Purity Retreat

In the beginning of November our church hosted the first ever (that we know of) retreat for single girls, in Albania, regarding sexual purity. It was a great joy and honor for me to be able to attend and help lead as a "spiritual mom". Sexual purity is a huge issue for the youths of Tirana. I have been told that most of the students in the high schools and universities are sexually active. The immodesty is appalling! Sometimes I am floored by what I see the girls wearing, or not wearing, just walking on the streets of Tirana. The decadence of the west has swept into Albania and is wreaking havoc on this young generation. Many of the cultural taboos are still in place regarding birth control and speaking out loud about sexual issues. It is a disturbing mystery that girls do not have any shame in wearing the barest minimum of clothes and yet will not even say certain medical terms relating to their bodies. Abortion is rampant here, as it is a more acceptable than birth control. Given this horrifying trend, it was greatly encouraging to have over 20 committed young girls and women attend this retreat. Here is a photo of the leaders and attendees. We had a special speaker from the Czech Republic give us the biblical view of sex and God's purpose for purity. Some of the girls said that this was the first time that they had ever heard these verses about God's plan for intimacy and His commands regarding purity.
Our retreat started on Friday night and we came back home on Sunday morning for church. We had many great opportunities for hearing God's Word, worshipping with song, praying together, and breaking up into small groups for discussions.
We stayed at this Christian retreat center in a nearby town of Priske. The facility was perfect for our needs, although we didn't have hot water (or any water for showers) or heating. It was in the 40's at night and I was thankful for the foresight of Kris to bring our warm sleeping bags to Albania. The mountain air was so refreshing! It was a gift from God to wake up to a spectacular sunrise on the changing foliage and to hear a bubbling brook nearby.

One of the most impactful times, for me at least, was the small groups. The desire of Gretchen, the youth leader who put this retreat together, was to provide a "spiritual mom" for these girls to begin to share with and build a relationship with. Discipleship and long-term spiritual friendships were the goal of these groups. Here I am with my small group. Eri, on the left, is finishing up her studies to be a doctor. Rose, is an American woman of Albanian descent, who is here on a short term trip to work with university students. She is 77 years old and is here in Albania with a passion to share Christ with her people. Bruna, in the blue shirt, is my true spiritual daughter. I have seen her grow from spiritual birth to become a leader among her peers and younger girls in the youth group. I am so proud of her! Aida, on the right, is in her first year of university. She is quiet, but has a solid grasp of Scripture and loves the Lord.
We had so many great times of reading from Scripture, talking about how culture has shaped our thinking regarding our view of morality and modesty, and sharing some real life struggles that each of us has.
Here I am with Eri on Saturday morning. I received a special letter from some of the girls at the conference. Here are what some of them had to say:

"Thanks for being in Albania. Thanks for being with us. Thanks for sharing with us...be sure that your testimony has changed a life."

"Chelle, thank you for sharing with us about your personal life...may the grace of God overflow in your life. Your name is written on the table of my heart because of your words and I praise the Lord for giving me the opportunity to know you and to experience the joy and the love of the God through you."

"Jam shume miremjohere per ty dhe jolenderoj Zotin qe no dho munderine te te kem mike." (I'm still working on translating this one :-) )

Please pray for these girls. Many of them are first generation Christians and face stiff persecution from family members. Some parents are even encouraging the girls to wear immodest clothes and engage in pre-marital sex in order for them to find a good husband and start their own families. They are under intense pressure from their culture, friends, and family to cave into Satan's world view. Pray that they would remain committed to their First Love and keep themselves pure for His glory. Pray that I would be able to get involved in the lives of these girls and give them a life picture of the benefits of a godly marriage. Thank you for your faithful prayers.

The Power of Prayer

Praise the Lord! He has heard and answered your faithful prayers. Our power problems have been fixed at this time. On Monday, our landlord finally realized that the problems were bigger than he could fix on his own and told us to get an electrician. Praise God that we know an Albanian contractor in our church who brought over an honest and hard-working electrician. He came over and found quite a few problems that he fixed.

We are so thankful that now our power is only out, like everybody else, for 6 hours a day instead of a 10-24 hours. Perspective makes everything look different. A friend, here in Albania, read a piece of work to me that was truly convicting. It had great bearing on how God helped me to deal with the electricity problem and so I thought I would post it for everyone to read.

Dying to Self

When you are forgotten or neglected or purposely set at naught, and you sting and hurt with the insult or the oversight, but your heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ—that is dying to self.

When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart, or even defend yourself, but take it all in patient loving silence—that is dying to self.

When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, any irregularity, or any annoyance, when you can stand face to face with waste, folly, extravagance, spiritual insensibility, and endure it as Jesus endured it—that is dying to self.

When you are content with any food, any offering, any raiment, any climate, any society, any attitude, any interruption by the will of God—that is dying to self.

When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation, or to record your own good works, or itch after commendation, when you can truly love to be unknown—that is dying to self.

When you see your brother prosper and have his needs met and can honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy nor question God, while your own needs are far greater and in desperate circumstances—that is dying to self.

When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself, can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart—that is dying to self.

Ouch!!! God is so faithful to reveal the true state of our sinful hearts, bring us to repentance and then bind up those wounds. Job 5:17-18.

Anyhow, thanks for you prayers. We rejoice that He answered in such a short time. Now, we are enjoying the snow on the mountains nearby from a cozy, warm house.

Pray for power (and patience)

Our family is so thankful for the faithful and loving prayers that each of you lifts up to our Father on our behalf. Please be assured that your ministry of prayer has made you a vital part of our life and work here in Albania. It is in this light that we wanted to let you know of one specific thing that you can be praying about for us.

I Thessalonians 4:18 says, "in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." We have been having lots of opportunities to learn about having a thankful heart in the past 4 weeks. The power situation at our house has been a daily trial. As you know, the electrical power supply in Albania has been in a state of "crisis" for some time. We have gotten used to having our power shut off for 4-6 hours a day. Of course it is inconvenient at times, but hey, it's the way things are here in Albania. However, about 4 weeks ago, the power in OUR house began to become erratic. Often, the power will not return in our house when it returns for the rest of the neighborhood. Even our landlords, who live in the other side of our duplex have power, but our side does not. Sometimes, the power will come back on one or two floors, but leave one or two without any power. Usually, when the power does come on, it is coming in at such a low voltage that it won't power any of our heaters or major appliances. This is really a big deal because it is getting down to 9 degrees Celsius at night (in the 40's) and it remains in the 50's in our house without heating. We do have a generator that we can run, but it is very expensive and we only run it when we must to heat up the rooms, recharge battery operated lights, send e-mails, and things like this. Sometimes, however, the power does come on and everything is fine.

The crazy thing about the whole situation is that it doesn't seem to affect any other house but ours. I have to admit that God has been using this to chisel away at the sinful attitudes, expectations, and responses I have displayed. He showed me how selfish I was because I was content to be without power when everyone else was without power as well. But when we are the only ones in the dark and we are cold...well, that's a different story. One night when our house was dark and I was struggling to not complain that we "deserved" to have power like everyone else, we heard a loud popping noise and saw bright sparks from outside our window. Kris and I looked out and saw the electrical pole by our house burst into flames and begin to rain down sparks onto the street. In my heart I was hoping that at least everyone else would lose power too. It was as if God was just exposing that to me because even though the whole pole was burning, no one else lost power - just us.

At this point, we are trying to go through all the channels to get this resolved because it has begun to affect our ministry, study time, budget and sanity. We want to have a Christ-like attitude in this because we are aware that our landlord, as well as the rest of our neighbors, are watching intently to see how we will respond to this. Please pray that we will not shame our God, but will showcase His sovereignty and joy and peace despite difficult circumstances. We also ask that you pray that we would be able to get this power issue fixed. It is not good for our appliances to have constant power surges and we don't want to be poor stewards of what God has given to us.

It is quite comical to see us in the house though. The other day, Sierra came down dressed for school and she looked like the Goodyear tire man. She had SIX shirts layered on. She could hardly move her arms. Most days, we have on at least two pairs of pants, 2 long-sleeved shirts, a sweatshirt with hood, two pairs of socks, and slippers.

I hesitated to blog this because I didn't want it to sound like a complaint. Have I complained (alot) about this in the last 4 weeks? Sadly, yes. However, I know that you want to know and pray about the issues that we deal with on a day to day basis. We need prayer; prayer that we would remain steadfast in faith and thankfulness with or without power and prayer that we would be able to fix this problem in the Lord's timing.

One friend, who lives here in Tirana, helped me to see this from an eternal perspective. She said that all the other houses in our neighborhood had light and our was dark, but in reality their houses are devoid of The Light and ours is the only one with The Light! We pray that we would "let (our) light shine before men in such a way that they may see (our) good works (attitudes, responses), and glorify (our) Father who is in heaven."