Happy 4th of July from Tirana, Albania! As a follow up to our last newsletter, we wanted to let you know that after much prayer, discussion and counsel, we have decided NOT to return to the U.S. this summer for an extended home assignment as originally planned.  

This was not an easy decision as it will be four years in August since we moved to Albania and since we last saw many of you. Our purpose and hope for home assignment is to be able to spend meaningful time with family, friends, and ministry partners. In light of the on-going pandemic, we see too many obstacles to being able to do this in a safe and satisfying way and believe it is wisest to sit tight here in Albania for the time being. Please pray that we have wisdom about the timing of our return to the U.S.

In the meantime, there is plenty of work to be done here in Albania and we are thankful that we are able to continue to serve through LinkAcross and our local church - even if it wasn’t what we had planned.  

We want to say a big thank you to all of you who contributed to the food donation project we shared about in our last letter. We will continue to provide food for about twenty families through at least the summer and reevaluate from there. Several of these families have started to attend church services and we as a church have been intentional about trying to get to know them and share the love of Christ with them.

Thank you for your prayers for our church’s annual discipleship retreat this past weekend at which Jeff spoke. This was our fourth retreat with our church and always a highlight of our summer. We had an immensely rich time together learning about the importance of Biblical grief and what it means to lament in a healthy and godly way. On top of enduring a once in a century earthquake and pandemic this year, many members of our church have experienced other significant losses so the topic was helpful and timely. Jeff borrowed heavily from the book Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament by Mark Vroegop for his talks. We have found it helpful in processing many of the losses, hardships and injustices we have encountered here and would highly recommend it! 

We appreciate your continued prayers for us and our church family here.  There are still many uncertain days ahead with this pandemic, but we are thankful to know that they are not uncertain to God!

Blessings,