Kosovo Outreach Project - PUSHK

Our Albanian friends (the Bakalli's) just wrote a story for their prayer letter. We included it below for those interested in a 'local perspective' of the Jesus film showing outreach. It was an incredible experience and all the stories of God working in that little village will continue to flow out in conversations (and changed lives!) over the years. Campus Crusade outreaches in Kosovo since 1999 have proved that his word does not come back void... blessed be his name! :)

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PUSHK “a shooting of joy”

One of the best Bible verses that would describe our walk with God is Ephesians 3:20-21. “...He can do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think……”

The PUSHK project for me was the most faith increasing experience of the year as I saw God doing more than I planned or thought. This year I prayed especially for two requests:
That God would allow us to use the public schools to show the Jesus Film. Recently the Kosovo parliament approved the law to close the schools for any kind of religious activity.
It was amazing to see all the principles not only opening the schools for us to show the Jesus Film but to participate in these showings also. One of the principles came to the film with her 2 sons. She stayed till the end of the film, but time to time she would retrieve to her car and then return. When the film was over she approached the team and said that she needed to leave because she had a sick child in the car.

During the years in Kosovo, God has given us a heart especially for the people that had never had a chance to hear the good news. I really wanted to see many people like this during this project.

“In one of the Jesus film showings, a family of 6 draw my attention. I could tell from their clothes that they were religious (Muslims). During the film I approached the man and asked him if they had ever seen this film before. Without taking his eyes of the screen, he gave me a short reply “No”. For 2 hours they stood in that cold night and when the film was over they thanked me for giving them a chance to see this film”– Jeff, missionary in Ferizaj.
Before leaving Kosovo to come to Albania I met the mayor of one of the villages we visited. As we were talking he told me his story. 3 years ago a car was driving fast in the village and one of the people inside throw out of the window a Bible. The son of the mayor took the Bible and brought it home. The mayor explained him that this Bible is a book for Catholics and that he shouldn’t read it. So he took the Bible from his sons hand and put it close to his bed. In the evening before going to sleep he took the Bible and started to read the story of Abraham. It was a wonderful story for him. Next morning he went to work and when he came back home he went to take the Bible to continue reading and to his surprise he couldn’t find the Bible where he left it. His son explained it later that he took it and tear it and through it into the river. He was very disappointed though he didn’t show it before his son. From that time he started to search for another Bible but he couldn’t find one. 3 years later a Jesus Film team showed up in his village with a Bible for him. That Bible made his day. He continued to read the story of Abraham. And when I asked him about his thoughts he was not ashamed or afraid to say that the next time we meet he might be a follower of Jesus.

Stories like these and more have refreshed my calling and transcend all my fears as I embark a new responsibility as a Coverage / Jesus Film Director for Albania and Kosovo.

Thank you for encouraging and supporting us to be a part of God’s work between Albanians and beyond.

With love
Kejdis and Rudina Bakalli

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And we thank you so much for supporting us and allowing us to contribute to this project, as well as Kejdis, Rudi and their family!

Blessings and love,

Cheryl and Kevin

It's Coming

This will be a quick note to let you know more is coming soon! We had planned on having all kinds of Internet access once we got settled here in Budapest. This however has not proved to be true. At first we discovered the Internet was turned off at the house we are borrowing from Missionaries who are away right now. This makes sense because they are gone till Christmas. So what we don't get Internet at home, oh well, we will just have to ruff it and do Internet on the wireless network at the church. Oops, no one remembered the 16 digit number code to log on. OK so we can check emails quickly on someone else's computer and then make a trip to the Mission's area office for a once a week blog update. OK after 5 days of trying to find a reasonable public transit route (that is when we weren't helping sort through a mound of screws and nails at a construction project) we have given up on this option. The one time we made the trip via public transit we had to abandon our bus in the traffic jam and walk for over an hour to get to the office. However finally we think the problem is solved! Someone who is in the States right now emailed the church with the number code and so Cheryl and I are able to get online with our own laptops. It is so cute right now we sit side by side typing away! All of that to say we are within days of finally coming through with the rest of those blog posts that will tell all our back story you missed.

Pictures from Scotland to Albania...

Ok so our last post caught you up with our adventures in Dublin this one will give you an overview of what happened from then until we left Albania. As we covered some of the stuff in Kosovo and Albania there will be less time on these topics as far as words go but I just wanted to give you some more pictures from that part of our trip. The next post will be from Cheryl and she will tell you about more reccent travels that is the past 2 weeks in Rome.

When we left Dublin we caught a bus north to Northern Ireland. We arrived in Belfast and went on a city tour. I had been there before but Cheryl hadn't and so it was interesting for her to see first hand the locations of what the Northern Irish call "the troubles". By this ofcourse they mean the 20-30 years of conflict between the IRA and the Brittish government. While most of the region was free of military conflict the city center and certain neighborhoods in Belfast were a constant war zone. This doesn't mean that there was constant fighting but rather that they were under constant strict military supervision to prevent fighting.

Things we take for granted were not posssible there. While driving around it was amazing to see all the beautiful new ways people were using glass in their construction. Prior to the past few years no one dared use glass facades on a building because it would be an obvious target for a car bombing. That means all of downtown Vancouver would be out of the question.

Political Murals - A tradition from the time of the Troubles in Northern Ireland

While in Northern Ireland we stayed with a good friend I made there a few years ago and who we just happened to bump into in Vancouver before leaving on this journey. That is actually why we routed ourselves through the region. We figured while we were in Ireland why not?!

We just stayed a few days before flying to Scotland in order to visit a good friend of Kevin's and his former room-mate from Regent College. This friend and his wife have a lovely new baby boy. While we definately did our day of sightseeing in Edinburgh we were really there to see a good friend of Kevin's. And so just like Dublin was a nice backdrop while we as a couple got to visit with good friends of Cheryl's so was Edinburgh just a nice backdrop while visiting these friends of Kevin's. It has been wonderful for us as a couple to get to visit with each other's friends and to see how we are becoming something new and different from who we were in those friendships alone. I am not sure if that is entirely clear but it is true for us. That doesn't mean we think who we were before was less than or bad it just means it is amazing to see how we are undergoing a metamorphesis as people. We have become a new thing for a new time yet we are not entirely inconsistant with who we were before, just new.

After Scotland we hit the road yet again for Croatia that picks us up to the part of the journey which we have blogged more about and so from here on it will mostly be pictures.

The next several shots are from our travels in Croatia

These next shots are from around Albania and Kosovo

is a statue of the Albanian national hero, Skanderbeg.

He was an Albanian who led a revolt against the

Turkish Empire and freed Albania for several decades.

This is a mural on the national Museum

This is the oldest Mosk in Albania

The Albanian countryside

The beginnings of the infamous Road through Kukas

The later sections of the Road through Kukas.

To be fair while it is very bad in some places

this is the worst due to recent construction.

This on a street in Kosovo. It is still very normal to see

such blending of the old world with the new.

This is the University Library in Prishtina Kosovo. The Architecture

is designed to communicate that the Albanian mind has never truly

been free to express itself due to the oppression of outside peoples.

Game and Ministry time with the children in one of the

villages where we showed the Jesus Film.

Because Bill Clinton was the President who pressed for intervention in the

Kosovo Crisis it is common to find things all over Kosovo dedicated to him.

A wedding in Prishtina, Kosovo.

Dancing in the streets to celebrate a wedding is very common. Dancing in circles holding hands at many occasions is loved by Albanians - in Albania and Kosovo!

Prizren, Kosovo

Shinjin, Albania - English Camp for Kosovars

Organized annually by a church in Yorba Linda - California, United States.

Taulant and Jona - 7 months pregnant! Friends in Tirana, Albania.

Joel Bakalli - 3 months old. The newest addition to the Bakalli family.

One of the three little cuties we baby sat to help our friends in Tirana, Albania.

The first day at the beach for little Thea (1.5 years) and Ema (3.5 years)!

With happy parents Rudi and Kejdis. (Joel in the stroler up on the beach!)

Ema and Thea with Tete ("Auntie") Cheryl