An unusual Christmas present for just £6

Here’s an idea for an unusual Christmas present for just £6 plus postage. Author John Butterworth is offering signed copies of his book, God’s Secret Listener, for just £6, instead of the normal price of £7.99.

The book tells the exciting story of Berti Dosti, who was a captain and signals and radio expert in Enver Hoxha’s Albanian army.

The Stalinist dictator closed Albania’s borders to the rest of the world for 47 years and abolished God, so he thought, turning the country into the world’s first atheistic state.

Captain Dosti, pictured below, was ordered to scan the airwaves to get an early warning if America, Russia or Britain, the three countries they feared most, were about to invade.

However, he didn’t find an enemy, but he found a Christian radio programme from Monte Carlo, which had been broadcasting into Albania for 24 years not knowing if anyone was listening.

At great risk to himself and his family, Berti became a secret listener. Now he is the pastor of a thriving church in Lushnje and principal of a school teaching 750 Albanians English.

The story, which is published by Lion/Hudson/Monarch, is also about:

• Sali Rahmani who spent more than 20 years broadcasting a Christian radio message into Albania. He was interrogated and accused of being a CIA spy by the Yugoslav police.
• Stephen Bell, who gave up a job in banking in Manchester to spend five years at Prishtina University in Kosovo, so he could learn Albanian and be ready for when God would open up that country. The only way he could keep his student visa was to keep failing his exams. He was one of the first missionaries into Albania and he said it was like seeing the Book of Acts coming to life 2,000 years later.
• Gani Smolica who gave up a lecturing job at Pristina University to go to help the new church in Albania in the 1990s.
• Ganz Raud, an Estonian who founded the European Christian Mission in the early part of the 20^th century. ECM prepared the radio messages and paid Tran World Radio to beam the tapes into Albania.
• Paul Freed, an American, who at great cost started Trans World Radio, beamed the gospel into closed countries such as Albania.

The book has a foreword by author and Christian speaker Stephen Gaukroger, and recommendations by Bishop Alan, former Bishop of Shrewsbury; Bishop Gordon, former Bishop of Stafford; Rico Tice, Associate Minister at All Souls Church, London, and Christian media expert Peter Meadows.