New church buildings Dear
friends and supporters of the mission,
After
the time in Italy, when we had a rest and visited some churches
in the district of Pisa and took part on the "European
Apostolic Conference", we are now back again to the Albanian
reality with its daily problems of shortage of water, electricity
and other. Even, we should admit that the general situation
is improving slowly. Carlo and Ester have started to go again
to school and we have taken up our activity in the churches,
that have been followed by Ardi and Linda together with other
brothers in the mean time. These brothers have even organised
a mini conference for the young people, besides this. You will
find their testimony about it attached to our letter.
On 30th September we participated on the opening of the new school year of the Bible school of "Christ for the Nations" in Pogradec. Sandro had the honour to preach there, but we were there most of all to encourage our brothers, Sokol and Rudi from Stropcke and Gerti from Cerrave. This school year was made possible for the three of them by the offerings from the churches in Germany, which has always shown to be sensitive towards the work in Albania. If we do not to forget that they are also supporting for our rent. We want to thank them once again for that. Now, we are happy to have rented a house for adults and children meetings in the village of Cerrave. Since we have had it, a lot of children and some more young people are coming to the meetings. In Pogradec we are trying to adopt the garage on the ground floor of our house into a meetings' hall. Despite the fact that some of the girls that used to come to our meetings are forced by their relatives not to come, we already know that there will be a wonderful apostolic work, here in the town itself. So at the moment we are doing a lot of practical construction work, not only in Pogradec but also in Cerrave in the new house and in the meetings' room in Stropcka. All these need to be done before the winter begins. We hope and wish that it will be a generous and abundant winter in snow, because there is a big problem of dry climate. It is because of this dry climate that in Bratomire (the village where Ps. Enke used to bring drinking water with a water tank), is lacking even the drinking water since some months. Nehemia Foundation is intervening, using a lorry with water tanks to bring drinking water to the inhabitants. Here, as you already know, we have always meetings with twenty, thirty women and about twenty children. We are looking for a place where the children can meet in this village, because they are having their meetings in open air. Taking
the chance we want to thank all the European co-servants that
we met during the conference, because they have supported us
with their encouragements. We know now that even more people
are praying for this nation. Special thanks to the French, Sicilians
and to all those that have given their offerings for our work.
Not forgetting all of you that often send us the mail bulletin,
give generous offerings during the missionary services and to
all those brethren and churches that organise Bazaars for the
mission in Albania. The Lord will surely give you hundred times
more than what you gave or did !
This summer was special for us the young people of the Apostolic Church Pogradec. We actually expected visits from other young people from the Apostolic churches in Italy or Germany, but it was anyway a good and busy summer. As
you already know, we have five new communities in Pogradec and
the villages around it, mostly young people. After two years
of work, since our Italian missionaries, the Sardellas came,
these communities have grown to a certain extension and we,
the young people felt somehow the need to get together and to
seek the Lord's face together and also to have some fellowship
with one -another. We
already knew each-other, but because of the bad infrastructure,
we don't often have common meetings. This is how it came out
the idea of a mini conference for the young people of the Apostolic
communities in Pogradec. We prayed about it and soon, what began
as a simple idea began to take flesh and of course problems
came out. First,we as Apostolic church do not yet have a place of our own to make the meetings in Pogradec, but thanks to the brothers from Christ for Nations,Germany, who allowed us to use their Bible School we had a place for our mini conference. How wonderful it is when the body of Christ works together!
The other problem, was what we already feared since the beginning. The parents here in Albania, have a great authority over their children, especially over girls, as long as they are not yet married. So, some parents in the villages would not allow their daughters to came at all. This was for us as organiser and for the girls themselves a time to put to work the simple faith through prayer. Well,
our Lord is faithful! And however it was a challenge as the
first conference for us and moreover that we had to organise
it alone, without the help of our pastor, everything was ready
on the 25 August. It
overpassed all our expectations! Every part of the mini conference
from the worship time to the good lessons and the discussion
groups, to the food preparation for ourselves and cleaning turned
out to be a great blessing for all 15 participants. We were
all amazed at how each moment of this mini conference of two
days was a blessing for us and we could feel the presence of
God so tangible there. We were happy and so enthusiastic at
every part of the mini conference. How faithful and loving our
father is ! Going back home was hard for every one at the end of a time when we were enjoying together the presence of Lord and the good fellowship with one another. Let's
hope that another time soon we could have a youth conference
or a evangelisation project together with our European brothers.
The Lord wants us to be together on His Name and for His Glory. Our new mail address is: Sandro e Luciana Sardella Qendra Nehemia Pogradec (Albania) e-mail apostolike@aep.org.al Lord Jesus bless you, |
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