A Real Missionary

Last Thursday night I spent the evening sitting outside in a pretty run-down courtyard talking with 2 families. As the evening wore on more and more members of the family showed up. Someone came home with a cart powered by a motorcycle -- he gathers iron in my neighborhood to get paid a few cents per kilo for recycling. Then the older daughter came home with the baby -- they had been out begging. It went on for some time as there were several children.

Their house itself is very shoddily constructed, but they are in the process of improving it as they are able. Last Thursday night they found some pieces of molding that were thrown out and they were "papering" (plastic'ing?) their walls to provide some insulation for the winter. Something is better than nothing.

What was I doing? We went to visit the neighbor who has a cut on his foot and is diabetic. My team-mate had taken him to visit the health center a few days before and we were coming back to see how he was. (Not a medical visit -- just a neighborly visit.) We were invited in to talk and the conversation turned to spiritual things -- someone actually asked my colleague what he had new to share. From a passage in Psalms 90 we somehow got onto "zombie stories" and our hosts proceeded to tell all their personal encounters with these ghosts/zombies. They firmly believe in these visitations from the realm of the dead -- are they deluded or are they experiencing spiritual warfare in a way we don't experience it in the West? We got a chance to ask all kinds of questions and find out much about this particular aspect of their largely animistic world view.

At another point we discussed the upcoming celebration one of them was going to attend. At the end of each summer they have a festival where hundreds or even thousands of Roma will go down to the sea and stand in the sea for 40 waves. This is their way of washing themselves clean of their wrongdoing. What a wide open door to share some nuggets of truth about God's sure and certain forgiveness rather than a made-up ritual with no power to save.

I felt like a real missionary. Sitting on an upside down bucket. Sharing hospitality (they were sharing with me, that is!) with beggars, the poorest of the poor in Albania. Listening to them share about their lives and what they believe and in turn sharing Good News with them.

Fruit? No, not last Thursday. But maybe some foundation stones were laid... Maybe something said will germinate in a heart.

Let's keep praying!