Successful weekend for me - and the book

Although I have been involved with Albania for more than 30 years there is one major missionary society working there that I had never come across - until this weekend

Then like London buses I bumped into the Albanian Evangelical Mission twice in three days.

The first time was in Sheffield where I went on Saturday to speak to a group of churches at an event organised by Lillian Miller, who is an AEM supporter and also involved with Logos, a media company based in the Albanian capital, Tirana, which produces Christian DVDs and programmes for their national TV.

To show what a small world it is we also met her daughter Karen Murdarasi, who is married to an Albanian, is fluent in the language, had worked for AEM – and was at St Andrews University at the same time as our older son Andrew and knew him quite well.

The third AEM supporter was 90-year-old Gordon Thomason, who still drives a car and celebrated his latest milestone birthday by going to Zimbabwe. I only hope I am as fit as Gordon when I am 90.

He is pictured below with Karen on the left and Lillian on the right.

Then on Monday I drove over to Wrexham to meet David Young, a director of the mission, who is retiring on Christmas Day when is 65.

The mission grew largely out of prayer meetings for Albania which began in 1976, visits to the country in the 1980s and the annual weekend prayer conferences which began in 1979.

They believed that a group was needed whose sole aim was to make Christ known among Albanians and the mission was formed in 1986 with the first missionary going out in 1989.

We talked about whether I could help their workload as they have so many speaking engagements all over the country and if they could support me by promoting my book, God’s Secret Listener.

I was delighted when David gave me some of their literature and bought 33 of my books.

I am now meeting Paul Davies, who is taking over as head of the mission in a few weeks’ time.

Even more encouraging Paul said he would like to take 100 copies of my book and probably more in the future.

What a successful weekend. It was even better because when I bought a copy of David Young’s book, Turned East, which is the story of half of his life being involved with Albania.

It was when I read about AEM holding annual prayer conferences at such places as Cloverley Hall in Shropshire that everything clicked.

In the 1980s my wife Jan and I and Liz and Pete Mason ran the Cornerstone youth group at Christ Church in Stone and every autumn we took the teenagers to Cloverley for a weekend away.

While we were there one year there was also a group at the hall praying for Albania. I joined them briefly but never knew their organisation until this week when I discovered it was the Albanian Evangelical Mission.