’s the reason we’ve been able to visit so many churches around Albania, as they all associate with each other. He was our Albanian Dad while we were there and made sure to keep us in shape while also taking care of any needs we had.

Ministry in Albania was mostly ATL, which stands for “Ask the Lord.” Every day, we would go out and focus on intentionally listening to whatever God was asking of us. Whether that was approaching someone, going to a specific place, or finding a specific object, our job was to discern and obey. We were also supposed to try and make friends with girls our age around Tirana for an event we called Beauty for Ashes. This was an all-female event that we were to host with worship, food, games, and a message, in hopes of building up the female community of Christ. Our Beauty for Ashes event happened during the last week we were in Albania. It was easy to find girls, but it was hard to keep friends with them, as many of them would honestly leave us on read after we contacted them via text. When it came to the event itself, unfortunately, none of the girls we personally invited showed up. However, we had the pleasure of hosting women who already attended the church, which was a very sweet moment. While it wasn’t exactly what we had in mind, it was still very special getting to celebrate God with fellow women. At the end, they even taught us Albanian dancing.

Beyond this, we helped unload an entire semi-truck full of donations, including clothes, shoes, cribs, food, and hygiene products. Then, we helped run the youth group for our host church. We also attended his church, where each person on the team shared our testimonies. We were able to visit and share our testimonies with other churches all around Albania. As a team, we visited Pogradec, Cërrik, and Perrenjas. Those were some amazing opportunities because we got to make connections with other pastors and believers in Christ. We were also able to help serve them in other ways, such as connecting with their youth. It is uncommon in Albania to have youth groups and youth events, so they are slowly trying to build up a new generation of believers. Our host communicated to us that, for the most part, he is the first generation of Christian believers, so slowly but surely, they will build up generations of Christianity. Honestly, I didn’t realize how big of a role generational Christianity plays in families until I realized that all of our hosts we’ve had so far—Malaysia and Thailand included—have come from Christian families themselves.

For the first time, we had to go grocery shopping and budget for all of our meals of the day. We lived in two apartments, so we also had to learn how to create a communal yet routine space, like doing a deep clean once a week. Then, almost every morning, we as a team would gather for worship. Some days, we each took a turn sharing a teaching we had prepared. We also read through a devotional book together, which we added to our schedule to help prepare our hearts for the day. This was new for our team, as a lot of times, our host created a schedule for us. But instead, Erion encouraged us to create our own. This was humbling because I think it made us realize how we will have to do this for ourselves when we get home. How are we going to implement God more into our day when it’s not our “job” every day, like it was for the past 9 months?

Honestly, I would have to say Albania presented its challenges. It was our coldest country temperature-wise, which did affect the team in some ways because, unlike our last two countries where it was sunny and hot every day, it was rare to see the sun. This caused some seasonal depression and lack of motivation. It was also discouraging at times when you would connect with girls you met in Albania, but then they wouldn’t reply about hanging out—especially because that was our main ministry. However, God is good and covered us exactly where we needed, teaching us so much about how to rely on Him. For me personally, I really felt like God revealed how faithful He is, even in our hardest times, and how He uses us even when we don’t always believe it. And as a side note, if you didn’t hear, we had a leader swap, so we switched leaders among the four teams. We got Gretchen, the team leader for Team Summit, who was placed in Greece. Our original leader, Ava, got placed in a different part of Albania with the boys’ team.

Thank you again for all your prayers. It is because of your support that I get to have this experience of a lifetime. God is teaching me so much every day. I’m excited to come back home and implement all that I’ve learned and the new habits I’ve made. We are officially in Guatemala after a small hiccup in traveling. Please pray for fruitful ministry and for all the parents who are about to visit us from March 11th through the 18th.

Blessings to you all,

Mollie Stutzman