"I thought you were going to kill me!"

Rabisha is in the Purple sweater.  This was taken in 2007 when I lived with her family

I cracked up as I read this line from the latest issue of Calvary Magazine. The quote above is Rabishe Mazreku talking about her experience when Pastor Randy Harvey baptised her. Apparently she didn't really understand all that water baptism entailed but she did know how she felt after, "free-like a new person."


You may remember me talking about the Mazreku family when I was in Kosovo from 2007-2010. I lived with them for a brief time in 2007. See the photo above. It was at their hearth in the candle light glow of our nightly blackouts that I learned to speak Albanian and appreciate the feistiness of this widow and the persistence of her family. Her story could be ripped right out a a book. Well...in some ways it has been...

One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. “There was a judge in a certain city,” he said, “who neither feared God nor cared about people. A widow of that city came to him repeatedly, saying, ‘Give me justice in this dispute with my enemy.’ The judge ignored her for a while, but finally he said to himself, ‘I don’t fear God or care about people, but this woman is driving me crazy. I’m going to see that she gets justice, because she is wearing me out with her constant requests!’” Luke 18:1-5


I was able to chat and pray with the family last night as they prepared to meet up with the judge, lawyer, abusive in laws, police and even some Swiss military that Pastor Jeff Harry was able to arrange. They were finally going to measure the land boundaries. They have been in a land dispute with Rabisha's deceased husband's family for nearly a decade. They technically own a good portion of land but they could never sell any or develop it because there were no borders drawn up.

Meanwhile this widow and her 4 children have been living in poverty. Thankfully they have friends like Jeff Thompson who helps them with food every month through his program at Mercy Projects, the Harveys always helped them as much as the could and Jeff and Rachel Harry continue to do what they can as I did when I lived there.