This past month has been our first ATL month, which stands for “Ask the Lord.” Basically, it is a month where we break into our teams, go somewhere in the country, and do whatever God tells us to do. Now if you know me, you know that structure and schedule are very important to me. I love having well-defined expectations. My very first question when we started planning was, “What does ATL look like?” The answer I got was essentially, “Pretty much anything.” We don’t have hosts, we don’t have connections, we don’t have a pre-made vision that we can step into. All we knew was that we had to stay in Albania. We have nothing but an eternal, infinite, creative Father who has absolutely no limits. Well, needless to say, it was a bit overwhelming for someone like me.
We started in prayer. Several days of prayer, in fact. We made sure to pray, fast, and research before we ever presented any of our ideas to the team. This took place during our week of debrief and our week of training. During training, they talked a little more about ATL and gave us a slightly better idea of what this might look like. However, they were all very careful to make sure that they didn’t influence us or get in the way of what God was telling us. A couple days before we left, my team finally started presenting what God told us. I got radio programs, handing out Bibles (as well as fundraising), volunteering, and, in a very indirect way, helping refugees, both Afghani and Ukrainian. Some other things the team got were: trekking in the mountains, walking to villages, Vlore, fishermen, looking for “people of peace” that would welcome us and invite us into their homes, etc.
As the date to head out neared, we still didn’t have a concrete plan. It wasn’t until the day before that we settled on something: We would go to Vlore for 4 days. Using that city as a base, we would trek to villages and either camp or sleep in the homes of villagers. We would hand out Bibles or Bible verses on notecards. We found an inexpensive, highly rated ‘Air B-n-B’ that we booked for four days that seemed to be on the outskirts of Vlore.
We instantly realized that God may have had different plans than we thought. When we got to the home that we would stay at and did some exploring, it turned out that we were actually in a separate village named Orikum. It is a small village that is in the middle of a mountain range and the sea. We had somehow been placed smack-dab in a mountain village. As we explored, we met many “people of peace”, who treated us with so much kindness and happiness. In fact, that first night, we attracted something of a crowd, thought that may have been because some members of the team had a yelling match with a truck-full of sheep. Our host was incredible as well, blessing us with her love and kindness, even offering to cook us some traditional Albanian dishes. That first night made me so excited for what God had in store.
The next day was Sabbath, so I got a good day of prayer, exploration, walking, and rest.
The day after, we began planning our trek. We decided to keep the home we were staying in as our base. We would walk to two villages (Dukat and Dukat i ri), stay somewhere there for three days and do evangelism, and then come back to Orikum. We would then do it again the following week. We watched the incredible movie Sabina, which had one scene of Richard and Sabina giving jelly to their neighbors as a way of spreading Christ, so one of my teammates felt inspired to make cookies and hand them out with Bible verse notecards before we left for Dukat.
We started our walk. One of the team hurt her back, so we were somewhat hesitant, but she said we should still go. Before we left, the sun was shining, with barely any clouds. We handed out the cookies and verses and saw the joy in their eyes.
The day quickly turned. A hour and a half walk to the first town became over two hours. Emotions were high. It had started raining. We stopped at a cafe that didn’t serve any food. We realized that we had no actual plan for what we wanted to do in these towns, especially things that we couldn’t do in the amazing village we were living in. We decided to stay in the first town instead of walking to the second. We went to a restaurant/bar, but found out that they also don’t serve any food. Jacken (who is my team leader) and I went out to find a place for us to spend the night. We walked around for a couple hours and found absolutely nothing. Hotels either weren’t open, couldn’t hold us, or were way too expensive. There we were, in another village: no plan, no food, no place to stay. it was a hard, exhausting day for us all. After praying and talking about it, we decided to take either a bus or taxi back to Orikum and re-evaluate our ATL plans the next day. Of course, we missed the buses by about 30 minutes. We took two taxis, which cost quite a bit more than the bus would have. We had a lot to learn about listening to God and following Him. We may never fully understand His ways or thoughts and we may end up confused, but we can rest easy in knowing that God is always good and kind to His children!
The next day, we sat down and did two brainstorming sessions. The first was about what would a “failed” ATL look like. We decided that we cannot really say an ATL can fail, because God can and does use anything for His kingdom. However, it was more about what an ATL that makes us look back with personal regret and sadness would look like. From that came a list of things we can do to make sure that we make the most of our time here. We taped it up on our door.
The second brainstorm was about all of the possible ideas that we have for ATL. We came up with a pretty long list. We then prayed about them and as a team, with God’s help, we narrowed them down to a list of attainable goals or items.
That tough day was a turning point. ATL has been such an incredible time! I am not going to say that after that day, we did everything perfectly and that we checked off all the items on our list. In fact, we haven’t actually stayed too close. Our plans keep adapting and shifting. But now, we are simply following God, wherever He may lead and we are doing our best with the time that He has given us here.
I would like to present a challenge: Give God a day, or even just a couple hours, where you approach Him in prayer and ask Him to lead you where He wants you. This may lead you to some uncomfortable times and stretch your limits, but I guarantee, it will bring you closer to Him and He will use you to do some extraordinary things!
Thank you all for your support!
