Praise God! He is so good! Even in the midst of this sin sick and perverse world, He is working out a plan that is beautiful beyond comprehension in His Love. We are sorry it has been so long since we have updated this blog. Much has happened and, well, we have been left without words by many of the challenging and even overwhelming situations that we have been facing. But as stated above, "God is good." We see now, the well known Scriptural teaching, that God uses the worst things to bring about the best. The prime example being Jesus' betrayal, defamation, false accusation, mutilation and crucifixion bringing about our salvation. In our darkest days God brought people to the church asking to be saved, asking how to pray to Jesus, humbling themselves before God. We have seen more than 10 people come to faith in Christ within the last year and more are coming each month. This may seem like very few to the western evangelical mind but here we know it is a great work of God.
Another wonderful thing that the Lord has done is to raise up a local believer to pastor the church here in Malishevë. This is, I believe, always the goal of the foreign missionary, to see God replace them with national leaders. Urim was ordained as a pastor in November 2014 (picture above: Urim and Jeff just after the ordination service). He is the first Albanian national pastor to be ordained in the church of Malishevë since the gospel returned to this region after the war in 1999. This also means that he is very likely the first Christian pastor ordained in the region since before the Islamic Ottoman reign, beginning over 600 years ago, and even before that it was the Roman Catholic Church that dominated this area for hundreds of years after the initial coming of Paul the Apostle which he mentioned is Romans 15:19. It is likely that Urim is the first Protestant evangelical pastor ever ordained in this small municipality of Kosovo. But praise God, just like in other regions of Kosovo, Light is shining out of the darkness through national saints whom the Lord has prepared and sent to labor in His harvest.
Urim is now serving as the lead pastor of the church of Malishevë. Jeff is helping Urim and the church through this transition from foreign to national leadership as well as preparing to transition he and his family back to the States this summer. God is also bring two new missionaries to serve on the Love on the Front Line ministry team: Jen Mellor and Ryan Gleason. (See "Team" page to find out more about them). And two other local believers are in Bible College currently, including Bisere from the internship program.
We are so excited about what the Lord is doing in and through the church of Malishevë, The Love on the Front Line Ministry Team and the Diamond in the Rough Outreach.
Please pray with us for the Lord to continue to send laborers into His harvest field here in Malishevë, Kosovo and beyond, laborers from the church here locally and from foreign countries. Pray for this crucial time of transition for the church. And pray with us to see if the Lord would have you join in the work in some way. Then see the "Join Us" page on this blog for possible ways that you can do that.
The front line is moving forward by the power of the love of God. Let us keep expanding the borders of the kingdom of God together through our prayers, sacrificial service and giving toward the lost and unreached who need that love the most.
Thank you so much and may God bless and direct you,
-LOTFL Team
