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Shkelqim Gjata |
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| Home Phone: |
011-355-4-362885 This is an international call from the U.S.! Also, be aware that Albanian time is six hours after the U.S. Eastern Time Zone. |
| Mail: | Rruga Artan Lenja Vila Nr 1 Tirana, Albania |
I am Shkelqim Gjata and my wife is Elida. Our two sons, John and Greg are 15 and 11 years old (ed: 2003). We are proud of our Albanian heritage and count it a blessing to live and work here in Albania. We are sad that so many Albanian Christians are leaving Albania and going to America, Canada or western Europe. Some years ago we submitted our documents to the Canadian embassy. They accepted our application, expecting us to come for an interview that would have been the final step towards getting our permanent entry visa. However, we prayed intensively to God during this time, and because we felt that He wanted us to remain here in Albania we canceled the interview
In July 1991 on a Sunday afternoon my wife and I were walking by the Tirana puppet theater. Usually the show was in the morning, but we heard people singing inside. We asked a young woman with a baby, "What is going on in there?" She answered, "It's a church meeting." Can you imagine our amazement after 50 years of communism in which all religion was forbidden by law, (just for mentioning the name "Jesus" you could very easily be sent to jail). I thought, "What are you talking about?" Growing up under the communist system I had no idea what a church actually was. Even before communism my family background was Atheist. It was as if a UFO had landed in Tirana's Skenderbeg square!!!!!!!!!!!!! The young lady saw our perplexed expressions and invited us to come in. We entered and saw 25-30 people who were singing . After the meeting some of the people came and spoke to us. To our surprise, the people in the church were quite nice, kind and friendly.
To give you an idea of the historical background: the communist government had recently fallen after 50 year in power, and we were a country without guidance. There was disorder everywhere, even anarchy.
During this time I began to show interest in Christianity and the Bible. I continued visiting the church in the puppet theater. We met a missionary from Brazil. Her name was Nazhua Diba and she told us that she would like to visit us in our home. She came, and for the first time in my life I heard about Jesus, the cross, redemption and sin. Afterwards she invite Elida and I to attend their meetings. We attended them all. At the same time, Nazhua, her pastor and his wife came to our home regularly to fellowship and share the Word with us. These things began to make a real impression upon me and my life started to change. I was reading the Bible and praying and I understood that something important was missing in my life.
After two months, one evening after Nazhua prayed, she asked me if I would accept Jesus Christ as my Savior. (Elida, my wife, had accepted Christ as her Savior a few days earlier when our pastor had an altar call after his sermon. At that point, Lida publicly came to Christ.) At the moment when Nazhua challenged me to accept Jesus Christ, I felt as if I was atop a very high building that was burning and Nazhua was calling out for me to jump to safety on a platform below. This was my moment of truth: to save my life or to die in flames. Was all this true or was I having a daydream? Something inside me said, "Jump! You are in safe hands". "Yes", I said her. "I need this. I accept." I felt as though God reached into my life at that moment and calmed the storm of spiritual stress that I had always had, but could never quite identify (Matt. 8:26). Then Nazhua said to me, "Now your are a child of God". It was difficult to completely understand the meaning of all this, but Nazhua continued to disciple me. As my great sister in Christ, with God's love in her heart she never stopped praying and she never stopped telling me about Jesus who died on the cross for me and my sinful nature.
After six months Elida and I were both Baptized by immersion in the Adriatic sea. One hundred and fifty believers witnessed our Baptism and together we praised and thanked God for saving us in Jesus Christ.
In the beginning my walk with God and my spiritual growth were slow processes. Often I saw how others lived hypocritically in the church and I compared myself favorably to them. I thought, "I come from an upstanding family. My household is in a much better state than many of these believers, so I am doing just fine". I thought, "How can these people live this way and still call themselves Christian?" This proud, selfish focus was a stumbling block to my walk with God and to my spiritual growth. I can say with conviction that for years I remained a spiritual baby thinking this way. I wasn't able to see or understand what a basic, godly life consisted of as I continued in my stubborn, proud ways. Pride has been one of the more difficult sins to overcome in my life, and this hindered me from growing in my new life in Christ.
Due to this sin pattern I was unable, fully to give Christ the proper, central place in my life. Certainly this had its own consequences. For several years I have struggled with this sin of pride, because as I saw the imperfect lives of Christians I was perpetually disappointed. I decided to distance myself from that church thinking that I would find a better representation of Christ in a different church, with different believers and leaders. The problem was that it was impossible to be satisfied with any Christians other than myself because I was proud. I looked on others with condescension while seeing myself as more important than they (i. e. as spiritualy superior). I was missing the humility that Christ demonstrated . . . Phil. 2:6-9
It took a long time before I was able to grasp the meaning of these verses so as not to be a hypocrite myself but to give myself fully to Him. In September of 1997 God led two American families and an Albanian to plant a new church. We believed that God wanted us to be inolved in this new work. At the same time God was helping me to deal with my pride problem and I began to realize that only God, Himself, is truly perfect. God is in the process each and every day of doing a miracle in my life. He is daily removing that old pride from my life and making me more like Him. It is no longer me who lives, but Christ lives in me. Increasingly I live for His interests and for His purposes. My desire is that everything should be done for Him. Now, things that previously had no meaning for me have become the purposes of my life in Christ. There are things that I no longer do for Christ from a sense of duty , but rather out of desire to please Him. More and more, God is enabling me to live less for myself, and more as His faithful servant; as a faithful husband, father and worker, and simply as a godly man. We continue to worship in this same church and have been faithful and participating members there for five and a half years. Often in our Sunday morning worship I have the privilege of ministering by reading the scriptures and leading in prayer from the podium. Annually for several years, my wife and I have been given the responsibility for organizing Christmas and Easter programs and other special events in the life of our church.
An experience that was a force for change in my spiritual life was when I worked in Kosova with an orphanage project. The project included helping Kosovar refugees who returned to their war-torn country and found themselves without homes, parents and husbands. We saw missionaries who gave up their vacations and sacrificed personal finances to come and serve in the name of Christ. They worked hard to help others in need. These were true testimonies of lives that were devoted to serving the Lord at all costs.
For a year and a half I have been privileged to help organize and serve in an English speaking church that meets on Saturday evenings. Preparing the meeting room and cleaning up afterwards gives me a sense of joy in the Lord knowing that I am serving Him as I serve His church.
For over six months now I have enjoyed serving a missionary who has taken twenty or so children off of the streets and provided meals and housing. I have helped with repairing broken fixtures and various projects around the half-way house there. I have also aided in registering the project as a licensed, government recognized entity, introducing the missionary to various government offices and arranging necessary meetings.