Our Albania Mission Trip

Thanks to the generosity of our fellowship, Nanette and I were able to return to Albania this year to continue our work with our ministry partners there. Our first four trips to Albania were part of the camp ministry, where I would speak at one of the seminars and Nanette and I would lead a small group. The camp is a joint effort of two Cru initiatives: Leader Impact (targeting professionals, mainly business leaders) and ISP (International School Project, targeting educators).

The last year we were at the camp, I approached Genti Shani, who leads ISP in Albania, to see if there was some other way we might be involved in their work. After an exchange of emails, we arrived at a plan for me to speak to teachers in a series of after school workshops.

In 2023 I delivered four presentations over two days for a large group of educators in Tirana, the capital city. We then did the same four presentations in Elbasan, a nearby city.

My four talks dealt with a range of personal and professional development topics:

• The Art of the Apology: four components of a genuine apology
• The Four Types from the Book of Proverbs: how a student’s response to correction (wise, simple, foolish, or mocking) provides clues as to character
• Emotional Capital: Here I integrated the Gospel, how “while we were yet sinners [with no emotional capital] Christ died for us.” I also used Jesus’ story of the prodigal son (who had squandered all the emotional capital in his relationship with his father) to illustrate the Gospel.
• Servant Leadership: Here again, after laying key principles of servant leadership, I used Jesus as the ultimate example of the servant leader.

Last year we did the same set of talks in two more cities where ISP has established a beachhead, then two more cities this year. I was pleased to see a high level of cooperation between the ISP team and local churches in the cities where we’ve worked. The pastors of the churches invited people to come and they themselves came to the workshops.

ISP uses workshops and seminars like this one to make initial contact with teachers, whom they then invite to participate in Bible studies and one-on-one meetings. They then invite some of those teachers and their families to come to the summer camp, where they once again hear the Gospel in both the final seminar and in the small group discussions.

A couple of my favorite memories from this trip:

On our way to the venue in the first city we stopped to pick up a young woman who was part of the ISP team in the city. She got into the back seat and after introductions she said something to the Albanian woman was traveling with us. I was thrilled when I heard what she had said: “Your talk at the camp helped me turn the corner.”

The last year I spoke at the camp (2022) I had given the presentation on servant leadership. That presentation, she said, helped her take the final steps toward faith in Christ!

In that same city, as I spoke on the first night, I noticed the owner of the venue sitting off to the side. He was not on his phone; he was listening carefully. The next day the pastor who was attending invited him to sit with the other men at their table, guys who were part of the church there in Bilisht. He sat at that table and participated in the discussions. That man heard the Gospel that day!

God is doing amazing things in Albania.
 
The church there is first-generation, but they are already sending out short-term mission trip teams and church-planting teams. The pastor in Berat (the second city we worked in this year) told me that his dream is to send out church-planting teams to Albanians who live in nearby nations so that they can reach those nations.

ISP Albania has invited me to return with new content to begin the same three-year project next year. I hope to go back to work with brothers and sisters who have become dear to us.

Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Pastor of Discipleship