Bilisht Carnival

After numerous hairpin turns down the mountains to leave Erseke (and quite a few queasy stomachs later) we drove through the large city of Korce, northeast of Erseke, and headed east to the village of Bilisht. It is called a village, and in my mind that denotes a community smaller than a town, but in this case "the village" had a population of 12,000 but has more of a village attitude than some smaller towns. We didn't see much of Bilisht has we headed right for the Evangelical Church of Bilisht. The beautiful large church was accessible by a dirt road (later we learned the building was only three years old) and is part of the evangelical group of churchs in Korce, Erseke (Mark's church), and one other town. We were met by the Albanian pastor and his wife, learned a little about the church, and then divided into groups of three for the purpose of walking through the town and handing out small flyers announcing our carnival which was later in the day. Each group had a teenage Albanian guide so my group of three women was guided by 17-year old Gersa who spoke fairly good English. Each group was assigned a section within walking distance - some just walked the streets where they found many children to give the flyers to, but our group set out for an area of homes on a dirt road not far from the church. Our task was to knock on doors, hand out the flyers, and invite the residents to the carnival. I was very impressed with the size of the homes and the beautiful vegetable and flower gardens in front of most of the homes. Each home was enclosed with a stone wall and gate. The experience was really unique and one that touched my heart deeply.

Imagine this, three foreigners who don't speak your language, knock on your door with a teenage Albanian young lady. Each of us greet the resident with a hand shake and a "Miredita" (Good day). In Albanian Gersa explains who we are and that we are throwing a carnival at the church. Every resident was open and friendly, so different than how we often greet strangers who appear at our front doors. After a short conversation in Albanian we were often invited in for a visit - and we don't even speak their language! A visit in Albanian is a "come on in, sit a while, let me serve you coffee, chocolate, biscuits, wine, and more food than you can eat. I'll serve you and watch you eat while we talk" type of visit. One family was eating lunch and they invited us in to join them! How often do we treat our guests this way? We had to refuse each invitation which in Albania is rude but we had our guide explain we needed to pass out the flyers and get back to the church for lunch. Hopefully that helped but I'm guessing we were still seen as rude. Once we refused their kind offer to visit, they'd disappear into their home and come out with a glass container of candy and offer us one. We'd often comment on their beautiful flowers, grape vines, and garden and before we knew it they were clipping flowers off their plants and handing them to us. I collected quite a few absolutely beautiful yellow, pink, and orange roses. One knock-on -the door resulted in a difficult conversation - remember everything said is being translated back and forth and although Gersa was doing her best there were many English words she didn't know which made translating challenging for her. The Albanian lady we were talking to explained that her 10-year son, Aleks, has a disease in his legs and they don't have the medicine he needs in Albania. At one point we got the impression she was asking us to either take him to America for medicine or to bring him medicine, we weren't sure. He had an operation in Greece on one leg but the other was bad. She then turned to me and asked if I had children. When I said "po" (yes), she asked me if they were healthy. I said "po" and she asked me to think of Aleks as my child. On my gosh, put a knife in my heart but I immediately assured her that I would pray for Aleks like he was my child. The other two ladies also told her they would both pray for Aleks. During our talk Aleks came riding up on a bike but when he got off we could see that his legs were bent strangely from the knees down and he walked with difficulty. One of the ladies in my group was a pediatric nurse and she thought it might be a form of arthritis.

That difficult conversation ended our handing out flyers, and with our hands full of candies and flowers we headed back to the church for a lunch of Byrek (layers of phyllo dough filled with herbed feta cheese) and watermelon. Afterwards we heard the pastor's very heartfelt testimony of how he came to Christ after communism fell in the early nineties and then we set up for the carnival. We decorated the large hall with balloons and set up games like bowling (with empty soda bottles), bean bag toss, fishing for prizes, ring toss, coin toss, face painting, balloon animals, and musical chairs. The carnival was to start at 5:00 but children started lining up outside the church at 4:15. Earlier Gersa had asked us three ladies if we'd like to go to her neighborhood and see her house but we had told her we couldn't as we had to be back at church for lunch. We told her that we might have time in the afternoon, and sure enough, she came to the church at 4:15 and asked if we could come, so we did. Her home, which was a 10 minute walk down paved roads, was the second story of a two-story building. We removed our shoes, customary before entering any Albanian home, and she immediately ushered us to her room which looked like a living room. It had two couches, an amoire, and a coffee table - nothing personal. She told us she slept on the couch (maybe it pulled flat like a futon) and she was so proud to show us her Albanian bible and devotional. We were introduced to her parents and were asked if we could stay for a "visit". We said we couldn't but before we knew it mom had disappeared. We talked a short time and then as we were putting on our shoes mom came rushing up the steps with a bag from the market. It was so important to them to be hospitable so we just couldn't leave although we knew we'd be late getting back to church. She reappeared with a silver tray and crystal glasses filled with carbonated lemonade and candies. We graciously toasted Gersa and her parents, "Faleminderit" (thank-you) over and over again, then we said good-bye. Rushing back we saw children running down the streets towards the church and when we got to the church lots of children were waiting outside. Once inside we took our stations and the children started coming in. I was in charge of the bean bag toss, shouting "Bravo" every time a child got a bean bag into a bowl and giving out small prizes when a child made two successful tosses. The room was filled to capacity with children and parents laughing and having a good time (we figure about 250 children participated). It was so hot and sweaty and within an hour we had almost run out of prizes (and believe me, Dundee Presbyterian had brought suitcases filled with carnival supplies and prizes so there was lots of stuff). The stickers that many of you sent were used by the children to decorate small colorful bags that held all their treasured prizes. After a short message from Mark and the church's pastor the carnival ended a bit earlier than planned, we cleaned up, and headed home, stopping in Korce for a dinner of vegetable antipasti, greek salad, french fries, grilled pork chops and pork roast (Pork? In a country of Muslim background? Yep, they eat a lot of pork, normally in the form of ham and salami). Overall, the day was rewarding on so many levels and as we rode back after dinner in the dark I very thoughtfully listened to Amy Grant sing Christian songs on my iPod with complete contentment.