Days in Greece

Language learning update: 

The other day I meant to ask the man at the "health food" store where his wife was. 

Instead, I asked him where MY wife was. 

He lost it. 

And here is a picture of what we are working with....

The right side is the Albanian equivalent of "woman" and "women." 

This should include the possessive English forms as well...but still...

Shoot me. 

I also went to coffee with two girls in my bible study who barely speak English. It was a great test of my Albanian speaking skills. At one point I was trying to say a word in Albanian but I said it so poorly they thought I was speaking English. When they realized what I had actually said they busted up laughing...the whole hour was pretty humbling. 

This week has been very full which is making the end of the pregnancy fly by. Saturday marked a month until Taliah's due date! 

On Wednesday Melodie and I took the babies to Greece to get their vaccinations.

Do you wish you could go to Greece for your baby's vaccinations? 

Let me enlighten you a bit...

***Let me preface this by saying that I am EXTREMELY thankful that we can go somewhere relatively close for this kind of health care, and that I realize there are many worse things than this kind of trip. I am slightly exaggerating in this account...:) 

I am not going to a Greek island. The doctor's office is not on the beach. Kastoria is not a "tourist" town. 

I wake up Shiloh early so we can get a good start. Shiloh DOES not like being woken up...don't know where she gets that :) 

It is a little over a 2 hour drive if everything goes smoothly at the border. You lose an hour because Greece is an hour behind Albania. All the little stores and offices are also closed from 1-5 pm so we have to get everything done in the morning. Greeks know how to nap! 

In the winter there are usually few problems at the border. But, we have waited there for 3+ hours more than once. 

The doctor's "office" is in the same room she sees the kids in. So there are stacks of papers and books and then a medical bed adorned with toys. I'm always wondering if a sick kid was just holding the plastic green dinosaur that Shiloh is in love with. 

The doctor is a sweet lady who speaks "ok" English. But she's not very calm...Shiloh is not highly fond of her. Especially when she rattles toys in her face and sticks the cold stethoscope on her chest. Or when she shoves one of those tongue sticks (what are those called?) in her mouth to check her teeth. 

She weighs and measures Shiloh while I try to convert the kilo's and cm into pounds and inches. I could be wrong but it seems as though Shiloh is in the 95% for both. I don't know how that happened. 

I then try to understand which shots Shiloh is supposed to get. The schedule is different than the American one, and the Greek one seems to be changing all the time. The names are different as well as the dosages. 

She gets her shots and I hold my screaming 22 lb. chunk while the doctor writes up a Greek receipt, crossing out our names 6 times trying to spell it right. 

Once the babies are all vaccinated, our trip to Kastoria has just begun. 

There are some stores there that have grocery items we can only get in Greece. 

There is basically one parking lot for the main part of town so we lug the babies around from store to store collecting random items like brown rice and yummy cheese. 

There are no drive throughs so we sit down and try to eat while Shiloh runs around dropping pita bread on the dirty floor and then picks it up and eats it before my 9 month pregnant self can stop her. 

By this time Shiloh is late for her nap and has gone into what can be called "spazz mode." 

Then we go to last store where I always get chicken and where you have to bag your own groceries. 

Shiloh has normally lost it by this point. 

This particular time I had Shiloh sitting (wailing) in the parking lot while I bagged groceries. I pulled one of the whole chickens I had bought out of the cart and realized I was actually touching the bare chicken wing. The plastic wrap had come undone. 

This is like my worst nightmare. I am deathly afraid of raw chicken.Don't ask me why. It's like a weird thing I have. 

I spray the counters and the sink down with antibacterial spray and run boiling hot water over everything every time I cook chicken. 

Cory always tells me he's never met anyone who's gotten salmonella poisoning...I tell him he should be thankful that it won't be us that gets salmonella poisoning. 

When my brother Kyle was here he ragged on me for buying chicken in Greece and told me I should adapt to the culture and start killing and plucking my own chickens. 

NOT A CHANCE. 

So I stock up every time we go to Greece. Everyone looks at me like I'm crazy because of the 40 chicken breasts I have in my cart. 

I was going to take the unpackaged chicken back in and try to get a new one but I couldn't carry Shiloh and the chicken in without touching the chicken. 

My plan was to wait until Melodie got out and then leave Shiloh in the car while I took the chicken back in. 

I set the chicken on the curb by the car and ran back to put the cart away and check for something else in the store. 

When I came out a few minutes later, there were 10 pigeons and a crow picking at the raw chicken. 

Shiloh nearly leapt out of my arms "oooooohhhhhinnngg" very loudly at her newfound friends. She's obsessed with animals of any kind. 

Now I definitely was not going to return the chicken. 

I gagged and buckled Shiloh into the car. 

I grabbed some wipes, shooed the pigeons away and carried the mutilated chicken to the trash bins. 

I'm pretty sure I accidentally dropped it in the recycling one. 

Yum. 

We then begin our drive home. 

By this time Shiloh was too tired to sleep and spent the first 30 minutes letting me know how unhappy she was about how her day had gone...poor baby. 

We get home just before dark and unload our groceries trying to keep the babies asleep as long as possible 

So, when I think of Greece, I think of shots and chicken and meltdowns in the grocery store :) 

Women's Day

It's an international holiday did you know that? 

Why don't we celebrate it in America? 

Probably because of Mother's Day but someone blew it when they decided we shouldn't have both. 

In Albania it is basically a day of "freedom" for women. 

They go out to coffee or lunch with their friends. Their family attempts to free them from housework. They enjoy themselves. Some are given flowers. 

We took the Women's Bible study over the border to Macedonia (it's about a 10 minute drive) for a nice lunch. 

They were all extremely excited and decked out for the occasion. 

The restaurant made it very special and gave each lady a flower and had musicians come play Albanian folk songs. 

When I wrote THIS blog, the lady below is one that I had in mind. She is the epitome of the woman I wrote about. I also wrote about her in HERE. She comes to bible study because 2 of her children have gotten saved the last two summers and are in the youth group. Her son is in Cory's bible study. She is hearing the truth for the first time and while I don't know where she is at exactly with the Lord, she definitely has a hungry and open heart. 

She has 4 children and it is obvious that she did something right because they all adore her. They bought flowers for me to give her in the middle of the party and they were giddy about it. 

It was a beautiful bouquet and when I gave them to her and explained that they were from her kids, she started crying. All the ladies clapped and she had the sweetest smile on her face. 

She has served her family tirelessly without expecting anything in return. It was so touching to see how her children honored her and how she responded to it. 

There were also 2 ladies there that are sisters. One of their sons comes to the youth group. I found out that their father has been blind his whole life and their mother has been paralyzed for 30 years. There are 3 sisters and they take shifts each day taking care of their parents. 

Another lady's husband left her for another woman. She was extremely hostile to anything spiritual or religious. Her son was saved this summer at camp. She has been very impacted by the change in her son, has attended some events and has become good friends with Melodie. 

Actually Melodie has drawn all of these women together. Melodie and Erion are the couple we are working with here in Pogradec. Erion is Albanian and Melodie is American. She moved here from San Diego right out of college, met Erion and they now are married with 2 little ones.  They were sent by their church (45 minutes away) to plant a church here. I can't say enough about them, and in fact I will write more in another blog post. They deserve their own. But, right now I will say that this couple has been our lifeline since we moved to Albania. They have been our best friends. They have been our greatest encouragement. They have been our inspiration and stability. I don't know what we would do without them. We can't think of more amazing people to serve with and we are constantly challenged by them. 

Melodie and another woman who's son is in Cory's bible study 

I've said this before but I will say it again. It was crazy to look around the room at all the women and to see that most of them have kids in the youth group. A little community has been created for these women, but it's all because they saw a change in their kids. It's also because Melodie has reached out to, loved, and become a friend to them. I am so excited to see what the Lord does with these relationships down the road. 

What might be even crazier is that I am not sure of where each of them is at with the Lord or if they would even claim Christ. I know of few of them are definitely believers and some of them I do not know. 

One woman said just a few weeks ago when we were studying the parable of the sower that she believes in Jesus with her whole heart. The roots have sunk deep and she believes. She said this in Albanian and it brought tears to my eyes to hear someone profess Christ in this language I so desperately want to understand. 

Another woman said that she was arguing with her son (who is in Cory's bible study) because he was saying that Jesus is the only way to God. But she thought that Jesus was the only way to God for Christians and that every other religion had alternative ways to God. Melodie told her that her son was right and she agreed with him. 

So while we have some opposite sides of the spectrum, they come to bible study. 

Many of them are from Muslim backgrounds. 
But they come to this bible study. 
They come and hear the truth and ask questions and are loved. 
Please continue to pray for these woman and for this time every Monday afternoon. Many of them have very difficult home lives and my prayer is that Christ would be the answer to their pain.

It was a sweet first "Women's Day" in Albania and I came home to these incredible flowers from my wonderful husband :)

 I cried and then I informed him that this doesn't mean Mother's day is out :) 

In other news: 

*Albanians do not have their kids close together for the most part. Hence, I was asked today if my stomach has still not "gone down" from Shiloh....No...I am having another baby in 6 weeks....

*Shiloh had an allergic reaction to something she ate (I think it was some kind of tree nut). Swollen lips and hives all over her body. I had to remind myself of the lesson the Lord has taught me over and over again. My sweet babies and my husband are in the Lord's hands. Even in a place where the medical care is insufficient. Easier said than done. But I'm thankful that there are people at home that I can text and who can help me make medical decisions. You can't totally tell but here she is with her fatty lip. 

*We leave for Tirana (the capital where I will have Taliah) in a little over 3 weeks! Here I am at 34 weeks with my friend Alda. She has a baby that is Shiloh's age. We met her because her husband worked at the supermarket we always go to. 

And here is Shiloh drinking some bitter lemon Schweppes at the Women's party....