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· The country We have a new prime minister as well as now a new president in Albania with a government of young intellectuals who do have the desire to change the country. This is not easy because of the lack of infrastructure, crime and corruption rate and the mentality they have to cope with. PRAY FOR THIS GOVERNMENT AND PRAY AGAINST CORRUPTION. Since May there has been no rain, and this is now causing great problems in the provision of electricity and of drinking water. PLEASE, PRAY FOR RAIN!o The situation between Kosova and Serbia backed up by Russia is also getting more and more tense. Please pray for peace in the Balkan.o Today the Minister of Foreign Affairs has officially installed Prince Leke as a new staff member of this ministry. Pray for Prince Leke, he is a young man that I met a few times. His mother, queen Suzanne was a Christian from Hungary. She went to the Lord about two years ago. Prince Leke stands for noble things and personally I’m really happy that he is now officially involved in the country. The royal family had been banned from Albania since the 2nd World War and came back just a few years ago. 
· Our centre and its activitieso Apart from the young people with a disability, we also had about 14 village children attending our kindergarten. Their teacher is Zenepe, one of our young adults who is in a wheel chair. We praise the Lord for her integration and for the way she has been accepted by the village people. The children really love her. Zenepe wants to be baptized next week! Also Anilla, who is one of our teachers and comes from the village, wants to be baptized next week!o Today and for the rest of this week, a guest team from Holland and our pupils do evangelistic outreaches in the villages surrounding us. Last week they did training and this week they are out!o This coming Thursday we hope to have baptismal services and think that 3 persons will be baptized.o Our therapy department has seen good results, both at our centre as well as with people from the community and others coming during the camps. At this moment though we are without a professionally trained physiotherapist: PLEASE PRAY THAT THE LORD WILL PROVIDE US WITH THERAPISTS!o For some of our pupils, we do need 24 hour help for their personal needs, particularly for Hermes, who is now 16 and has Duchenne (worst form of muscular dystrophy) and Kastriot (in his thirties) who is very spastic. Valdeta (16) partially paralyzed has become much more autonomous than she was but still need help in getting back to bed. Both Hermes and Kastriot have been abandoned by their relatives, just like Gjergji who is deaf and dumb and Gazy who is staying with us for a short time again while waiting for his adoption papers to come through. He has been very much abused in the past. We celebrated his 15th birthday some days ago.o We are in need of house parents or and educators who will love these young people and be like family to them. PRAY THAT THE LORD WILL SEND US PEOPLE TO LIVE IN THE CENTRE; PEOPLE WITH A FATHER/MOTHER HEART FOR THEM!o Some of the young people trained at the centre have really integrated well in society and we are very thankful that Bledhi and Eltoni have now been employed by World Vision. Others are working full time in our offices, like Trendelina our school secretary and Dhurim our secretary who does quite a part also in the daily management of the place; Klodi and Majlinda, both quadriplegic, who got married in Dec. 2005 and are now church elders in the local village where our centre is.o Right now we are almost at the end of the summer program. We have had teams from Holland, Scotland, Holland again and will have an other team from Joni and Friends, Italy soon. With these teams, we have done evangelistic camps in the Lure area, where up to 120 children attended, mostly with Muslim back ground. Also some 50 young men and 15 young women have been reached in separate activities. Mean while there were camps in our centre in Marikaj where we invited people with a disability from outside to take part in our activities as well as therapy. All of these teams have also done maintenance work in our centre and we have received new chairs from them and other necessary items like mosquito screens for the windows of building nr. 2. Some days ago we unloaded the truck from Italy, bringing us some 100 wheel chairs and other useful equipment. The team should be here by the end of the month when we hope to have some special days of wheelchair distribution, where for each person adaptations will be made. PRAY THAT EACH OF THESE PERSONS WILL BE TOUCHED BY THE LOVE OF THE LORD. PRAY FOR THE ITALIAN TEAM; PRAY FOR OUR ALBANIAN TEAM! o In September our school year should start, but we are in need of finances for school materials, wages of the school staff, heating in winter. We have a good staff, a good Christian curriculum, PRAY FOR THE FUNDING! · Visiono The need for our centre is real in Albania. The trauma department of the hospitals in Tirana and of all other cities, have no where to send their patients to for rehabilitation and integration. The director of the trauma department of the military university hospital in Tirana and us are making plans to work together. Right now he has 20 patients he would like to send to us. Already we have been treating some of his patients, but not as many as he would like to send us. Each year he would send us an average of 65 people who have become quadriplegic or tetraplegic. In order to realize this, we need to have more rooms available and to improve our infrastructure. The vision is to create small houses for long termers and for the integration process. This would be just outside of our present compound. It’s much better for people like Hermes and Kastriot, Gjergji and all others, to be in a family setting rather than in an institute like setting. We want to be a community of people who take care of each other. The larger building where they now sleep would become the building to host the patients who come straight from hospital and who need more care. · Lureo Our house in the mountains needs a new roof and lots of other maintenance. Once those things are done, we would like to offer it to the entire church and missionary body here in Albania for their own retreats etc. Also of course our own teams will be blessed when there are no holes in the roof!o A similar situation we have on the mountain near Kosova, in the villages of Kalaja e Dodes. |
