Eternity Church

This is our church building in Kosova, known only as "astrit and driton's church" while we were in Gjakove (after the pastors), but recently named "Eternity Church". It's a rented house, there's four floors; one underground, two you can see, and one that's some kind of fabled midget roof space that no one ever went in. The people on the steps in the photograph are me and anna, as far as i can remember we were turning up late for something. That would be normal.

The ground floor was where we met for prayer meetings, but we also where we just hung out - there's a little kitchen, and some amazingly bright red sofas. We used to meet there on sunday nights to watch this soap called "familje moderne" ("modern family", as if that needed translating. It was about this strange group of people who lived in Prishtina, the "capital" of kosova). Anyway! Upstairs was where we had our service. The room was really plain, it just had chairs, a wood burner and the drum kit, prized possession of Visar and Nullti. But it became home.

The thing about church was, there was always someone there - it's not like so many of our churches in the UK where everyone turns up for the sunday service after which the doors are locked until a mid-week meeting. Nearly the entire congregation (which ok, was only about 30 at maximum, but still) went through the building every day, and in our cases it was usually several times a day! It was the hub of everything that was going on, which i suppose in an ideal world would be what all our churches are like, but in our culture and with our lifestyles that just doesnt seem to be possible. A huge number of people who came to astrit and driton's lived in the nearby streets, and it was just natural to pop round - the church were each others best friends, they worked together (there was a big ministry to surrounding villages like hereq, drenica and krushe e madhe, where we worked too), worshipped together, hung out together - sure, people argued sometimes, but it was a very close-knit group, more like a family than any other church ive been in. I remember one week when for some reason we hadnt been in church for about five days and it was like "woah, whats going on!".

I miss the fellowship that people have there. When you arrived at church, you greeted EVERYONE - that means shaking everyones hand, asking how everyone is - "a je mire?", anna, mike? - which was kind of embarassing if you turned up late. Although i would find it very hard to go back to kosova for some reasons, i wish i could see the church again, be there again. It's been persecuted a lot recently, broken into several times, and now the guys in the church - which i guess is astrit and driton, patrit and besim - seem to be taking turns to sleep in the building to protect it. Please pray for their safety, and a continuing blessing on them, as they were to us.