A World Race Birthday!

As some of you may know, October 1st was my birthday and I got to spend it in Theth, Albania with my amazing team, and celebrate with a girl on my team, Gina, who’s birthday is also on the October 1st. Theth is where we are doing ATL this week and I don’t think there is a better example of what Ask The Lord month can look like than this day in itself. 

This is Me and Gina in the morning by our balloons that our team got for us!

 

So to set the sceene, we are staying in an Air BNB in Theth, which is literally a post card. 

And this place isn’t just a normal air BNB, we are on a tiny farm in the middle of no where, a two and a half hour hike (or a $50 taxi ride) both ways from a store, and we living with the owner and his son. The only people we see are a few hikers here and there that will pass through, and typically they dont speak any english.

 

 

This is the view from our drive way. Like I said. A post card.

So I wake up at 9, its a crisp mountain morning and I roll over to grab my jar of peanut butter that I had saved from Romania because apparently the country of Albania has something against peanut butter. You can not find it anywhere here and believe me, I have tried. (If you are wondering, peanut butter is probably my favorite substance in existence, so eating it first thing on my birthday was a definite win.) 

Then my team said happy birthday and all was great. 

We then went down to the dining hall in our little farm house that we are staying in and started boiling some water for soem coffee and tea. Now out comes Albert, the son of the owner of the farm, who doesnt speak a lick of english and has no idea that its our birthdays, brings out a cake for us. My whole team was so confused and we had no idea why he made us this cake and it happened to be our birthdays. So we praised God that He provided us and we ate our fig kiwi fruit cake with some of their home grown honey and sipped our coffee and that was the morning. 

My birthday fruit cake!

 

Later that day we did a photo shoot and went for a walk just down by the river for a few minutes. Denny and April, two of my teamates prayed that God would bring some people to us and that they would speak English.

Imediately after this a man wandered into the hostel and he was very concerned because his girlfriend wasn’t feeling good. We were then able to help him get a taxi and and we met them on the road and prayed over her. But God wasn’t through providing! 

A photo from my birthday photoshoot! Shout out to Hannah Green for her awesome pictures!

 

At 5pm we did our daily worship outside in the garden at this beautiful table overlooking the country side. While we were doing this Albert comes outside to grab some chairs and we asked him why he needed them and he said “22” and pointed to the dining room.  Come to find out, there is a group hiking in that night and they are all from Israel! 

So we decided to pray for this group before they came. We prayed that there would be at least one that spoke english or at the very least that there would be an interpreter. We prayed that we would know how to love them well and how to serve these people. Immediately after we pray, Denny says, “I just got this vision of us serving them food.” and imediately we all just got up and went downstairs and started grabbing food from the kitchen and setting the table. There was no hesitation, no discussion, no planning. It was was like in the bible when Jesus spoke and then it always said that his followers immediately they dropped what they were doing and left, that is what happened. 

 

As we are helping the tour guide comes in, he speaks perfect english, and so do almost all of the hikers (praise the Lord for answering that prayer), and we ask him how we can help. He sends one of us to go help cook in the back and the rest of go clean and prepare the rooms that hadn’t been made yet. So we turn over the beds and clean the bathrooms, all the while praying over the rooms and the places that these people would be sleeping. After that, we head back to the kitchen to help taking food out to them, wash dishes, and refill waters. 

Here we are cooking in the tiny albanian kitchen!

All of this happens in a whirlwind and at one point we stop and look at each other at 9pm and say “Guys. I started off my birthday by eating free fig cake and now I am literally serving a group of wandering Israelites.”

 

As we are doing this we kept wondering how they were planning to feed these people to begin with, because the only person working there was Albert, and the two tour guides who only arrived with the group. Albert hadn’t had time to make the beds yet or prepare the food or and anything. So we ask around and come to find out that Prek, the owner, his mother, wife and daughter all have COVID and he had to go visit them in the hospital. This left Albert to do all the work. So the Lord provided 7 random Americans to help when he was short handed and needed help, and we didntneven know that that is why we were there. 

 

On top of this, we find out thay we are the talk of the town in Thethi. (Thats the main town where the store is, a 2 hour hike away). Apparently everyone there was talking the group of 7 American girls staying at the inn who have no food, no money and yet they were helping with all the chores! It was such an amazing opportunity to share the love of Jesus with all these amazing people. 

 

Albert even then taught us how to make the homemade bread and the fruit cake that we had for breakfast that morning and by then it was 11:30pm so we all went to bed.  

 

This is Albert teaching us to make bread and Taylor taking notes for us.

(He kinda looks like Drake don’t you think?)

After everything is done and washed Amber gave us some wine out of a coca cola bottle and made us some fries. But the biggest blessing was that we got to keep all the left over food! Which we had been surviving off 3 bags of rice and 2 bags of pasta for 6 days so this was just another way that God provided for us!

This is Denny and I holding our abundance of leftover bread!

I think I can confidently say thaf that was the most unexpected, eventful and truly amazing  birthday I have ever had. 

 

 

 

More photos!

 

 

All of us after a good days work!

 

 

This is us with Peek (the owner) and Albert (his son) just before we left. 

 

 

Yet another picture of just how beautiful this place was.