OAC Publications
Borderlines
November 1993

FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ALBANIA

by Darren Lyons

After a fourteen-hour overnight journey by road, our team finally arrived in Liboniku, a small village of about eight thousand inhabitants in Southern Albania.

Poorly maintained and unrendered high-rise flats towered above us. Throughout our time in Albania, the difficult living conditions continued to appal us. The children have little to wear, shoes are difficult to acquire and it is almost impossible to buy the basic necessities of life.

We were greeted by some of the Christians who form the nucleus of the village Bible study group, led by an Albanian called Holgar. They soon took us us to the homes of our hosts, whose generosity and self-sacrifice surpassed anything we had seen before.

Holgar is an interesting man. A quiet and humorous school teacher with an immaculate grasp of the English language, he became a Christian about three years ago and now has an insatiable desire to study the Bible.

As well as leading the Bible study group in Liboniku, Holgar often translates and assists the missionaries in Korce. He is leaving his teaching post this autumn and will live on his translating fees and on gifts from other Christians.

Each day began with devotions, followed by three and a half hours of door to door work before lunch. We rested during the hottest part of the day, and then held a Bible study in a local school and open-airs until darkness fell at 7pm. The programme was exhausting but exciting, and we did manage to get a short break in the middle of the mission.

The response was incredible. Everybody wanted to know about Jesus and many wanted us to hold long Bible studies with them in their homes. During the open-airs we were able to witness to dozens of captivated villagers. In one instance the sketchboard was knocked down as a crowd of around 150 surged forward to receive free literature, a mistake we never repeated.

It was common for each team members to be surrounded by up to a dozen individuals, most of whom were hanging on your every word. One young man asked, "Is it really possible for Jesus to come into the heart of an Albanian?" A girl of sixteen asked whether Jesus could come into a moslem's life.

The mayor's son, who was studying marketing at university, had followed a comprehensive Bible study course from Derby, England. He wanted to know how he could obtain the forgiveness of God and know for certain that he was a Christian.

During the evening open-airs we ran children's clubs in Maliq and Liboniku. Both groups grew rapidly in numbers and the children were very keen. Some of them took to following us around like sheep!

On the last Sunday of the mission we were greatly privileged to witness seven baptisms in the beautiful lake which borders Yugoslavia. We will remember the people of Liboniku for a long time. But it is the young Christians who faithfully translated for us and threw themselves into serving God without complaint who will remain in our hearts forever.

And then there was Legor, who, at the age of eighty was one of the few Christians to have survived fifty years of persecution to see the birth of a new church in his village. How many other Legors live in villages which have yet to hear the Good News of Jesus Christ?

For the team, the experience of working face to face with those who will struggle to keep warm in near-arctic conditions this winter made us reconsider our own dependence upon God. I will never be quite the same again.