Hauling my heavy suitcase and backpack up the marble staircase, I turn the corner of a long narrow hallway to enter a room with 4 bunk beds, 2 on each side of the room. A small walkway separates the beds, leading to only a singular sink and window on the ceiling. I set my belongings down, claiming a bottom bunk of course, and take it all in for a moment. This is it: my new home for the next month and a half. 

If you would have told me a month ago or even a week ago that I would be sharing a room with 7 other girls for this amount of time, I don’t think I would have fully believed you. It’s been difficult enough to wake up at 5:30 every morning, fall asleep at 11, and not have my own room, but to now have several more roommates for much longer than a week… I’ll just say it's not what I expected. 

There's been a lot of unexpected surprises that have happened for me on this trip. I knew going into this mission that there would be things I have to lay down and sacrifice for the purpose of serving Jesus and the effects of these sacrifices have begun to get at me a little bit this past week. 

For example, one thing that has been difficult for me is our food situation. As a team, we have to cook for 33 people, so you can imagine how many groceries we have to get. In doing this, we have to make sure we get enough food to satisfy all of us, that is within our budget and that is still nutritious and healthy to our bodies. One of my roles on the team is being the nutritionist, so I have been ensuring our meals have enough protein, veggies, and carbs to keep us full and benefit our wellbeing. The first couple of days in our new location, we struggled to purchase enough and make enough food when meals were being served, but as time has gone on, we have been improving! 

Another issue has been drinking water. Unlike our last location, we are prohibited from drinking straight up tap water because it will make us sick. This barrier has made it so we can only drink bottled water from the store. Just like our food supply, we buy it in bulk on our grocery runs, but it runs out very quickly since there are so many of us. There was even one night when we ran completely out of water and one of our leaders had to boil pots of water in the kitchen so we had something to drink. 

Because many of us often don’t have enough food at meals and are left hungry, we have made the habit of walking to the grocery store to get our own little stash of snacks. The walk can be a little long, as it is just under a 5-mile walk there and back, but I personally enjoy it. The scenery is SO beautiful, it forces us to get in our steps and allows time for us to connect and bond with each other further. We do have to be very aware of our surroundings and safety though since the journey we take to get there is pretty dangerous. The path is along the highway and in an area of town where many intimidating men are. I just pray every time we go that the Lord will protect us and put a shield around us from danger. 

Other than these challenges, we have been getting into the routine of things and establishing structure in our living conditions. Every week, a couple members from our team create a schedule that declares when each person is cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry so that everything is in an orderly fashion. We also have set times for when we do school and ministry each day. We are free to work on any classes and projects we want in the morning and ministry and free time in the afternoon. I love how much flexibility there is to study and research topics you are interested in, but to also have the time to serve others within the community and hang out with friends!

As for ministry, we haven’t done much yet over this first week. So far, we have cleaned the church inside and out and have hosted a youth group session where a few people shared their personal testimonies with the group. We also did worship with young Albanian kids and played games with them outside. The other day, some of us played volleyball with a group of Albanian high school girls. Even though we didn’t understand their language and weren’t able to communicate with them fully, we could still connect with them through our emotions and body language. It’s so cool how we live on opposite sides of the world with totally different cultures and ways of living, but we are still so similar in our likes, dislikes, and personalities. 

One other thing that our team has been discussing recently is our issue for the world's greatest problems. A responsibility that we have each been tasked with is to choose an issue from a list of problems most prevalent in the world, get in a group with others that have the same issue, and to brainstorm with AI ways we can combat and solve the issue. I chose the issue of human trafficking/sex trade since it is something I am very interested in and passionate about. My group came up with many good ideas and we presented those ideas to two mentors that came to our location to help us named Dave and Beth Kuhnert. They have been very helpful in giving us advice about life and our preferred career paths. 

I told them my interest in getting involved in volunteering with human trafficking and they told me that their daughter runs an organization revolving around helping those involved in trafficking! What are the chances of that, I thought. They immediately got me connected with her and I will now be calling her next week to discuss joining her organization to help out! 

Finally, I’d like to leave you all with a few prayer requests for us. Since yesterday, many of us have begun to get sick. Since we are living in such close quarters to each other, it's inevitable that we do spread our sicknesses. We are also becoming more like siblings every day in the way that we are beginning to have little disagreements or “fights” with each other. Please pray that the Lord will heal us quickly from our sicknesses and that he will allow us to be at peace with each other so that we know how to communicate our problems to each other and are able to forgive each other. Many of you have probably also heard about the death of Charlie Kirk. Pray for his family, friends, and our nation as we grieve such a bold, confident role model that has led us in so many ways. Lastly, please continue to pray for protection over us as spiritual warfare attempts to control us. Now that we are on the field, it's getting more intense than ever, so all the prayers that we can get we appreciate. 

God Bless, Hailey