Biblical Contest 2024

 by James

On the last Saturday before the end of Summer vacation, the churches in Albania meet together for a friendly "Bible Bowl" competition in Durres.

Every year the subject is different and teams from every congregation in Albania study very hard all summer so they can come together and compete at this special meeting. They sacrifice many hours digging deep into the often-overlooked corners of God's Word and enjoy a day of fellowship and friendship.

There is a competition of course, and that means there are winners, and the Albanian competitive spirit comes out in everyone. But at the end of the day, it's simply a wonderful way to encourage each other to study hard, dig deep, and share in the experience, celebrating each other and celebrating God.

This year the study took us through the entirety of 2 Samuel and 1 Kings as far as Chapter 11. You might know this passage as the kingship of David, following Saul's death at the end of 1 Samuel, through the death of Solomon in 1 Kings chapter 11. Two generations of epic history with secondary characters and tertiary characters and... what do you call fourth, fifth, and even sixth-level characters? So many numbers and figures and cities and dates and rivers and curses.

We had two teams compete from the city of Berat. One was a youth team, which included a very friend of our family who was baptized just a few months ago. She would come to our house twice a week to read a few chapters and take copious notes with my daughters. Andrea did a wonderful job leading this study. A fourth teammate would later meet us at the competition since she moved to Tirana for college last fall. But the three studying in Berat would bond the rest of the afternoon by watching movies and then having lunch together. I would listen to them laugh while I sat in the backroom scrambling to put together notes for the second team's study a few hours later.

The second team was a group of four older men from the congregation. I would show up, two evenings a week and teach them entirely on my own. And by that I mean, without the help of a translator. At first, I thought for sure these eager men would give up on my fumbling dialog, but they were very patient with me and we pressed through hours and hours and hours of study together.

I now know the word for "Murder" very well, in Albanian. And I know the word for "sailboat" because it is what Solomon built to travel on the Red Sea. And the other day during a conversation with a friend, he mentioned how his wife had helped him improve his balance with Yoga, and I had to stop him and ask, "I'm sorry, but your wife helped you improve your justice?" and I learned that, in Albanian, Solomon's wisdom was in his ability to understand "balance" because this is the same word for "justice".

We had many good evenings together studying. As much as I am relieved to be finished with the stress of the Bible Bowl this past Saturday. I'm already looking forward to next year.

I will admit, I was reluctant to dive in. I felt like there were probably better uses for my time here than teaching a handful of Albanian men about blood and murder and rape written in Ancient Hebrew and taught by a man that does not speak Albanian. But I accepted my mission and I did what I was asked to do. I'm humbled to share that near the end of the study one of my students, a kind man named Misiri said he wanted to be baptized. When asked why, he simply replied, "I was inspired by the faith of David. That is a man that I want to be like." And that's entirely the work of God.

It has been a very blessed summer. I can't wait to see what happens next.

I'll now attach some pictures from the bible competition and maybe a few of our notes and study sessions.