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This month: An Albanian to Albania -
How to make your money go further
- Every penny counts -
Stories of Jesus: tell them to me
An Albanian to Albania
Here I am at Gate 3 in Tirana airport, in Albania, reflecting on the last four
days with the YMCA, reviewing the projects in Tirana and Shkodra.
I remember standing at the airline gate in Milan airport waiting for the flight
to Albania thinking I don't really know what world I am entering now.
As I flew over Albania, it looked very much like Italy - lots of mountains and
square fields. On arrival, it took one hour for 20 of us to get through
passport control - nearly the time it took to fly from Italy.
First impressions on arrival are that this is a dusty and chaotic place with
lots of cars, holes in the road, half constructed buildings and plenty of
litter.
My first experience of walking around Tirana was trying to cross an eight lane
road with no pedestrian crossings. I followed the locals but that didn't
seem to help. Jay walking became a regular pastime.
Tirana is a city of contrast: half constructed buildings, poor housing, Romany
camps on the side of the road, expensive bank buildings, lots of cafes,
Italian-designed government buildings, good and bad roads, pavements dug up and
left - and lots of dust.
We visited some of the museums in Tirana. They were large and empty of
people. They give an impression of a troubled land which has constantly
been at war. Among the guns was the most fantastic collection of icons I
have ever seen.
The Dajti hotel we stayed in was a government hotel, built in the 1920s and,
perhaps, for me summed some of the life in Albania. The hotel was enormous
and furnished with best Italian marble. Ordinary people were not allowed
in the hotel for many years.
As I drew up in the taxi and went up the grand staircase I thought 'this looks
good.' However, as with many things in Albania, scratch the surface and
life can be rough underneath.
Leave the enormous reception area and make your way up the marble stairs: watch
the carpet deteriorate, the paint become yellow and fall off the walls, the
lighting fail to work and the corridors begin to smell of I’m not quite sure
what.
The YMCA review group - two people from Poland, one from Norway and three from
England - set off for the 90 minute journey to Shkodra, in the north of Albania,
in a minibus - a regular form of transport in Albania.
The meeting place for all the minibuses in Tirana can be best described as a
building site with enormous holes in the road, which you had to watch you didn't
fall down.
The road to Shkodra is now good and had recently been improved.
We had views of the mountains, towns and the farms - which are small and usually
had one cow and, sometimes, a few sheep.
Shkodra is a busy and lively town at the confluence of three rivers, with its
own castle, lake - and mountains in the distance. It has a mix of
expensive bank buildings, buildings burnt and left following the resistance in
1997, markets, shops, cafes and children from the Roma community begging on the
streets
We were met by Fatmir Lugji, the inspiration behind the projects in Shkodra, and
young people from the YMCA. They proved to be excellent hosts and our
every need was met.
You will be relieved to know the hotel was much better than in Tirana.
We visited the Roma community on the Saturday afternoon. They live on the
edge on the town - which is where they fit in Albanian society.
Over 100 families live in makeshift communities. Their houses are made of
everything and anything they can find on the rubbish tips. The people are
unable to work as no one will employ them and there is no state benefit.
The boys are sent to beg each morning on the streets, to keep the family in
food. Not only are their basic health and housing needs not met but the
girls and young women are in danger of being trafficked out of Albania as
prostitutes.
We were welcomed into their homes and the church was thanked many times for the
support already provided.
We also visited the school, which is a small stone building in which over 100
children are taught by four teachers every afternoon.
The classroom is basic and crowded - with a few desks and chairs, and over 50
children.
The teachers - all of whom have degrees - are a dedicated and caring group of
people who, with Fatmir, are concerned for the welfare of all the children and
young people.
They hope, by providing basic education, that the Roma children will be able to
lead safe and happy lives, no longer relying on begging and prostitution.
I was told, with great delight, that the teachers had taken 100 children to the
beach for a week with the money that the church had given. We had also
paid for resources for the school and teaching time.
On behalf of the Roma community, I would like to thank everyone in the church
for your support - including the pencils, crayons and pens from our harvest
thanksgiving, for which they were very grateful.
It was an enormous privilege and experience to visit Albania and learn about a
country and a people that has been closed to visitors until recently. It
is obvious that our on-going support will make a huge difference to the lives of
these children.
By Julia Clarke.
Top of page
How to make your
money go further
At the Church Meeting I asked people to consider where our mission giving
should go for the next year. The mission committee, and the deacons, have
considered it and think it time to reassess the distribution. There is no
intention to reduce our support for BMS or Home Mission in fact we would like to
meet the target set for us by the BU for both.
We then need to consider prayerfully who or what we also support. As a
fellowship we have supported the Leprosy Mission and the Bible Society (both
worthy causes), for many years without considering if they are the best use of
our resource. For instance, last year we gave TLM £323 which is very small
fraction of their total income of nearly £10M a year (and increasing). We
gave a similar amount to the Bible Society who have an overall income of some
£8M a year and are able to spend 25% of that income on advertising, fundraising
and administration.
However, we know that our support to Albania is making a real difference, as
Julia told the church Meeting. We also know that what they need is a guaranteed
income to allow them to continue their work. We have recently received an email
from Shkodra detailing their requirements for the coming year and whilst we
couldn’t hope to meet their full costs (about 1050 Euro or £700 a month) it
would be good to guarantee them a minimum income from here.
We would also like to support the work of Theophilus and Prakash in India. Any
money we can give will go a long way to supporting them. It costs £5 a month to
support a “Bible Woman” and Prakash can buy his helpers a new sari for Christmas
for just £3. Again they would value our help and a guaranteed sum from us will
help them plan ahead.
The amounts that will be proposed to the Church meeting will probably be around
the cost to each of us of buying a daily newspaper but will go a long way in the
mission of God’s kingdom.
I don’t believe we should limit ourselves to the minimum and if we can raise
more that would be splendid.
John Baughan
Top of page
Every penny counts
According to The Daily Mail of 26th September, there's £1bn lying around houses
in Britain. Britons are said to have left this amount in loose change lying
around the house.
The over -55s were found to be the best age group at managing their money but
they still kept, on average, £40 in ‘spare’ coins.
At this time of year - as I prepare the church's budget for next year - we all
need to manage our finances more effectively, especially as utility costs
(rates, electricity, gas and water) will increase much faster than any pension
or income will do. So any odd coins lying around - in your sofas and other
containers - should be put to good use.
The Sunday Club children raised a magnificent total of £167.52 in coinage for
the Albania appeal. This challenges to us all to try and match their
effort. To this end, a bucket will be found by the amplifier desk for all
your odd coins to be added to the Albania Appeal.
By Chris Songer.
Top of page
Stories of
Jesus: tell them to me
Bible storytelling is being used as a way to initiate new written translations
of the Scriptures, as this example from Africa shows:
Our facilitators have been learning to speak the language of one group of
Africans. As their proficiency in that language has developed, they are
relating God’s story in a way that resonates with the people’s existing culture.
Music, dance and storytelling play a central role in these people’s recreation,
social events and rituals. They use storytelling to communicate important
truths and have a repertoire of over 1,000 traditional stories, known as ‘likanos’.
Wycliffe Bible Translators’ facilitators are now adding to this repertoire a new
set of Bible likanos - stories taken from the Old and New Testaments which are
translated into the same style as the traditional stories.
According to the facilitators : “We want to stay faithful to the content as it
appears in the Bible while re-telling it in the likano style with which the
people are familiar.”
The people delight in learning new likanos and their enthusiastic response to
the Bible likanos confirms what the Wycliffe facilitators suspected: these
people’s love of stories is a key way to their hearts, enabling the facilitators
to share God’s love with them.
So far, 15 Old Testament stories and 22 New Testament stories have been
translated and are being recorded, along with songs to accompany them.
These Africans are among the most illiterate groups of people left in the world.
Being a hunter/gatherer society, they are ’now’ orientated, so it is difficult
for them to appreciate how learning to read and write can directly help them in
the short term.
However, Wycliffe’s facilitators hope that the Bible likanos will serve to
bridge this cultural gap by providing them with well-known Bible stories in an
oral format and, thus, prepare them to receive God’s word in written form later.
From Geoff Knott at Wycliffe Bible Translators and supplied by Alan & Theo
King.
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