The Lessons I Learned From Two Months Overseas

I spent two months overseas in 2015 with a team of nine people. We lived in Skhodra, Albania, for all of June and July. Albania is northwest of Greece, across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. It has a Mediterranean climate like Greece; after the fall of communism in the 1990s, Albania hasn’t recovered and is a developing country.

The purpose of our time was a mission trip. We worked with local missionaries and a Christian organization. The ministers were a married couple in their thirties; their primary demographic was high school and college students. We helped the missionaries run two outreach programs. One was an after school program for high school students, and the other was a summer camp.

These are some lessons I learned.

Some parts of life are universal. Albanians cherish family and friends. No meal is alone, no weekend spent inside, and no living space is occupied by only one. Albanians’ lives revolve around other people. They would rather spend their time with their loved ones than doing anything else.

Everyone is a foreigner somewhere. Just like an exchange student in America, we were outsiders in Albania. We stuck out like sore thumbs everywhere we went! The guys all had beards, and the girls were fair-haired — two physical characteristics that stood out in…