Business as usual

Thursday night we travelled to a village called Skivean, to do another Kids program. The routine normally goes that we meet at the church run through the program, pray and go. We get to a village, usually we are met with at least one angry local who protests at the presence of Christians and then he clears off and things get going. We walk around a bit gathering up the kids (we are the gavers in every sense of the true Essex lingo) there’s usually lots of shouting to get things under control then it starts. The crowd in most of these situations is the same, little kids at the front, older kids at the back, teenagers who act like they’re not interested gathers on one side, far enough so as not to look interested but close enough to see and hear everything, a few random kids rome the outskirts and there’s a few adults around, half watching their kids, half intrigued by the goings on. The team shoot into action, one opens and intros, one brings a verse from the bible, the kids say it out loud a few times, and then they take it away and see who can still remember. Sometimes there’s a prize if you can. The weird, token English guy share why he’s hanging around, they sing some songs, you the type with actions and that get faster and stuff. Then someone bring a bible story, they pray, amazingly most of the crowd is quite for this part. Then they play a game.
I know I’m still new to this but, it never fails to amaze me how these guys week in week out love to live out their faith, stick up for it against the crazed villager, and shout at kids to get them to be quite for 90% of the session. They are flipping good at this. And its working.

Today (Friday) we went out at 11 to a village just outside Gjakova called slovan. I haven’t been hear before so it’s new to me. Once again the back drop of intense beauty, and reflection of all that’s good in creation is marred in the face of desperate poverty. I’m sure the people of slovan barely even realise the immense natural beauty that surrounds them as the struggle to find food to eat. We are just hear to visit families, no more no less, we come bearing no physical gifts, no program in toe, no shoe boxes for kids or aid to distribute. But if we choose to use what we have in our hands, we have so much more. As we rome the village visiting family after family it’s not easy to not be shaken, the inhabitants of this, I guess it’s like a trailer park, live in porter cabins. I use to do a pirate radio show from a building much the same as a family of 4 were living in. One lady told us in the summer its just bearable in the heat, in the winter the cold is terrible, and in between when the rain isn’t coming through the gaps the mice are. These are the conditions that human life is reduced to. Yet there is hope, the people of the village hear are open the Jesus, as I travel with Kjamalina and Feta their stories of how God provided for the caravan family colony, how we were protected in babaloce and how God is bigger than any of our problems, don’t fall on deaf ears. If anything its easier for these families to except these facts in there desperate situations than, the content, employed, middle class citizens in the city.
Then a beautiful moment, just after we pray with one lady, kjamalina turns to me and in her beautifully broken English and says ‘’it’s good to cut for Jesus’’. Before I had time to be too worried about the implications of what she had said, she had walked over to this lady lifted up her hand and was clinging to a bracelet around her wrist. I’m told these are taken from the burial materials of wise men that have died and in some Muslim sects they worship these men of honour. Kjamlina explains to this lady, that may well of received this from one of her parents that this is not a good thing and that there is only one God and that we should not have anything or one at the same level in any way that we should worship, with tears building in her eyes the lady nods in agreement, kjamalina, also with tears now forming asks if she can break the bracelet as a symbol of freedom. As the lady agrees Kjamlina begins to shed tears in prayer as she pulls the band from this fragile wrist, in doing so she brakes ties that may well have gone back for centuries and releases, at least in part, the destiny of this family and their future hear and in the realm of the spiritual. It was a beautiful moment, one I’m sure will be in my favourite of my time here. I played no part in this just mealy witnessed the brave faith of the pastors wife, who was also visiting the village for the first time, and the almost life changing decision of a lady, desperate for a change, desperate for someone to help he, to love her and to meet her in her desperation.

Blessed are the poor in spirit for Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Peace.