Medicine for Little Hearts
January 17, 2003

   It’s been said that he who would be like Christ must study Him and be changed into His likeness. Study and change are what it’s all about on Saturday afternoons at the Ministry Center in Tirana where Planters encourages spiritual growth in the hearts of children. 
   The children of our city neighborhood have a kind of reverence for Eldina’s Bible lessons.  These lessons present new truths that are powerful and lasting if one will accept them.  But how do you know where the heart of a youngster lies? Could we paint or print a depiction of that state? Simply put they are lost lambs apart from a savior. Teaching God’s word presents the standards for a sanctified life into a new bright light for Eldina’s audience.  
   Planters touches the hearts of young people so that parental influence and the hereditary disease of sin might not eternally corrupt the next generation. Our wish is for the old complexion of Albania to be healed and transformed with the medicine of the Gospel.  
   Pray that by the power of God's word and His Holy Spirit little hearts might be changed! 
 

The Lord's Ways
January 15, 2003

The Lord works in mysterious ways and so, if you can follow as I did,  the route of some of our materials in our remodeling in Vlashaj.
   Knowing that good lumber is almost non-existent here in Albania, a friend of a friend (that’s the way it works here)  told me of a facility that sells flooring boards. We found the business and were not disappointed. We were more intrigued to hear the story of the travel of our boards.
   Our lumber came from trees grown in Finland, shipped by train through eight countries to Greece (because of customs),  and finally transported by semi-trailer to Tirana. For its final trip for installation in the village ministry center, we loaded the flooring on a Chinese truck with a chauffeur who learned to drive in Yugoslavia. We are going to attach them with nails from America.
   The Lord is good and His ways are profitable. They just take longer in Albania.