“Oh, the adventures we missionaries get to have!” I thought to myself as I gripped the steering wheel tightly, guiding the truck slowly through the deepening water of the rushing river. “Now, where is that exit point?”

This winter brought some new experiences made possible by the project’s vehicle, and of course by God’s providence. You may be familiar with the program in which people fill shoe boxes with gifts for needy children overseas to be distributed near Christmastime. Well, this year our district was chosen to receive some of those gifts, and the few Christians in our district were contacted for help. Since I was the only one in our area with a four-wheel-drive vehicle, I volunteered to drive to the isolated mountain villages in our district.

Three quarters of Albania is covered with rugged mountains. In many mountain enclaves, time appears to have stood still for more than a century. Old traditions and ways of life remain largely untouched by the outside world. This stands in marked contrast to city life where people are trying so hard to catch up with the rest of the world that they forget that not all change is good.

I had spent some time in villages, but I had never been to places as remote as those I visited during my deliveries. In some places, I was the first foreigner many people had ever seen. They were quite shocked to hear me speak in their own tongue but with a foreign accent.

Some of the roads to the villages were not much more than goat trails. They were steep, muddy and icy. One went right through a river. A swinging pedestrian bridge was also strung across the river, but the only vehicle access was a 40-foot wide stretch of shallow water. I actually had to drive about 1,000 feet upriver through the current to find where the road left the river on the other side.

It took several days of extreme driving to deliver all the packages to the children, but it was so heartwarming to see their big eyes and wide smiles and hear their excited laughter. Many of the parents and grandparents invited us into their homes for meals. It was a treat to be able to show these people a little taste of Jesus’ love. I only got stuck in the mud once and had to find a farmer with a tractor to pull me out.

A few weeks later, I drove Pastor Kastrati from the mission office in Tirana on a trip to the north. Our destination was Burrel, a small town only 15 or 20 miles across a mountain range from the capital as the crow flies, but it takes close to three hours to drive there because there are no roads over the mountains. The narrow road to the town is in terrible condition and must be driven slowly.

Burrel was a dismal town. The various shades of gray in the road, the sky and the landscape were a fitting backdrop for the somber faces of the residents. Even the history of this place is depressing. The communist prison here was known as a place where people died slow, painful deaths. To avoid the suffering, some prisoners attempted desperate, daring escapes, preferring to be shot than to endure slow death in the prison. Many people were sent here simply for speaking what was in their hearts or for standing up for freedom and human dignity. Others were destroyed for their faith in God. Anyone who did not mechanically comply with the brutal atheist dictator’s many rules for daily life put himself and his family in grave danger.

Despite its bleakness, Burrel is home to a small group of people who have been studying the Bible on their own and worshipping together on Saturdays. The mission and the Burrel group recently found out about each other, and for several months the mission has been visiting the group to give them help and Bible studies. The group wanted to help six local families who had lost their homes and their belongings in a fire, but they did not have the means to cover their needs. The purpose for our trip was to bring food, clothing and blankets to these needy families.

In our cultural research, we learned about a unique Albanian custom still sometimes practiced in the north. If a young unmarried woman chooses to, she can become a sworn virgin and remain unmarried her whole life, living as a man from that time on. She will dress like a man, cut her hair short, smoke, drink and work as a man. Often this was done because there were no living sons to inherit property, and women could not inherit. Sometimes blood feuds wiped out all male heirs. In other cases, a woman might choose this kind of life over a forced marriage and a life of subservience to a man she doesn’t love. In any case, the women who choose to live as a man often become very aggressive and masculine in order to be accepted and respected by men. This is a big leap for the very feminine women of Albania. On this trip, I met one of these sworn virgins. For most of the time I saw her, she was arguing loudly with the men. It was a rare look into an ancient, rare social custom.

By the time we left, it was getting dark. I had been surprised to see some men walking around with automatic rifles on their shoulders, and now I began to wonder about the stories I had heard about the bandits who frequent these parts. My unasked questions were answered when Pastor Kastrati casually mentioned that it wasn’t safe to travel after dark here, but the lights across the top of the vehicle, which I had turned on to see road hazards better, would help keep the bandits from bothering us since they would likely mistake us for the military. And I had thought these lights were just to help me avoid deep potholes, wandering donkeys, large rocks that might have rolled into our path and deep ravines that plunged hundreds of feet down from the edge of the rocky road! Thankfully, we arrived home safely. I hope to return to Burrel some day, but next time I will leave earlier and drive in the daylight.

Things are almost as exciting in our hometown, though perhaps not as adventurous. We are happy to report that the Lord is blessing a small group of people studying the Bible with us weekly, and interest seems to be growing. That’s an adventure we can take to heaven!

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