I'm coming to this empty page with a question:
Why is it so hard for me to write a blog post?
I could write one on the stages of culture shock…. here's hoping I'm entering the last stage now. That's when rejection (everything here stinks!) rolls into acceptance and you start just living instead of feeling like you have to defend yourself from a hostile environment. It's where you start realizing once again that there are beautiful aspects of where you now live, after feeling so overwhelmed by the things you don't understand or appreciate that you'd rather just hide in your apartment than face the world. But it's through choosing to face the world that you find your way to the start of a new season... Even if you do have to walk through sewer smells and perpetual road construction to get from your apartment to the outside world.
I could write one on learning how to navigate the pazar, Korce's version of the middle eastern bazaars. At first the bustle and noise sent me straight to the Italian chain supermarket half a mile down the road. At least at the supermarket, the clerks only follow you around with body language that tells you that they have better things to do than make sure you don't steal anything.
The pazar is full of color and the shouts of fruit and vegetable sellers hawking their products.
What are you looking for, girl?
Come here, sister, I have what you need.
Bananas! Bananas! 200 lek a bunch! (That's about $2.)
Socks! Shoes!
Come this way!
What do you want?
Take a bag!
The pazar requires a set of skills I'm still figuring out, but I'm finally able to understand enough to buy my produce there.
I'm still learning whether something is a high price or a low price. At some booths, the products are marked by a piece of torn cardboard with a number. Plums are generally 80, peaches are 100, apples might be as low as 3 for 100. That's all in kilos… which makes the plums $.36 a pound, peaches $.45, and apples a whopping $.15 a pound. I've come to appreciate that cardboard. Although most people there may tell this American-accented girl the same price as everyone else, I'm just not sure they're going to.
Of course, there are other tricky things in the pazar.
Recently I saw some beautiful apples and asked the price. Sixty-five, the old man told me. Want to try some? He sliced off a bit from an apple on the side. It was spicy and delicious. I said I'd take three kilos. My applesauce was going to be spicy and delicious, never mind that I was buying the expensive apples. Later, while slicing up all those apples I tasted another one. Not so spicy and delicious, clearly not the same kind of apple I'd tried... yes, I'd been had. Cinnamon and lemon juice made up the difference, but I learned my lesson that day. You have to pay attention in the pazar.
I could write a blog post about how God is teaching me that the value of what we are doing does not depend on numbers.
There is an ebb and flow to life in the village. That means that some times of the year, work takes priority over Bible study. There is a lack of trust in the village - because after years of only atheism or Islam, the idea of "church" does not come with the respectability that it tends to have in the states. There is a struggle to see more people become interested. And that's what we want, right? After all, we are planting a church - and that means numbers... Right?
We began a girls' bible study earlier this year and were excited to see 8 or 9 girls come. But slowly that number trickled down and then with the comings and goings of summertime - people going to Greece to see family or having that family come visit them. Many weeks nobody came. We took walks through the village, inviting the girls we saw and knocked on doors to find more. And then after a few weeks of this, we realized that persistence eventually gets obnoxious.
Kam punë, they say. I have work to do.
Last week I made a house visit with the woman who leads the Bible study in the village. She'd had enough of hearing about all the work that the women do… the same women who always have time to invite someone in for a coffee, and who we found shooting the breeze on the porch. It's true that women in the villages have a lot of work. But it's also true that "I have work" is often a polite escape.
She let them know she'd rather just hear the truth… Kam punë. Kam punë. Don't tell me you have work. It's an hour a week, a twenty foot walk from your gate. We made the time for you, at the time when we know you don't have work. You just don't want to come.
My mouth nearly dropped open. You can say that?
Well, perhaps not everyone can say that. But she could.
What I am learning is that while numbers are obviously helpful - you can't have a meeting if nobody comes - they aren't the goal I need to be reaching for. I can't make anybody come.
When I feel discouraged about girls mostly not coming to the meeting we prepare each week, I have to remember that God is working in the village.
There is one girl who comes when she can, who loves Jesus, and who wants to live for Him. Jesus is the one who is drawing her to come. That's ultimately His job, not mine.
There are a handful of young men who love the Lord and are growing tremendously.
There are a dozen or so children who come nearly every week to learn more about how the Bible tells us that God loves us and that Jesus came to save us.
Our job is to show them the love of God when they do come. It is not to make the numbers look good in our updates. It is to pray for the people in the village that they will desire to know God.
If I look to numbers to find my value, I will allow discouragement to overshadow the fact that God is much bigger than us or the meetings we plan. He is working even when we don't yet see significant results.
What He has called us to do is be faithful in all things and trust Him.
A friend quoted this recently (as in, I just got distracted on Facebook and saw her post) -
"The goal of the missionary is to do God’s will, not to be useful or to win the lost. A missionary is useful and he does win the lost, but that is not his goal. His goal is to do the will of his Lord." --Oswald Chambers
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