Travel with me to Albania

Where is Albania you ask? Officially known as The Republic of Albania, the nation is located in South Eastern Europe. The country sits across the Adriatic Sea from the heel of Italy with Greece as its south and southeastern neighbor. Albania is about the size of the state of Maryland with a population of 3.1 million people. Its per capita income is approximately $2,580 and more than a quarter of the population lives below the poverty level, making Albania one of the poorest countries in Europe. Often family members will work in neighboring Greece and send money home to provide for their families.

In 1967 the communist government created the world's first officially atheistic country when it outlawed all religions. It was ruled by the most repressive and isolated regime in Europe until 1991, when it became the last country to emerge from the communist regime. Since then the nation has struggled through years of political instability and ecomonic collapse. An outbreak of civil disorder erupted in 1997, followed by an influx of 460,000 Kosovar refugees in 1998. This increased the burden on the already deteriorating political, ecomonic, and social infrastructures. Today Albanians enjoy full religous freedom. and while the government is an "emerging democracy" maintaining infrastructure is extremely difficult, especially in rural areas.

Alongside Ministries International hosts the Crossroads Christian Camp in Erseke in southern Albania. The children and youth are introduced to Jesus Christ and loved on by Christians in a one-week camp enviroment that includes crafts, games, bible lessons, and a ropes course (don't we all love camp!). I feel very priviledged to be part of bringing Christ into the lives of these young people.

Excerpts borrowed from World Vision http://www.worldvision.org/

Sunday, July 4, 2010

A Walk to Camp

As I've mentioned before the group is staying at Mark's house and we walk 15 minutes to get to camp. "Camp" is not what we think of as "camp" - Calvin Crest, Westminster Woods, or even Huddard Park. The actual camp's grounds are quite small and consist of a long rectangular building (see pictures posted previously) which holds the boy's sleeping rooms, the kitchen, a meeting hall, the girl's sleeping rooms, some staff sleeping space, and a few small classrooms. Directly across from this building is an outdoor eating area, a volleyball sand area, a storage shed, and the rock wall/ropes course. The camp is located in what feels like the outskirts of town. Because camp is small they utilize areas outside of camp, like the walnut grove, a field and Mark's church for various activities.

Things have changed for us as this weekend two groups from Boston/France and England arrived to help. There is so much help this week that they can't use us all at camp and there's not enough room for the large 9-11 year old camp (larger than last week), staff, and all the volunteers to eat there. In fact the Boston/France group (young adults from Boston partnering with a French group) are staying at a hotel, I'm not sure where the British group is staying. Anyway, our group will probably not be helping much with camp this week and we'll be eating all our meals at the Stoschers. Can you imagine cooking for 28 people, three meals a day for an entire week? The roofing crew is still able to work on the new roof but the rest of us will work on finishing up the playground restoration and getting involved in shopping and preparing food with Ruthie. I'm the organizer of that (not surprised are you?) so schedules are made and posted and I'll be involved myself a lot as I feel Ruthie should have as much support as possible although she is so gracious and is a wonderful hostess.
We enjoy our walk to camp (especially if it's not raining which it has done every afternoon) so I wanted to share with you some of what we see during that walk.


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2 comments:

  1. UnknownJuly 5, 2010 at 4:56 PM

    Wow Cathy this pictures are amazing. You can really get a feel for the poverty their and how a mission trip like this can really help the families that live there....You are doing an AMAZING thing! The pictures of the children seem like they are really happy to be their and I am sure they are also happy to have a loving counselor like you to help guide them!

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  2. june LehrJuly 6, 2010 at 10:11 PM

    Cathy,
    Just want you to know how much your blogs mean to us. I get up every morning and can't wait to read your latest writings. You are a gifted writer and you are really painting a true picture of your surroundings.
    We love you and really miss you.

    Love, Mom

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