This is an incredible story of God’s provision. The Bregu I Lumit or Treshi area, where our church is located, is a little north of Tirane, but when it was set up, in the communist era, it was a fair horse cart ride away, or an even longer walk. It was an area set aside for Political Dissidents, Thieves, and all manner of other types of criminals. As you might guess it was a very poor area. The demographics of the area have changes some, there’s not the same criminal element there used to be, but the poverty remains.
Sometime after we got to Albania we, as a church, began to pray for a new building. The one we were in didn’t suit our needs and it was a bad rental situation. Some months later a church in South Korea, which Festim is connected with through a South Korean missionary Pastor Lee, gifted us with €54,000! We were excited and we certainly appreciated their help. However the purchase price for this building was €70,000. That still left us €16,000 short. We continued to pray and wonder how God was going to work this apparent shortfall out. In spite of this the purchase progressed with a contract being drawn up and signed and the €54,000 handed over. Once all this was taken care of the agreement was made that we would pay the €16,000 when we could raise it. Everyone was in agreement, we thought. A few weeks later the owner called and said that he had to have €4,000 MORE. We were devastated. We couldn’t get the rest of the money, not to mention more, and also being quite aware that what what he was trying to do was illegal. But, he said if he didn’t get it, he would take all the doors and windows and wreck the place when he had to leave.
We knew we could not pay extortion money, but we also had the strong sense that we did not want to acquire this building in an unpeaceful manner. We came to the conclusion that all we could do was pray. So we did. Can you imagine that after a couple months we found out about an organization in the Netherlands who’s mission is to connect worthy projects with donors who have a passion in those areas. We submitted a project for the church asking for enough funds to complete the purchase and do some much needed renovation. We were ecstatic when we were approved. Although the problem with the owner still remained we were standing firm in prayer and our convictions. In the end the owner settled for €2,000 which, with his agreement, we paid an outstanding power bill totaling about €1,500. And the remaining €500 we used to pay an insurance bull for him. To us that is almost the best part of the story. We not only did not have to pay extortion, but, we got to bless him by taking care of these two outstanding bills which would have transfered with the building anyway.
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