Time flies by so quickly!!
We arrived here in Shkoder, Albania 3 weeks ago today, March 24. Our first two weeks here in Shkoder was ATL where we Ask the Lord what kind of ministry we will be doing each day. It was really amazing to see how God works and the connections we would be making so soon. Within the first three days we already had so many opportunities to do outreach and meet people to just share the love of Jesus.
Two of the days I was in charge of figuring out what we would be doing for ministry those days. The day before it was my time to take over I could not think of anything really for us to do. I would talk to God about what He would like us to do but nothing was coming up. One of the local churches in the area was having an event with kids that evening so I was thinking we could just help out with the event. My plan was for us to do street evangelism in the morning then after lunch go to the children’s event with the church. I had made a comment to my team earlier that day saying the children’s event was a “get out of jail free card” on what to do for ministry because I wasn’t hearing anything from God.
My teammate Travis, had messaged the pastor of the church hosting the event to make sure it was alright for us to come help that day. Well, the pastor had messaged back and said that our help was not needed the next day. Here I was back at square one not knowing what we were going to be doing part of the day. I knew street evangelism was one thing but what would be another. I went to bed that night still not knowing but asking God what He wanted again and again. When I woke up the next morning the first thought I had was “ice cream ministry” and I was like alright bet.
Met with the team for coffee and explained to them our plan for the day. That evening after lunch I went and bought 12 cups of ice cream. We all got two cups a piece and went to give them out to people. The point was to just show the love of Jesus passing out free ice cream and being interruptible to have conversations with people. It was a bit harder at first giving out the ice cream. Many people declined it when we would ask if they wanted it. Which made sense to me, I mean it’s not every day you just see random Americans walking around handing out free ice cream. Eventually we went around kinda back behind the ice cream shop where there was a little park area. At the park there were a bunch of older gentlemen sitting at tables playing dominos. We went up to the first table and the men declined the ice cream. The next table over one of the men was waving us down yelling at us to come over. All four of them accepted all the ice cream we had left and it was a really interesting experience. One of the gentlemen was saying something to us but we had no clue what because none of them spoke English. A younger guy was walking in front of us and kept looking and laughing at us at what was going on. A random man came out of nowhere and just shook our hands and patted my friend on the shoulder and kept walking.
It was a really sweet evening just to see the smiles on peoples faces of those who got ice cream. Even from the workers at the shop who were laughing when we had bought 12 cups of ice cream and then came back after for more ice cream, for ourselves this time.
There are too many sweet moments of ATL to count but don’t worry I have more to share with you another time.
