Saturday, August 19, 2017

Are you watering the weeds?

The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one. Matthew 13:38

Walking home after buying two handfuls of groceries a couple of weeks ago I almost ran into a little girl in the middle of the sidewalk. I repositioned my stance and the groceries in my hands and squeezed around her. Why would her parents let her be squatted down in the middle of the sidewalk? What was she doing? She had a small cup and was watering the weeds growing between the sidewalk cracks. This stuck in my head as quite odd. But I think too many times in life we are just like that little girl. With all of our heart we pour out all that we have into weeds of this world and neglect the beautiful thirsty flowers that are around us. I want to pray daily for God to direct my focus to whom he wants and not for me to waste time playing in the weeds. 

Dorian's baptism
We have had an extremely busy summer! We had an intern, Nathanael Schanie from McDonough Christian Church join us for two months. Nathan was a blessing and a great help. Most of his attention was focused on helping Juli with the youth in Kavaje. I have so many pictures of what happened that there isn't enough room to show them all. So, Dorian a newly baptized believer in Kavaje put them in a video for us. You can check out the video here at Summer adventures Some of the summer activities have been a sea Baptism of Dorian, game night, two youth camps and a trip to a conference in Pogradec, Albania, countless youth trips to the mountain and beach, worship and prayer time, serving others in the community, lots of fellowship drinking coffee and playing cards plus lots more! We are very thankful for this eventful summer and sad to see Nathan go!

One of our youth Gloria is having to go back to school for highschool. This is her second year away in Elbasan. We have supported her with housing while she is away. She also has been an amazing help this summer and we are blessed to have her here. She told us that this has been the best summer of her life. Gloria was able to deepen her relationship with Christ this summer. 

Thank you for your prayers for our family! On July 11th, Arian's dad (Naun)'s heart stopped working. They rushed him to Tirana, the capital, to put in a pacemaker. He is doing much better but has some blood clots in his leg and they are worried about them moving and causing a stroke. Please continue to pray for Naun. 

We are very excited about visiting the states in October and November. God has prepared a way for Arian's sister to take care of his parents while we are in the states. Here is our schedule so far of where we will be during our furlough. We would love to see you! 
October 8- McDonough Christian Church, McDonough Ga
October 15- Hickory Valley Christian Church, Chattanooga, Tn
October 22- Horsepasture Christian Church, Horsepasture, Va
October 25- Colonial Heights Church of Christ, Norfolk, Va
October 29- First Christian Church Keswick, Charlottesville, Va
November 5- Crosspoint Christian Church, Conyers, Ga
November 19- Hickory Valley Christian Church, Chattanooga, Tn
December 3- McDonough Christian Church, McDonough Ga


Thank you for all your prayers and support. We love and appreciate you all!  

Serving in His name,
Arian & Stefanie Kosta
Stateside address: 148 Wolfe St.  Cohutta, Ga 30710 
Albanian Address: L3 Rr Egnatia AP:1043 
Durres, Albania
email:kkdurres@gmail.com



1 comment:

  1. Good morning, how are you?

    My name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys travelling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.

    I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately, it is impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are very small countries with very few population, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.

    For all this, I would ask you one small favour:
    Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Albania? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Albania in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:

    Emilio Fernandez Esteban
    Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
    28902 Getafe (Madrid)
    Spain

    If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.

    Finally, I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.

    Yours Sincerely

    Emilio Fernandez

    ReplyDelete