How You Can Help Albanian Bible Institute

From Director Lee Bradley, July 30, 2010:

So much has changed since we last put a list of strategic needs on our website. When I see the last list, which should have been updated a long time ago, I rejoice in how God has provided so much for our school in the last four years. We now have the teachers that we need and are relying totally on permanent staff and other missionaries and pastors who live and work in Albania. This has given us the advantage of having lessons in the Albanian language taught by people who know the context of serving the Albanian church. Only on a rare occasion over the last four years have we relied on teachers from abroad and these were missionaries who served in other parts of the world. How I thank the Lord for good teachers who live in country and teach in the Albanian language with an understanding of this context.

The nature of a Bible school is different than church planting in that we need fewer volunteers from abroad who can help us with children's work, evangelism and humanitarian projects. To some this may seem like a tacky thing to say, but the main need of our school is consistent financial support. Albanian Bible Institute has no monthly support from a denomination or mission board. We have only one church who has committed to monthly support, which makes us dependent on raising the vast majority of our financial support through individuals who know us personally and receive our newsletter, THE ABI ADVANCER. In all these years, God has proven himself faithful time after time. We are blessed that God has stirred people to give one time gifts or occasional donations. We need even more of those. If God would lead you and your church to give monthly support to our general operating budget, we would be ever so grateful. To have consistent support takes stress off of us to spend so much time and energy raising money. If you'd like to join our ministry of leadership training through monthly support, please send those donations to International Ministries FEC, 1420 Kerrway Ct. Ft. Wayne, IN 46805. Please make sure your write "Albanian Bible Institute General Fund" on the check. If you'd like to make one-time donations to the school, you can also send your donation to the same address and mark them for the general fund.

More than volunteers and more than gifts, we need prayer support. The success of our ministry has been the countless people who take our cause to the Heavenly Father every day. Our ministry has been a ministry of joy and fruitfulness because people are praying. God is using us because people are praying. We are avoiding mistakes because people are praying for us. We are seeing lives changed and students learning because people are praying for us. Our students are going forth and being faithful servants of the Lord because you are praying for them.

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Would you join us in prayer for this ministry, its staff and students, that we may be honorable to the Lord each day? This is our greatest request before God. All can't come as volunteers. Many do not have a lot of money to donate. Still, ALL CAN PRAY. Would you do your part to lift up our ministry to the Lord through prayer? This would be the most effective contribution you could make to our cause.

Ongoing needs

1. INVESTING IN TRAINABLE CHURCH LEADERS ...This is our student sponsorship program. It costs approximately $5,000 per year to educate one student. The students themselves pay $750 of that, thus putting 85% of the cost on the shoulders of the school. We are attempting to find 60 sponsors who will donate $500 a year to cover the costs of our students which they are not able to pay. Could your women's group or Sunday school class sponsor a student this year? Maybe your church or you as an individual would like to sponsor a student?
2. FEED THE DISCIPLES ...This project helps us cover food costs for the school. When students are on campus we feed them three meals a day since they are not able to cook meals in their dorm rooms and cannot afford to eat in restaurants. It costs us approximately $5,500 a year to feed our students. This is about 10% of our annual school budget.
3. HOW ABOUT SOME HEAT? ...This project helps us fill our 1,000 liter tank with butane gas to heat the building in the winter. We anticipate that it will cost us approximately $2,800 to heat our building this winter. On average we have to spend $400 every two weeks in the winter for the filling of the tank. That can be very expensive and frequent in the winter months.

If you or your church would like to donate money to these strategic projects, please send your donation to the International Mission Board and designate the check to "Albania Strategic Project: (Title 1, 2 or 3 above)". The money will be designated for that project and not go to anything else.

The address is: