19:14

WOW…this is some thunderstorm!  When I wrote less than an hour ago that I expected it to start pouring rain any time soon, I had forgotten what fury a Kosovan thunderstorm can unleash. The thunder was booming away in the distance for quite some time, and it has arrived over our heads now.  We’ve unplugged all our sensitive electrical items…just in case!  The sky is heavy, and the lightning is flashing all over the place.  The thunder claps are long and loud! The rain is bucketing down. It feels exciting J

I’m not a great soccer fan, but Dan loves to watch competitive matches.  I have no interest in watching the year-round European league matches, but when it comes to the World Cup I do enjoy the competition. 

I couldn’t sit and watch three or four matches each day, but the evening game is being played at a really good time for us.  Dinner is over, and we have time to drive out to the big park on the edge of the city to take a nice long walk.  Temperatures have dropped a few degrees so it’s pleasant for walking, but we still work up enough of a sweat that a cold drink on the patio of one of the restaurants in the park is tempting!  The current football game being shown on a big screen is an added attraction, and we’ve enjoyed a number of evenings cheering on our preferred teams alongside the waiters and other patrons.

I thought I was being clever today.  It was hot all day yesterday, Monday, and today, and I didn’t want to go outside.  Even less did I want to get into our landrover and drive to the supermarket on the outskirts of the city where I go twice each month to stock up on grocery and household items. With snarled-up traffic on the main road outside our apartment for much of the day, I didn’t want to be stuck in a vehicle in the sweltering heat. 

Thinking that it would be cooler and more tolerable in the evening, I set out around 8pm with my list in hand. I was right about it being cooler.  In fact, it was almost pleasant.  On arriving at the supermarket, I realised that about half the population of Prishtina had had the same thought as me!  The car park was very full, and the supermarket was thronged. Ugh!  Back to early Monday morning shopping trips from now on.

We’ve been surprised by some of the features of the apartment block where we now live. We love that there is a nice modern lift that works well, but we try to use it only if we’re carrying heavy bags. After all, we only live on the fourth floor.  I don’t blame the elderly lady from the tenth floor for using the lift, and I’ll feel badly for her if the lift stops functioning.

There is a car park for residents underneath the building with easy access back up to the apartments, a water tank for when the city water supply is turned off in the evenings, and a wee room for a security guard at the entrance.

The builders have recently been working on a playground for the children who live here.  The swing set is incomplete still, but that hasn’t stopped the children from having a great time out there.  Now that the weather is improving and we have our balcony doors open a lot, it’s lovely to hear the children’s happy voices as they play out there.

We have greatly appreciated the good insulation on the building too.  We were able to get through the winter without activating the central heating that is installed in all the apartments.  We have a small electric oil-filled radiator that we used when it was cold, and the low electric bill we received for the winter months pleasantly surprised us.

When planning this building, it appears the architect felt the need to include a ramp at each of the two entrances to the apartments.  The ramp at our entrance is steep and it’s difficult to pull a wheeled suitcase up it, and we no longer even attempt to roll our luggage down the ramp!  Our nephew and niece loved sitting down and sliding down it when they were visiting us last week!

Our power has been off for the last 12 hours.  This is a new experience for us in this apartment, and it has made me realise how far Kosova has come in the last few years.  When I lived in Prishtina in 2004, we regularly had power outages for a number of hours at a time, and the supply was even more limited in Peja.  Over time, supply has been catching up with demand, or more people have been paying their bills more regularly.  Either way, I’ve been thankful.

Since we moved to Prishtina, the power has rarely been off for more than 20 minutes at a time.  I think there were a couple of occasions when it was off for an hour or more, but I can’t be certain.  Now when the power goes off in the evenings, I have to search my brain to remember where the candles and matches are.

But, this morning the power went off around eight o’clock.  Assuming it would come back before long, we carried on with our morning activities.  Dan went to his class, and it was still off when he returned mid-morning. Now, it’s twelve hours later, and we’re still electric-less.  I haven’t opened the fridge door for many hours now, and the freezer hasn’t been opened at all. There’s no more hot water in our water tank, no internet, no heating, But, we do have a little gas camping stove and I was able to cook dinner this evening and boil the water we’ve needed.

Dan got talking to some of the other men from the building a while ago, and discovered the plot! KEK (the electricity company) arrived this morning and cut off the entire building’s supply.  Why? Non-payment of bills for five months.  Sounds fair then, right? Not exactly.

When the builder started handing over the apartments to the new owners in October last year, he ‘forgot’ to inform KEK who they were.  The electricity bills have been going to the builder, who is long since gone from here.  None of the residents have received bills in the time they’ve been living here.  We have asked our landlord a number of times about it and he always told us not to worry! ‘The bill will come,’ he would say. ‘You can be sure of that!’ 

The men told Dan that our power supply should be restored in the morning and that the builder will register the new owners with KEK, as he should have done 5 months ago.  Our bill for the last 5 months should arrive soon.  We have been putting money aside each month for this day – with living in a new apartment, we’ve just no idea how much it will be so we hope the envelope will be full enough when the bill comes.

Tonight as we sit by candlelight, and I anticipate that the battery on the laptop will die any time in the next 10 minutes, we are enjoying the quiet – no television, no music, no video games, no doorbell, no washing machine! 

We hope we’ll wake up to electric power tomorrow morning.  We’d appreciate hot water again!

Our latest news comes to you from the capital city of Kosova – Prishtina. Most of you will not have been aware of this change, as we have very recently moved from Peja to live here.  The decision to move was made based on an ECM recommendation.  It will allow Dan to concentrate more fully on his language studies, and allow both of us to explore new ministry opportunities that we can be involved in together at the end of this period of language study in mid 2010.

Dan plans to attend language class 4 times per week instead of 2 and he won’t have to travel from Peja, thus giving him more time to study.  Primrose will continue to teach the English classes in Peja 2 times per week till the end of this year, and will spend time setting up our home here in Prishtina, hopefully getting to know our neighbours in the process.

We will be attending church in Prishtina, and are looking forward to getting to know people in the fellowship, as well as others in the city.  We will be looking for ways that we can be involved in the life of the church, and Primrose particularly will search for ministry opportunities in Prishtina over the next number of months.

This is a time of great change in our lives, and we value your prayers for us as we make the adjustments.  We know very few people in Prishtina, and we really miss the people we know and love in Peja. Even though it was very difficult to leave Peja, we believe this is the right step at this time.

Please be praying for our future.  Right now we don’t know whether it will involve staying in Prishtina, returning to the Peja region, or moving elsewhere.  We are open to God’s direction and timing, and ask you to pray with us regarding this.

We thank you for standing with us through these years, praying for us and supporting us financially.  God has been very good to us, and we know that He has good plans for our future, which we believe will continue to be with the Albanian people.

They had asked a dear friend of ours here if they could bring something that someone might need, and our friend suggested a new dvd player for us – in light of our recent break-in.  Her thoughtfulness in remembering us, in thinking of what might be meaningful to us rather than of what she herself could use, was touching to us.  And, our new friend’s delight in spoiling us with something that we honestly don’t “need”, but which is a luxury we enjoy, particularly in the long winter evenings, was also very special to us.

When we agreed to house sit for a long-time missionary couple here in Peja while they left for most of June to visit family, it didn’t turn out quite as we had expected.  It certainly started out well -they live just out of town right on the edge of the mountains. They have a wonderful view of the gorge from their front balconies, the air is clean, and there isn’t much traffic.

We enjoyed minding their two dogs, and were pleased to “break” them out of their 5:30am rising habit!  Keeping them up beyond 9:30pm helps, we soon discovered, and were very glad not to be woken early by doggy whines, or the expected licking of our ears!

The only glitch came right at the end, two nights before our friends returned.  I drove down to our house the next morning and found our front door open. Many of you know that we live on the church property, sharing the house with our Kosovar pastor Gani and his family.  Our apartment is on the ground floor, and theirs is on the second. 

On my first look around the apartment, I only noticed the dvd player from the living room was missing.  I then stood in the bedroom for quite a while trying to identify what was missing from there.  Someone had clearly rifled through the drawers, but it didn’t seem like anything was missing from them. However, I sensed that something was different in the room, but it took much brain-wracking to figure it out.  Before we had moved into our friends’ house, I had hauled our suitcases (a large one with other smaller ones inside) down from the top of the wardrobe so we could pack some clothes.  I left the ones we didn’t use on the bed, not wanting to have to lift them back up until I absolutely had to.   It was temptation for a burglar, obviously, as they were taken too.

It was a number of days later that we discovered our winter/hiking boots were missing…really nice ones, not inexpensive I should add, bought in the US, with many years of life left in them…and Dan’s running shoes are gone too.  They were good ones, not so new, well used, but still quite a loss for us. There may be more things missing that we haven’t discovered yet, although we hope not.  There are some other personal items that we can’t locate, but before we decide they’ve been stolen, we want to see if we’ve left them in Ireland!  That’s our hope, because while it’s hard to lose things that are useful and necessary (like our suitcases and boots), it’s perhaps harder to lose things that are very personal and hold great sentimental value.

It took us a while to settle back into our home again, and not be anxious about the thief returning…there was much more that could have been taken, and our fear was that someone out there now knows what we have and might return for more.  We’re praying more than ever for God’s protection over us and over our home.  Please pray with us.   Those of you who have experienced a burglary know the feeling of violation and unease it leaves behind.  Our God is a God of peace, and we pray that He will fill us with that peace as we thank Him for our safety and security in Him.