Happy Wednesday! I wanted to share a chapter from By the Fire: The Spark of an Extraordinary God in an Ordinary Life by Rusty Gerverdt that really encouraged me as I got here! The chapter is titled “God Loves Albania” and it’s a wonderful story of how God moved in Albania as it reopened to the west – and even while it was still closed. I hope y’all enjoy!
In the early 1990s, Europe was in a major transition: the Cold War with the Soviets was coming to an end, the Berlin Wall had just come down and there was saber rattling in the Balkans, which eventually broke the former Yugoslavia into war-torn states. In that part of the world, such challenges were not new; however, things were changing rapidly, and the Yugoslav wars would be hard-fought and horrific. Yet again, in 2022 the region has seen more conflict just to the east between Russia and Ukraine.
In the summer of 1990 I was twenty-six, living and serving right in the midst of incredible geopolitical change. The mission organization I was with had many relationships with other mission agencies from all over Europe. Amid all the upheaval, we were presented with the unique opportunity of driving through these tension-filled countries to the border of the most isolated country in all of Europe: Albania.
Rumor had it that the political will of the hard-liners there was softening just like much of the rest of eastern Europe.
Albania had closed its borders to the west for so long that good information was hard to come by. All borders prohibited visitors and even resident Albanians were forbidden to leave. They had no passports and no opportunities. In many ways, Albanians were imprisoned in their own impoverished nation, completely cut off from the rest of Europe. Fear and suspicion reigned. It was into this situation we had hopes of entering: While I wasn’t fearful, I didn’t know what to expect.
Officially, there were no Albanian believers in Jesus to be found in the country, In fact, it was illegal to believe in God; at the time, they were the only stated atheist nation on the earth.
We had official Albanian documentation and a governmental invitation for our group to enter and conduct an outreach campaign — a totally unprecedented event. There was a large soccer stadium in the capital city of Tirana where we planned to hold several large, open-air meetings and introduce the curious to the life-changing message of Jesus.
After long days of travel, we arrived at the Albanian border just before sunset. What a sight we must have been for the officials on duty — the road was far too thin for our large convoy of vans, cars, and trucks. At first, there was great confusion; the border officials had no information that we were coming and didn’t believe the signed documents that we’d brought. They did, however, agree to let us stay overnight at the border while they tried to verify our documentation. The next morning, after a fitful sleep on the pavement, we were waved through the checkpoint and continued on our way toward Tirana.
The countryside looked like something out of the last century. The roads were terribly rutted and worn. People worked in the fields with horse-drawn plows and hoes. As we passed by, people everywhere stopped what they were doing and Just stared. They seemed stunned to see us and quite curious, if not suspicious. Though we drove all day, we didn’t see another car the entire way to Tirana. We saw people in the fields, but we were the only ones on the road.
The capital city had large thoroughfares, yet we saw no vehicles. In the evenings, hundreds of people walked up and down these same streets, talking softly. It was strangely absent of any traffic noise. There were no personal cars. Most Albanians had never been outside the country and didn’t have easy access to radios or televisions. Contact with the outside world was nearly non-existent. It was a nation lost in time. The former dictator, Enver Hoxha, had ruled with an iron hand since 1944 and forced an atheistic political isolation on the population.
That night we were housed in a small boarding school for the handicapped a few blocks from the main square. Since the students were on summer break, we slept on their straw-filled beds and cooked our food in the courtyard in huge pots. It was a lot like camping, but without tents.
Albania, just north of Greece on the Adriatic Sea, has a Mediterranean climate during the day, and is pleasantly cool in the evening. In the evenings, we’d go out in small groups and walk the large promenades with the people. It was a surreal experience. I’d never been amongst thousands of people hearing only the sounds of soft voices. It was as if a hush was upon the entire country.
It didn’t take long before we met some curious university students. They picked us out in an instant. Surprisingly, many of them spoke broken English. They said they had secretly taught themselves by listening to translated radio broadcasts coming over from Italy. The secret police would have punished them had they been caught, but university students are risk-takers. Knowing that things were changing in the world and that English was the language of the West, they wanted to communicate should they ever meet someone from there.
Well, this day their dreams came true. Here were forty English-speaking young adults all interested in talking. During the afternoons, under the shade of the trees in the city parks, we sat talking about everything and anything. Before we said goodbye, we made sure to invite them to the event in the national soccer stadium, which was taking place in a few days.
In the city center, in front of the cultural hall, we hung a large banner that said, “God loves Albania” in Albanian. It was the best advertisement we could think of, hoping to capture the attention of the many walking by in the evenings.
No one knew a single believer in the whole country, the experts said. That was an incredible thought to me. It must have been true, for when we talked about Jesus to these students in the parks, they had no idea what we were talking about. They were curious, asking, “What is a ‘Jesus’?” Even without good translation, conversations were spirited, particularly when talking about God. It reminded me of what Paul might have encountered on Mars Hill in Athens, where new ideas and new religions were continually discussed. Though the dictatorship had outlawed religion fifty years prior, people were curious to know what had been kept from them for so long. As a result, it didn’t take much to persuade people to come to the soccer stadium.
The first night of the outreach was exciting. Not only had an outreach like this never happened before in Albania, but one of my personal heroes, Brother Andrew, had arrived and would be addressing the crowd. We knew that, for the first time in their own language, thousands were going to hear how much God loved them. Would they understand? There were few translators among us, as not many people outside of Albania spoke the language. Fortunately, there were a few who had foreseen such a day and had spent years just across the border learning the language and praying for the day to move to the county.
One of the speakers on the first night shared how much God loved them, but that they were separated from Him.
Positioning myself in the middle of the packed-tight crowd, I wanted to see if I could feel what the people were feeling. I looked into the faces of those all around me, praying under my breath, “Lord, make the message of the gospel clear and under-standable.” A few rows down to my right, I noticed a man weeping, holding his wife. I wondered if everything was alright. They didn’t seem to be in pain but were definitely overcome with emotion. One of my newfound university friends was sitting with me and offered to translate since his English was fairly good.
We came alongside the couple and I asked, pointing to the stage, “Do you understand what that man is saying?” He shook his head side-to-side, which to an American indicates no, but in their culture it meant yes. Once we cleared that up, I asked, “Do you want to be a follower of Jesus?” He shook his head, “Yes.”
“We’ve always believed,” he communicated, “But we’ve been waiting for many years.”
That’s strange, I thought. There must be a misunderstanding since I thought that there weren’t any Christians in Albania.
With slow and methodical translation, this emotional man told me the most amazing story. A small crowd of people listened in; they were just as eager to hear as I was.
“When I was a young boy in 1944,” he began, “just after the revolution in our country, life was very hard. Many people died and the secret police reported on and watched everyone. We didn’t know who to trust. Even members of our families were informants and couldn’t be trusted. All the places of religious worship, churches, mosques, and gathering places were condemned, and many were torn down. We were afraid to even go near the ruins, for fear of being reported.”
One night, he and his friends were doing what kids do — daring each other to do things that they shouldn’t. One suggested they go to the ruins of an old, torn-down church near their home and throw a rock at the bell, which was still partially hanging. Quietly and secretly, they kept to the shadows and made their way to that old, burned-out ruin. It was a dark night; the moon was low in the sky.
After determining that they weren’t followed, they loosened up and started joking around. They each gathered a few rocks and took turns trying to hit the bell in the dark. Over and over, they tried. Suddenly, one connected and a loud “Dong!” rang out through the night air. That scared them in a big way, scattering them in different directions. If they were caught, it was serious business for them and their families; such was the fear in those days.
When this young man, now older and weeping before me, had run a few yards, he felt a deep calm come over him and he stopped. He looked back at the darkened church ruin and then down the road toward his village. No one heard anything, he thought. He relaxed a bit, believing he was safe, though his friends had left him standing alone.
Looking back toward the church, not forty feet away, he saw something amazing: three tall men stood, glowing in brilliant white, the one in the middle with a golden sash draped across his shoulder.
“I was terrified,” the man said, “But I didn’t move.”
“Don’t be afraid,” the glowing man with the gold sash spoke.
“God loves you. Believe in God and in His Son. In time, you will understand completely.” At that moment, these words were seared into his mind and heart. He didn’t understand them, but he never forgot them.
Stunned by what he’d seen and heard, he turned on his heels and ran away as fast as he could. When he was a short distance away, he turned to look at the three glowing men again, but they had disappeared. Did that really happen? Standing in silence, he repeated what he’d heard: “Don’t be afraid. God loves you. Believe in God and in His son. In time, you will understand completely.”
Over the years, he held that secret deep in his heart. Initially, he told his friends, but they thought he was crazy and just seeing things. However, he knew it was real. He decided not to tell another living soul but treasured it inside. Later, when he married, he would often recount that evening to his wife.
“I was so emotional when I shared with her that she knew something miraculous had happened. I would insist that we must believe in God, that He loves us and one day we’ll understand more, but in truth I really didn’t understand anything more.”
His wife and eventually their children all held these simple truths about God to themselves but had all but given up hope of knowing anything more. That was, until he came to Tirana a few days ago to sell his produce.
“When I saw the huge sign hanging on the cultural hall saying, ‘God loves Albania,’ my heart leapt within me! Quickly, I went to gather my family and persuaded my friends to come to the stadium tonight. Here we are.”
Now, I was the one stunned. Here, in the most restricted country in Europe, an atheistic country, God had prepared an invitation to a people years before.
It was a fantastic night; this man and his entire family came profoundly into relationship with Jesus. While I think they were already believers, now they understood the message of the Lord more completely. For several consecutive evenings, the stadium was filled with clear, easy-to-understand teachings from the Word of God spoken in their native tongue.
During these evenings, many Albanians believed the message of Jesus and made him Lord of their lives. The following day we invited them to a lake near the stadium where they would take the obedient step of baptism in the name of Jesus, as the Scriptures instruct. Many came and sat on the bank of the lake, while many more came to watch what was going to happen. It seemed like a scene out of the Bible, something Jesus or John the Baptist had seen.
One of the preachers walked into the water, turned, and addressed the crowd about what was happening. How wonderfully and beautifully he proclaimed the message of the gospel again! Then he welcomed those who had given their lives to Jesus to come out to him in the water. It was hard to count the numbers, but how beautiful it was to see that man with his whole family, tears streaming down their faces, waiting their turn to be baptized that afternoon.
As a ministry team, we were witnessing the rebirth of the Albanian church. In one day, the population of believers multiplied 100-fold and is still growing to this day. In addition, there were several believers, both men and women, who had been waiting for years across the border in Pristina, Macedonia. Already fluent in Albanian, they were part of our larger team. After we left, they were prepared to remain in the country, strengthening the fledgling church in its new identity.
As we gathered our things and prepared to leave, I was overwhelmed with what God had done in such a few short days. The gospel was preached, a church was reborn, salvation was experienced by many, and God had gone before, preparing the way.
The early days of God breaking in are exciting and trying – it’s what makes the book of Acts so invigorating to read and ponder. The window of spiritual hunger and openness of those years is different now. Many nations were hungry for the gospel during that political and social transition, but soon the appetites and distractions of the world crowded out the simple freedom in Jesus, bringing new challenges. Such is the pattern of those who follow God; staying simply devoted and true is the invitation of a lifetime.
