Bonnette Acres

My last day in Lushnje is now halfway over. All my goodbyes seem to have gone so quickly, and now I am two coffee visits away from leaving Lushnje for good. Last night Jess and the OM team gave me a going away party that was so kind and re-announcing who my true family was in Albania. The leader of OM said that when they heard a Nazarene missionary was moving to Lushnje on her own, they were unsure what kind of girl would do that. Ha, but he went on to say that he was so glad that I became apart of the family and that OM would accept me anytime and would miss me greatly. This morning at church our small room where we meet was full of people, and I could not be more over joyed to see so many faces I had seen through out the year. At the end elke had me come up front and gave me a present. She gave me a coffee cup, and said to everyone "You have never seen someone like coffee as much as Emily!". They also gave me a beautiful book all about Albania with great pictures. Everyone ...

This week deep inside my head I have been in a constant battle of love and hate. I have been digesting my time here. Have I loved it fully or could I not get over the hard parts? All I can fathom to say is there was miraculous moments and horribly hard situations. So much of my heart will always stay with the kids at the kindergarten, and the teen girls who became my best friends. But is that enough for me to say I have a passion for this land? A passion for all the people? A passion to leave my lovely life again and live here longer? Right now I can not answer that question. Honestly if I have any inkling to the future I don't see that happening. But after talking to some amazing Nazarene missionaries my thoughts have been re- open. Not necessarily to coming back to Albania, but once again living in a foreign land. Pretty much all summer long I had decided that doing volunteer missions again all by myself was not a good idea. My head was filled with thousands of situations where I...

I have one more full day left in Lushnje before I head to Tirane for a week with all my things. I will be coming back for two days right before I leave for a nice goodbye to my year of interesting adventure in Albania. Right now I am thinking how fast just this past month has been and how this week has lasted a second. One by one I have been packing my things but I have been amazed of how hard it has been. Not necessarily like "O my goodness this is so tough getting all of this in these tiny bags". No it was more like I just didnt want to pack. Which is very strange for me. Usually I love packing, it means a new adventure is before me. But this one is different. I am full of such mixed emotions. This week I am doing a VBS at my church. The first two days were just the pastors kids, but today randomly we had 4 brand new kids. That might not seem a lot to all of the mega church's out there but here that is amazing! I was so excited. It was a huge MM (Miraculous Moment) for ...

The night before camp I found myself working like crazy to get all the things done. Yes I had the whole week before to slowly and nicely work on the lessons for camp, but SOMEHOW that just did not happen. So like always I did not find motivation until hours before. In these moments of my life is when I wonder why God would use me, the procrastinator. But amazingly and only in God's way it was all done AND I had time to clean my apartment. Yep, miracles do happen. To be honest I was not looking forward to camp. I had already missed out at not being at Texas kids camp, and I knew that another culture family camp would not be the same. I also was not up for talking in Albanian all the time, since after summer started my little Albanian that I knew amazingly disappeared. It is interesting how you can live in another country and still never have to speak the language. This is not so at camp. Ryan and Kaci gave me a ride in there nicely air conditioned car, and it was evening when we arr...