Saturday, August 8, 2015

Albania Day 7 : Hot chocolate, castles, slouvaki and an orphanage

Today was a busy day. First we had the opportunity to visit an orphanage.  We brought a foam turtle craft for each of the kids to make. There were about 10 kids around preschool age.  Then we spent a little time playing games with them like "Duck,Duck, Chicken" (Cydil did not know the Albanian word for "Goose"). What a joy to see our kids helping these little ones with making a craft.  The orphanage children were so at ease with our kids.  Our kids started picking them up, giving them piggy back rides and teaching them to summersault.  The smiles on both our kids and the orphanage kids were so amazing to see. We are so thankful for the opportunity. (Sorry, we cannot post any pictures of our time there.)
  




Afterwards we met with some other missionaries in Elbasan.  We met at a fortress for cappuccinos and sodas. 

Here in Elbasan is another section of the Rruga Egnatia.  It was so crazy to think that we were walking on the same road as Paul and other missionaries in the Bible.

For lunch one of the missionary friends, Julie, brought us to eat slouvaki with the Waggoners.  It's kind of like eating a gyro stuffed with shredded meat, lettuce, tomato, and special yummy sauce. They stuff French fries in it as well.  You can see the pictures of Rachel and Andrew eating them.  Side note: We were able to find a similar food the day we spent in Rome and we all were so excited.



Soon after lunch we drove to another fortress called Petrella.  This is the fortress that Scanderbeg's sister was in charge of.  Most of the castles/fortresses are rented by restaurants, so they do not cost anything to visit.  We just bought cappuccinos for the adults and hot chocolates for the kids as a thank you.  Here is a picture of the hot chocolate we wrote about earlier, nice and thick and delicious!








We enjoyed time with the Waggoners seeing the beautiful mountains of Albania.  This is such a beautiful country!!!

We drove home and immediately Cydil and Jen got things ready for an evening bible study with the ladies of the village.  Jen spoke on how God delivered her from so much anger and how spending time in God's Word is essential for growth in the life of every believer. The ladies were surprised, but encouraged to know that we all deal with the same things despite where we are from. As Jen finished our interpreter signaled for Jen to continue. The ladies wanted more encouragement, so she began to tell the story about our adoption of Andrew and his healing of hydrocephalus.  It was a wonderful time of fellowship!









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