September Newsletter (sorry about the formatting)

SOJOURNS IN SHQIPERI




Life as a Missionary

I realize that I’m daily surrounded by people of sacrifice. Many people would hear that and think, well naturally, you work with missionaries. But listen, that’s just it. It’s easy to say. And it’s even easy to see. It’s easy to hear, read, and talk about. However, if you sit down and think it through, I mean seriously consider it, it’s something almost beyond comprehension. I don’t say this because I feel like I am overly sacrificing here in Albania – goodness, I’m in the center of a downtown capital city working in a Christian atmosphere speaking mostly English with people who love to serve others. My workplace is a beautiful ex-Vietnamese embassy, complete with a fountain, umbrella-ed tables, cascades of well-landscaped flowers and fruit trees, and a place to park my moped. Furthermore, Tirana is a city that any foreigner could love to live in because its people go out of their way to make you feel welcome as their honored guest.
As my job entails working with and bringing together foreigners, I get to learn more about “real” missionaries’ lives. Not simple short-term missionaries that will move back home and “move on” with life. No, these are the real deal. The hard-core, bring up their kids, live without water pressure, never eat hamburgers (or veggie burgers as some prefer), survive without a car, suffer from thievery, have no retirement funds, kind of people. The ones that send their kids off to college in another country because they don’t want their children to have to pay or sleep with the professors to pass. Or those that have a baby (which they went to another country to give birth to) and then live in a small apartment just outside of Tirana that’s so cold in winter that they constantly see their newborn’s breath. Naturally, they have to consider moving into the city for the family’s sake, and yet that would mean moving away from their jobs, friends, support circle, and church. Just to find a suitable place to raise their child. Or think of the man who’s a pastor of two churches. He’s married to an Albanian, and spends his life dedicated to people – training them to live for others, love God above all, and help run the church. And yet at the crucial moment of leadership they leave the town because, well anyone with the ability would, to get a job to bring their family needed money, or find an opportunity to go to school… whose conditions we’ve already discussed.
These are people that have dedicated part of their lives to leaving all they know in their country and helping develop another (usually poorer) nation. Naturally, it’s not only missionaries – there are many expatriots that dedicate their lives to reconstruction – I just happen to work with missionaries: it’s their stories I know, their houses I’ve visited, their books I’ve read. In fact, I just finished one (and highly recommend) that’s a biography written by a journalist missionary based in southern Albania about another missionary family who started ministering there after the fall of Communism, and still remains in country (Christ and the Kalashnikov). It talks of their struggles and joys sharing the Good News with those from whom it had been hidden for so many years. They served and suffered through times of anarchy – complete with bombs, nonstop gunfire, car ambushes, threats, etc. Shortly after, when thousands of refugees poured from Kosovo during their crisis, he used the small church to instigate caring for 2500 refugees when his city was barely surviving itself. Most importantly it showed how God provided, was faithful, and led them throughout the time. These are the type of people I work with.
These people call me and say, “Hey! Is this Jen?” Then they ask all kinds of questions regarding things like: what organizations are working with marginalized Roma Gypsies in Albania so that they don’t re-invent the wheel, to how to live in Albania legally, and the best local restaurant. But mostly when people come in I hear tell of the common struggles that are faced: The slow-paced society that causes the feeling of little to no accomplishment; The lack of government rules that come back and slap them in the face when their kindergarten is closed because they didn’t follow “the rules”; The supporters that just pulled their crucial monthly donations because they’re building a new house; The young church that seems to somehow lack commitment even though they’ve been striving in it for years; The Gypsies that just won’t get enough health care because there aren’t enough workers, and of course they don’t have enough money for a hospital. Hmm, did I say “common” struggles? Oh yes, I did. And I meant it. This isn’t pretty work until you see that serving God means that He is being glorified, and as impossible and frustrating as life can seem, we can always lean on this hope.
(You’ll note this doesn’t even approach the topic of my Albanian friends that make perhaps an average of $200/month to live on. Add on the fact that the majority of this goes to supporting the household, which consists of parents, often a grandparent, and siblings, and possibly their kids. Even worse, Tirana is a “modern” city in some ways (though still its infrastructure is far from modern) and the prices are much like any American city. Who can afford that? Yet all the jobs and “modern” living of larger apartments with frequent access to electricity, water, phone lines, internet, etc. are naturally in Tirana. An impossible situation. Unfortunately, I’ve run out of room, and I could probably write a book’s worth.)
I’m not trying to pull heartstrings or garner money or do anything but state the truth in a way that you can understand. Family and friends have said, “Jen, write updates in a way that’s personal, with what’s really going on in your life!” Well, this is a good part of it: these are situations I hear of everyday, and more importantly, these are situations that friends live everyday. It first brings forth a question.. how could anything but a divine love cause people to care so much for others and sacrifice their lives in such ways?? It secondly causes me to question why I live in the States and why I take jobs that don’t first-handedly work with those that need it most. It makes me wonder what life is all about if I’m not actively obeying the Biblical instructions of helping the poor, widows and orphans in my area. What are my focuses in life and who am I serving first and foremost – myself and my desires, or working for those who have a lot more needs than I do? Please pray with me as I seek out God’s desire for me and how I am to serve Him as I come back home in 3 months (Dec. 7th). Pray also for those that are working here to better this corrupt and dilapidated nation, that they may work with endurance, perseverance, and vision.

In Him who is able to present us before God’s glorious presence without fault and with great joy, I send my love from across the seas,
Jen



Recently a “tragedy” occurred. Considered in comparison with the tragedies which occur all over the world everyday, it is of minor importance. It involved the loss of only one life, as opposed to thousands. It involved the hospitalization of five, as opposed to hundreds. We’ve even been able, as we can gratefully say seems to be the case with tragedies, to move on with daily life. Though we move on, however, incidents like this can be used to give us lessons, and convict us of areas in which we’re lacking. This is what the death of one of our children has done for me, and this month I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned with you.
She wasn’t even a child I really knew. She was one of the “shumë i vogels”, or the very little ones. Most of my favorite children have now moved down to Rozafa house, and I guess I hadn’t been spending much time or energy acquiring new favorites from Hannah House. Yet as I sat by a lake one day thinking about her short life, a day or so after it happened, I started to become very angry, an emotional state I’ve experienced frequently during this adventure. This anger convicted me, but perhaps not in the way you’d expect. See I got to thinking that the greatest tragedy in this wasn’t that she died, though this is certainly sad. The tragedy was that she lived in an institution, and died without a family around to take her to the hospital. The caregivers and nurses who took her certainly cared about her, but it wasn’t a loving mother’s arms who held her in her sickness.
Please don’t get me wrong. This isn’t me calling for the closure of institutions, or universally denouncing the conditions within them. This certainly isn’t me saying that children ought to be aborted rather than placed in them; I hope you know me far better than that by now. An institution can be a good place for valuable children to wait for the permanent family they so desire. Our institution, as I’ve said many times before, is a wonderful place; a place I might leave my child if I had to. I am really quite an advocate of institutions- at least the children in them belong to mothers who cared enough to give them the gift of life. What bothers me is how long these children wait, and why they sometimes wait so long. Sitting by that lake what angered me was the way laws are written, and how much we as a society fail to challenge them, and fail, as I see it, to fulfill our Master’s desire for our treatment of His children.
There’s no doubt that God loves children, and wants us to take care of them. He even commands us in His word to help orphans in particular. What sort of help ought we to give them? I’ve come to believe that this shouldn’t just be “adequate” care, or “good enough” care, or care which is “better than they would have had otherwise”. We should be helping them to the best of our abilities. These efforts should be continuous; we must strive against complacency. This is where I think we are failing. Let me explain the Albanian adoption process to you. If a child is abandoned at birth, which is not always the case, they have to undergo a waiting period of, I believe, three months before they are adoptable in any way. This is a time given to the mother to change her mind. Next follows the sixth month Albanian adoption period, in which only Albanians can adopt. This I approve of, to a point. It is good for Albanian children to stay in Albania, to grow up surrounded by their cultural heritage and become the Albanian leaders of tomorrow. However, this period is pretty much never waved, even for children whom we all, including the Albanian social workers, declare are never going to be adopted by Albanians, barring unforeseen circumstances or Divine intervention. (Though, of course, no one gets adopted without Divine intervention). It’s a cultural truth, not a cultural stereotype, that Albanians usually do not adopt special-needs children, older children, children with any sort of facial or bodily deformity, children with Roma or Gypsy blood, or children whose parents have a history of mental illness or retardation. This encompasses a decent number of children. There has been a move towards foregoing this six month period for such children, but it is as of yet unsuccessful. Thus many of our children, both “normal” and “special” will be almost two years old before they are able to be adopted. Why? Not because there is a dearth of parents longing for young children, rather because that is how the procedure goes. I think it is perhaps too often that we, myself included, throw our hands up in the air while shaking our heads woefully and say, “It’s awful that they can’t be adopted sooner, but it’s just the way it is.”
Or take the children who aren’t abandoned at all. Their mothers have control over them, and in this culture terminating parental rights is something which just isn’t done often. What do you do, however, with the mothers who willfully have the institutions raise their child for them. They’re capable of raising it. They have the money, the time, the ability. For some mothers such decisions are justifiable; they honestly mean to one day bring their child home. Others, however, appear only to think it’s justifiable, or maybe they honestly don’t see it as wrong. In my short time here I’ve known a number of adorable, loving children whose mothers rarely if ever visit but doggedly cling to “parental rights”. It may not be a large number, but even one child raised by a system acting as a surrogate for an absentee mother is too many. A recent talk with Milika compounded things even further. Apparently the laws here actually are written to protect the rights of the child, not of the parent. It’s just that no one uses them.
Now I know some might say that a child is in this situation because that’s where God has put him. This is true; God is in control of all things. However, I believe that God wants the best for His children, and research indicates an institution is not the best long-term solution. Could it be that God has placed the child in the institution for now, and then placed him on our hearts so that we can be used to help him? God may allow hunger and poverty, but I don’t believe He means for us to idly sit nearby and watch it. He calls on us to help the poor. He also calls on us to help the widow and the orphan. This is a worldwide thing; I’m discussing Albania simply because it is the situation I’m currently in. Even in the U.S., however, there are children who long for a nurturing family, but don’t find one, or need to experience a rocky road before they do. I also hope that I don’t offend anyone with this newsletter. It’s not that I’m saying we do nothing to help our children. It’s just that I think maybe God used the death of an orphan to convict me that we could do so much more.
What can we do, however? If we aren’t politicians, or social workers, or orphanage directors, how can we help? We can pray. We can pray for the kids growing up in institutions around the world. We can pray for the laws that hold them back from families. Prayer has power- that we know. We can sponsor children or volunteer, in order to make the environment in which these children live as pleasant as possible. We can prayerfully consider getting into foster care, or adopting, in order to provide more homes into which these children can come. We can simply ask God if there is any way we can help. I believe if we offer, and He so desires, He’ll open up a way. In this way perhaps fewer and fewer children will find themselves sick without a family nearby.

God bless!!!!!!!!!!,

mindy darrow

Note: We’ve actually been updating our blog. For more news and more pictures, feel free to visit www.jenminalb.blogspot.com.












Prayer and Praise:

³ Praise that, as always, God has been amazing to us in our lives and work here.
³ Praise for all of you, who give us such wonderful support.
³ Praise that Rauli is making strides in his abilities, and for how much he has come to mean to Mindy.
³ Praise that our children are healthy and happy, that the ones who were sick quickly came home well.
³ Praise that the blame for the death is no longer on the orphanage, and that everything worked out.
³ Praise for our vacation to Ohrid, Macedonia, with some of the church people.
³ Praise for the number of children getting adopted, or whom we have hopes for getting adopted, including one special case.
³ Praise for the girls' meetings which we continue to attend on Tuesday nights.
³ Prayer for our decisions about the future, that we might do as God wills us to do and be where He wants us to be.
³ Prayer for all the new people settling in, as well as for those returning from vacations of the summer and settling back into work and/or school.
³ Praise that it looks like Mindy might be able to start ESL classes for the caregivers and fencing lessons for the kids. (Note: not the orphanage kids :O), expat. children )
³ Prayer that these programs might go well
³ Prayer for the AEP conference coming up in October – that it will run well and the Lord will bring His people together to learn more about His vision for Albania.
³ Prayer for Jen's sister & brother-in-law who had to evacuate their home in Port Arthur during Hurricane Rita.
³ Praise for Mindy’s 26th Birthday!!!!!!! (September 27)
³ Praise for the missionaries, and all others here
³ Prayer for the Roma gypsy people, who really need it
³ Praise for the wonderful nature of the Albanian people
³ Praise, once again, that God is awesome, controls our lives, and meets our needs, knowing them even before we speak them, or even if we never do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




Contact Info:
Mindy Darrow / Jen Taylor
K.P. 119 AEP
Box 68 / BCS
Tirana, Albania
(Europe)

Home: 001-355-4-237420 Mindy Cell: 001-355-68-2804528 Jen Cell: 001-355-68-2092561
Mindy: milydar@hotmail.com Jen: jenalbania@yahoo.com