It's Sunday evening - about 10:30 pm - and we just finished dinner. There has been no internet for the last couple of days.

Today we are in Vlora with Dori and Alban, Daniel, Rueben, and Cindy. Today we gave a presentation at the International Baptist Church here, and had about eight women. They were determined to finish a block, so you can see that they did the Coronation Crown. We attended church there this morning - it was a challenging sermon. The pastor spoke on Amos and Hosea. Interesting... Hosea hasn't been the most understandable book over the years - and he made it, in some ways, come alive.

We arrived here yesterday (Saturday); Alban was kind enough to pick us up in Spille and the

n stop for a couple of hours in Lushnje. In Lushnje, we met with Erna and Esther along with two women from Esther's village. What a wonderful campus they have (except that someone is knowingly building on their land; it looks like they may have to go to court to clear it up). The building itself used to be the courthouse - interesting. The villagers seemed especially interested - with the colors and patterns. It really felt good to have such an enthusiastic response - I'm glad we were able to stop.

On Friday, we left Tirane and went to Spille where we presented the concept of quilting bees and piecing blocks to the wives of the pastors at the conference - the meeting included others, I think, as there were women of all ages. The older women were particularly interested in the technique and were ready to start sewing on a new project right there. Due to sp

ace, etc., we just gave a demonstration and were unable to have the women actually sew. There was a contingency from a city near Elbasan (I think it was Bejan) who desperately wanted us to have a quilt class at their church. Unfortunately, we won't be able to stop, due to time constraints and lack of tools, but we expressed our hope that we could be at their church next year - God willing.

We did have a couple of hours off and read - otherwise it's been busy. We estimate we have presented to a out 100 women so far, and we have two more presentations at the end of the week. Almost every group has been enthusiastic - unless they are great at pretending. So, it seems that we have been successful at introducing this technique and have extracted promises that it will be used for evangelism. Only God knows what will happen - and how.

Thanks for following our adventure. We will be resting for a couple of days, then back to Tirane Friday, and then we leave this wonderful land on Sunday.