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."