Preparation and Anticipation

The last 2 days have been spent getting reacquainted with old friends, meeting new friends learning new songs, learning a new language, learning a new culture, and discovering God's heart for Kosovo.

Getting reacquainted with Old friends is the easy part. Three of the people I'm touring with I've met before. I get to hear about new children, new adventures, new opportunities and life lessons in the midst of relationships that are picking up right where they left off even though time and thousands of miles have separated us.

The other 8 are all people I met for the first time on this tour. Most of these people I've talked to over e-mail, but now those names have faces and beautiful personalities. Usually I tend to be reserved when meeting new people, unless I'm in a pretty comfortable situation. In this case everyone has been so warm and friendly that I've been able to feed off of that and be myself. This may also have to do with the fact that many of them are part of the group in Istanbul that counts me as one of them and prays for my family on a regular basis, even though we live half way around the world.

So we have 12 people on this tour and we've just gotten done with our second and last day of rehearsal. A rehearsal day was 9am-6pm of band practice in a local church. It is rather tiring and rewarding at the same time. All the band members are great musicians and they've made great progress on a large amount of music. We also have members of the tour doing dance, drama, and fire poi during the performances. Again each one of these people are very skilled at what they do. It's a pleasure to work with them all, not because they're good at what they do (even though they are), not because I get to work with them in Kosovo (which is beautiful), and not because I'm being paid well for this, (because I'm not), but because each one of them is using their God given talents to serve Him.

Kosovo is amazing. I've got a few words of Albanian down. I can now say “yes” “no” “Thank you” and “I don't speak Albanian.” While I love Turkey I will say that the people there tend to be rather stern. One of the first things I noticed on the streets in Kosovo was two men who looked like farmers. The remarkable part about it was that they were smiling as they looked out at the fields. My first impression is that people from Kosovo are generally pleasant and friendly. This is relieving, because if they were grumpy I would think that this would be a waste of an amazing landscape.

Just and interesting note that Kosovo is a young country. They declared their independence from Serbia all of 3 years ago. In fact, I just added Kosovo to my spell check dictionary. More on that later.

Our first concert is tomorrow night and already one of the men on our team has had a chance to pray with someone he met on the streets here. I'm very excited to see what happens when we get to get out there and get loud for God. There is so much more I want to tell you all, but some stories are best told in person.