day 2...no clever title

We all fell asleep fairly early last night and since the church service we were attending didn't start until 11:00 we had a nice lazy morning just laying around. It was quite nice. 

The owners of the house we are staying in (and pastors of another local church) invited us over to their side of the home for coffee and to meet a group visiting from the Netherlands. We had a great time hearing about their long time involvement in the Balkans and we were able to share what God is doing through baseball.

Church was great....it was in an upper room and we worshiped alongside about 30 others. It was exciting to hear and see the worship in the albanian language. This will be our future; it's exciting and scary at the same time. We were surprised that there was English translation...we expected to not be able to understand a thing. So this was a positive development.

The worship leader is an American from Buena Park and Pastor Jeton is a local guy with twins who were just a little younger than Kailyn. We talked with them a little bit about the potential future partnership...and hopefully will be seeing them later on in the week.

Berat was off during this time picking up Maples and Faisal. These guys have been a huge encouragement over the last couple months. Faisal was the main force behind the video that we released about the Kosovo Baseball camps and will be joining us in June as well.

We headed off for a very pleasant hike through the national park and ended uo at the same restaurant we ate at yesterday. Berat brought along his two kids and Kailyn immediately fell into a deep friendship with his daughter. They walked hand in hand for most of the afternoon and spent a ton of time on the playground. Some other kids befriended Kailyn as well and helped enjoy some of the less toddler friendly playground equipment.

After a very nice couple of hours enjoying our food and being out under the trees, we headed down to the old town of Kosovo. Our first impression was how much had changed. This entire area was burned down by Serbian troops back in ’99…and international investors and Kosovar leaders have put forth great effort to rebuild this area. You can see the fruits of their labor. In addition to the return of the local merchants and craftspeople, it has become a popular destination for young Kosovars to enjoy a coffee or meal.

Berat, of course, ran into a few familiar faces…one young man he introduced us to was very excited to be able to help in the baseball camp efforts, seeing them as very positive opportunity for Kosovo. We hope to be able to get a coffee with him at some point, and continue talking about possibilities.

After a nice walk though most of the downtown area, we returned to our accommodations. It is very cool to be able to share this experience with Kailyn and Justin…but it is also really awesome to have Faisal and Maples with us as well. 

Tomorrow we get to visit the hostel/ministry conference center where the camp team will be staying in June, the host school for the camp, and a couple of other assorted places. We continue to be struck by the balance of great hope for the future and a great need for a true understanding of where hope comes from. Pray that we will take opportunities to share the news of salvation and that through all we do here, bring glory to God!