We wanted to post a quick thank you for all of those who have been parying for our trip to Kosovo this week. It has been an extreamly sucesful trip so far with us being able to achieve more than we imagined! Doug has changed NGO documents, bank account and much more! We are hoping to return home on Friday/Saturday, hopefully taking the mountain road for the last time. We should be able to cut the 10 hour trip to 5 hours when we return in August due to the openning of a new straight highway that is almost complete! Check back soon for a more comprehesive update!

Yes, I do believe it was over a month ago that I said to check back soon for some photos! Opps. Well, here they are. Hopefully they will give you an idea of what we are getting up to! Click on the thumbnail to see the whole picture! That way saves a lot of space! Enjoy! We go to Kosovo again this week… check back for an update and maybe some more photos from that trip.

From Left to Right…

1. Jonathan showing off his “zip”. In April he fell and ended up with three stitches on his forehead
2. Sweet, smiling Sarah, six months old.
3. The mission team here in Tirane (The Bielers, the Ronnies and us) plus three of church teens (Yeta, Alba & Xhoni).
4. The MK’s plus some of the local church teens waiting to hunt for Easter Eggs.
5. Jonny and his best friends, Hannah and Mya.
6. A view form the mission apartment in Suhreka, Kosovo.
7. Selim & Edona, some of our Kosovan friends
8. One of the many mountians on the road between Kosovo and Albania
9. Sarah and the Sunberg girls in Prishtine , Kosovo.

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…. with Eastern Europe. This weekend we had the opportunity to take a road trip (or Woad Ship, in Jonathan’s words). We traveled across Albania, through Macedonia to Kosovo. As we drove for 8 hours on Friday and 7 and a half hours on Monday with two exceptionally well behaved babies, we enjoyed the beauty of the mountains and villages along with some great conversation and time to think and reflect. Over the past few years we had both felt a deepening call to come and work in this part of the world. Driving across some of the Balkan countries seemed to just confirm again that we are in the right place.

Our time in Kosovo was fantastic. To meet with the two groups of believers was exciting. Staying with the leaders of the groups there in Prishtina gave us the opportunity to talk with them about their history and their visions and goals for the future. We have committed to supporting them by at least visiting them regularly. Kosovo has been on our hearts from the outset of our assignment. Having now both visited the country we have a deeper sense of responsibility to supporting the efforts there.

Check back soon for some picture form our trip!

As the title of this post suggests, we have gone from having no tutors at the beginning of February to having two this month! Today started lessons with a university linguistics professor who has studied Albanian, English and French. We enjoyed our first lesson in that we not only learned what words Albanians really say but also a lot about the culture. He will be invaluable when we get to asking him some of our more complicated questions about the grammatical structure of Albanian and how things really translate. On Monday we start with a highly recommended tutor who has developed her own teaching material. We are especially excited about this as up until this point we have not found any single book to be particularly helpful!

Slowly but surly we are starting to be able to speak to those in our neighborhood that only speak Albanian. We are excited to be able to get to know our neighbors better. With “Summer Day” celebrated on the 14th of March we are looking forward to the warmer weather and the opportunity to have grill outs in out court yard and invite the neighbors!