Today I Bought Beef

I bought meat for the first time today at the meat shop. 

The man had no gloves on. He licked his bloody fingers to open the plastic bag that he dropped my ground beef into. 

I turned around so I wouldn't gag. 

I asked for beef but he was saying no, no no. 

I was confused until finally an old man who was waiting, looked at me and yelled (because you understand foreign languages better when the voice is raised) "Lope babi vici, yo lope, po vici." Intense enunciation. 

That I understood.

Basically translating-beef is the father of veal. We don't have beef, we have veal. 

I think. Who knows? Maybe we are eating goat for dinner tonight. 

Shopping here is very different. There is a shop for everything. A meat shop. A bakery. A cheese shop. An outdoor market for produce. 

I could never understand why people shop every day. Do they just like to go to the market every day? Do they get bored and need an outing? Do they not know how to plan ahead??

It has finally occurred to me that we go shopping every day here because you can only take home what you can carry. 

And I apparently cannot carry very much. 

You walk to each shop. If you buy 8 apples, some peaches, a kilo of beef, a container of yogurt, a couple peppers and maybe a loaf of bread you begin to have bag marks on your arm. If you throw in some eggs you can get even less because they are swinging around, determined to bump into the apples. 

So, I am beginning to learn the art of shopping everyday. 

Here is the Pazar where you can get everything other than food

However, the beauty of this is that you begin to build relationships. We want to focus on slowly building what little of a relationship we can have, until we know Albanian. It will take time before we can share the gospel with these people, but the daily reality of simple friendship is not a waste in this culture. 

We learn more Albanian every day. Today I learned how to say "girl and boy" instead of "girl and dog." There are like 4 synonyms for every word and they have 40 different endings. I am exaggerating. But only a little. 

We were learning colors the other day. Red, green, black and yellow. Instead of learning 4 Albanian words, we have to learn FOURTEEN. There is a feminine, masculine, feminine plural, and masculine plural form. And that should equal 16. Except one of the colors doesn't change when its plural. Why? Just because. 

Great. 

More things I feel I need to share...

*If you play volleyball or basketball, you will be tall. Yes you read that right. 

*If you smoke 3x a day, you will get rid of bloody noses. A kid's doctor told him that. 

*If you walk around with bare feet inside, you will get sick. 

*If you cut babies hair and eyelashes, they will grow back thicker and more beautiful. 

*I was asked if my teeth were real. She pointed at her teeth and said "authentic??" Um...yes my teeth are authentic. 

*Four or five days means 8 or 9. 

*Sometimes at the border, when there is a long line of cars waiting to get through, ALL THE POLICE go on a coffee break for at least a half hour. 

Here we are, just waiting at the border for 2 hours

*Most of the bathrooms have Turkish foot baths. At least I thought they were foot baths. They are actually for something entirely different. I will leave it to your imagination...

*Policemen do not have radar guns. They have foot long sticks with red circles at the end. If they feel you are going to fast, they straighten their arm with the stick and you are to pull over. 

*Albanians do not have a word for frown. I don't think it is a negative thing to frown. They always frown when they speak and seem angry even when they are not. 

Everyday we tell each other how badly we want to learn Albanian. We cannot wait to build true, deep friendships with these people. We cannot wait to share Christ with them. 

Everyday we are more motivated, more determined and more conscious of the Albanian around us. 

There are kids in our home almost ever day. We can say simple words and laugh and play games and pass Shiloh off to them, but we look forward to the day where we can study the Bible with them, answer their questions, and point them to the truth. 

This is Redon, our adopted son. On days he does not come over, we get worried about him. 

We are constantly reminding ourselves that every day counts. Every word counts. Every relationship matters. We must be patient while working very very hard. 

On Friday our first team comes. We cannot wait for them to get here! We have 5 teams coming this summer to do English camps through the church. 

Please pray for-
 *Our strength as we will have many people living in our home 
 *For the hearts of the students that will attend the camps
 *That the gospel would be powerfully proclaimed

Looking forward to sharing how the Lord works during these summer camps!