Germany

I have so much to share with you all, but briefly, we had a plan for our first months in Albania:

1. Get our family acclimated to the culture and meet many Christians in Albania

2. Find a language teacher and start lessons

3. Find a home in Berat

4. Begin residency paperwork

5. Teach/help where possible

6. Start medically needed and time sensitive orthodontia for Clara

7. Find a car before starting our work in Berat

I am so grateful to God that I can say that we have done the rest and are working on the last item. We flew to Germany last week to find a car to help us in our work in the much more remote area of Berat. We had several reasons to go to Germany: cheaper cars which are usually well maintained with a paper trail, friends to visit who could receive some items we left in America through APO mail, leaving the country to re-enter it for our residency permit, inexpensive one way tickets, and a little family adventure rolled into one.

What we didn't know about car buying in Germany could fill a book. This whole experience has felt like a crash course in European car makes and models, German bureaucracy and tax system, banking, and export, and we are still in the very middle of the process, just trying to find the car to fit our lose but specific needs.

We have been incredibly blessed to have people opening their home to us, feeding us, loaning us their cars, receiving our boxes, keeping our kids, and offering support and advice. This whole endeavor would've been prohibitively expensive without the kindness of brothers and sisters.

Lord willing in the next few days we will transfer money from our bank in the states, withdraw cash, pay for the car of our choosing, take the bill of sale to a registry office to buy temporary plates and insurance, pack up our suitcase, boxes, and needed items purchased in Germany, and drive south through Switzerland and Italy to a port where a ferry will take us to Durrës, Albania, and we can begin the process of navigating THEIR bureaucracy. There are often moments when the whole thing seems totally crazy and we wish some grown-up more experienced than us could come finish this thing we started, but the only way out is through, and each day we see more clearly the path ahead.

Thank you so much for your encouragement, love, and prayers. Each little message of love from one of you becomes like a cool drink of water on a hot day. Keep us in your prayers. Pray for this car that it can serve God and be a sturdy and reliable car. Pray for us that God will give us discernment and protect us from unscrupulous people or from making difficult and expensive mistakes. Thank you!