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Fall 2002 E-journal -- Weeks 5 & 6
December 1-14, 2002
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Double click on thumbnail photos below to enlarge
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Race of Slaves
December 11
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At times I think I’m on familiar ground.
The path I walk and have walked gets nearer to the sound of the heartbeat
of Albania. Then at other times,
I’m hamstrung trying to wiggle free from encumbrances all around me. I’m living in the same country that Rome tried to occupy,
smashing into silence these mountain-walled inhabitants who would rather retreat
back in time. Rome failed and
retreated from the uncivilized! Over
time, like a growing orphan, Albania has had a passion to be amazed and
helpless, a country spread thin from years of sultans and socialists.
Everything she loved and cultured was turned upside down.
In the sudden pulse of the twenty-first century,
Albania’s orphaned eyes have had Lasik surgery.
With surgery her vision sees beyond the shadows of the firelight of the
past. Today Albania is naming
her own frontiers; frontiers, once slumbered and dreaded. It’s now a country
of eagles swooping down over the unfolding gulf of commerce.
For
some there is gold at the end of the rainbow (faintly visible in the picture
above).
Gracious and spirited, the sons of this race of slaves are panning for
that gold where the streams are full. But
the breadth and width of those channels are still uncharted.
On one bank, corruption and its companion, greed, lure many.
On the other hand, faith and hope attract a poor, small, company.
They follow a solemn voice leading them to real gold.
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Two Pretty Girls
December 9
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How many pictures have I
taken with cows? How many cows
have had their pictures taken with me? The
answers are probably the same.
I’m pictured with two pretty girls.
There are some differences between the two.
The real difference is this fact:
one is a city girl and the other is a country girl.
Let me tell you a secret, I’m partial to the country.
Marinela is very city.
The other day when given the chance to meet Mauly (translated it means
"apple"), Marinela strongly declined.
To this city girl this was the utmost village challenge.
Terrified, curious, respectful (of the horns) and very solemn, Marinela
begged to be released from this torture of meeting Apple first hand.
I had to deny her pardon. How
else would she meet such a charming personality?
You must understand it was now my turn.
Marinela was now on my turf. So
many times in the past, Marinela has had me in her hand to translate what
people were telling me. She had
me squirm a time or two. I saw
this moment as a golden opportunity to let her know about the world of farming
and cattle. It was my turn to
translate in the real world.
But my pride quickly turned. My
instructions to Apple were fruitless (don’t laugh).
Apple only understood Albanian.
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Poverty Provides the Clue
December 7, 2002
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Today was a Friday washed clean by rain and full of the basic
substance of sunlight brought headlong by God.
Kasalle, seen from the river was
resplendent, flourishing and seemingly invincible!
But that village is a different one from the Kasall you walk.
Misery takes the stroll alongside you as poverty provides the clue.
Nothing is distinguishable but the obvious effort to exist.
Time has not changed the living standards in a thousand years.
There is a seasoned boldness in their ability to live in the footprints
of the ancients.
Luka (pictured with Sarah)
spoke truthfully about life here. Her
story struck a tragic note, we could tell. No borrowed opinion.
In the strongest sense, there is no amusement for her or among any other
women in the village. Little wonder
that no matter what union of the heart takes place for the wife, little is
contributed to their happiness or pleasure.
For their well being, I know of
only one prescription. No matter
whether they are characters in a bad play or bad characters in life’s play,
Sarah and I helping on our own could operate only by blind instinct.
Life for them in life’s play can only be influenced by God.
Some things are probable, some
things will be traced around the templates of basic living in this world, and
some things will be firmly entrenched in personal desertion.
The atrophy will breed an atrophied heart.
Christians are obligated to
bring hope to hurting people, something so precious nothing could be more
just.
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Headstrong and Disobedient
December 5
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“The
wood is up high” they say here, and the new building is prepared for a Qurban
(pronounced “kor-bahn”). Qurban
is the Muslim tradition of placing an item, usually a sheep’s head (real of
course), from the highest place on the building under construction.
Very real to the Muslim, very tragic to the Christian, very significant
to our differences.
“The
protection it affords can’t be overlooked,” confides my neighbor, a Muslim
with as much religious training as a NASCAR mechanic.
We are at odds.
The new
rafters on the Vlashaj ministry center
are dominating the skyline in the village. Green and heavy, yesterday, the lumber had leaves; they are
so fresh. But because of that
prominence, we have a real “opportunity in an innocent way” (I think that
was the way it was translated), to cast out the “evil powers from the
house.”
The selected
instrument, a ram’s head, which I steadfastly refused to secure, was quickly
substituted with a baby doll with one eye, then a stuffed animal, and finally,
with a dissenting look, a stuffed sock.*
I am now looked at as headstrong and disobedient.
There will be no bonds of gratitude on the east side (the neighbor’s
house) of the ministry center.
*Due
to confusion, not only in the village but also by our American readers,
we need to add a postscript. It might read that we included a
stuffed sock on the village property as a Muslim tonic to ward off evil
power. The only warding off was the cold when I stuffed my foot in
that proffered sock. |
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Charming, Smiling, 20-something
December 2
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There’s
a fourteen-acre village called Shen Jinge just 83 miles south of Kosova.
Pure mountain water trickles down through bumper rocks that villagers
gauge for sound like inhabitants do in Zurich for their church bells.
Morning doves call out from shrubs as old as the olive trees that receive
direct sun only 6.5 months a year. The
beautiful clarity of the air lets you see darkness coming.
Elizabeth
sleeps there under a leaking roof with scorpions on her walls and wild boars in
her garden. Her house is 100 meters
from a narrow river that follows a gorge in the shadow of those water-soaked
mountains. She lives where her
ancestors were from.
Beta,
as we know her, makes a weekly trek out of the mountain range to Tirana
furthering her Christian education from a sought-after mentor.
She springs from a battered microbus, dizzy from the winding road and
clinging in her hand her well-traveled backpack.
I know from personal experience that it takes 2 hours to rid your
clothes of the garlic and diesel fumes. But
the memory of the road full of those dangerous curves never leaves you.
If
you could know her as Sarah and I do, you would meet a charming, smiling,
20-something-year-old Believer ready to quote the Bible or an L.L. Bean™
catalogue. (She subscribed over the
Internet and receives the catalogues regularly).
She:
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loves
her Bean™ hiking boots
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has
been chased by a snake on the trail with a lizard in its mouth
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hates
hoeing weeds out of her family’s field corn
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has
been served bear meat from a bear that ate the farm’s sweet corn
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helps
direct 6 nightly Bible meetings a week for youth in her village
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loves
soccer but can’t sow
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loves
the beach but can’t swim
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sees
the sunrise from a mountain top
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