Another gift for Victory School

I was delighted to be able to send Berti Dosti another £500 this week as the latest net profits so far this year from the sales of God’s Secret Listener to help pay for more poor children to be educated at the Victory School in Lushnje, Albania.

Last year I was able to send £2,000 to pay for 80 poor children to attend the school.

Berti, who is pastor of the church and also principal of the school, said these youngsters would not have been able to afford the three-year course without these gifts.

Victory School, which started in the autumn of 1997 with just eight pupils, now teaches more than 750 pupils a year offering classes in English, Italian and computer studies.

Students, whose ages range from eight years to 40 plus, learn English by using the New Interchange scheme for adults and the Cambridge method for youngsters.

The scheme consists of five levels and students study each one for six months by coming three times a week for afternoon classes. The children also attend a state school in the morning.

Interestingly, the pupils do not wear a uniform, but the teachers do, all having a pink overall, some of whom are pictured below.

The students will also be given the chance to learn Microsoft Word be as all new students at the school are given free computer lessons for a year.

With Albania now a member of NATO and wanting to join the European Union more and more Albanian children wish to learn English to give them a better chance of a job.

If you would like to read more about the Victory School email me at John@jbutterworth.plus.com  to buy a copy of God’s Secret Listener, published by the Monarch division of Lion Hudson, for £7.50 including postage within the UK or £8.50 anywhere in the world.

Trans World Radio joy at book response

I was delighted to receive an unexpected email from Trans World Radio in America this week in connection with my book, God’s Secret Listener.

It’s the true story of Berti Dosti, a captain and radio specialist in Enver Hoxha’s Albanian army, whose job in the 1970s and 80s was to listen in to the world’s airwaves to give the Stalinist dictator early warning in case Britain, America or Russia were about to invade.

Berti, pictured below, never found an enemy signal, but he stumbled across a radio programme broadcast by Trans World Radio and the European Christian Mission into the Balkan country which had been closed to the rest of the world for 47 years and had banned Christianity.

At great risk to himself Berti became a secret listener and after communism fell in the late 1980s Captain Dosti became Pastor Dosti of a newly-revived Albanian church and the principal of The Victory School in Lushnje, which now teaches English to 750 Albanian youngsters every year.

Trans World Radio in America were delighted with the story and bought 250 copies of my book last year to use in a direct mail effort to supporters and potential new ones.

In this week’s email, Bob Hall, Director of Donor Services of TWR Americas, wrote: “Response to your book God’s Secret Listener was very positive when we used it as a donor premium in our direct mail efforts.

 “Since the book has such a close connection to TWR and was very well received by our constituents, we would very much like to use this book on a regular basis.”

TWR, which broadcasts in 230 languages to more than 160 countries with millions of listeners, wondered if we could print the book in the USA.

After speaking to Tony Collins, editorial director of the Monarch division of Lion Hudson who published the book, I was delighted to be able to tell Bob that we already print God’s Secret Listener in the USA and we could provide him a sizeable order.

The story of how American Paul E Freed started Trans World Radio in 1954 and how they came to be broadcasting from Monte Carlo into Albania is told in my book.

To order a signed copy for £7.50 in the UK or £8.50 anywhere in the world including postage email John@jbutterworth.plus.com