Nineteen years ago this month Gani Smolica and his wife Adile, pictured below, were invited to a meeting which changed their lives.
European Christian Missionary Stephen Bell was going on home leave from April to November 1993 but he needed someone to look after the four churches in Albania while he was away.
He decided the ideal person was his friend Gani, but it would mean him giving up a good university job and persuading his family to leave Kosovo for what he called “his promised land of Albania”.
In November 1992 Stephen invited Gani and Adile to meet him in Vlore in southern Albania.
To Stephen’s surprise, Adile was the more receptive to his plans.
“I feel we should say yes,” she told her husband, “and we should start in three or four weeks’ time.”
Gani was shocked, but agreed. So they went home to break the news to their parents and three children.
Their children were not too keen on the idea, but Gani’s mother was horrified. She said to Adile: “Tell him not to go and don’t take the children.”
But on January 15, 1993, the family, who were now supported by the European Christian Mission, left Prishtina in Kosovo by truck and by bus going to their new home in Tirana via Macedonia, because Montenegro was too dangerous.
The Smolicas stayed in Albania until June 2000 when they left to work from the mission in Peja, Kosovo.
There’s more of their story in God’s Secret Listener, published by Lion/Hudson/Monarch of Oxford. To order a signed copy email John@jbutterworth.plus.com
Interestingly, I will be meeting Gani tonight at Rising Brook Baptist Church in Stafford as he is visiting his supporting churches in the UK this autumn.
I will report back on his latest news in a blog tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment