Theology with Meat

08 October 2012 Fushe-Kruje, Albania [Lydia Weidner,  ted NEWS]  ADRA Albania has successfully launched the "Reflect! Act! Integrate" Training Centre in Fushe-Kruje, 25 km from Albania's capital, Tirana. Kindly sponsored by the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA) Austria, the projects aims to combat illiteracy among the largely marginalised Roma populations. In the opening ceremony, Dr Beatrice C. Kastrati, ADRA Albania Country Director, welcomed distinguished officials including His Excellency, Mr Florian Raunig, Ambassador of Austria, Mr Erik Tintrup, Vice Ambassador of Germany, Ms Filloreta Kodra, Vice Minister of Labour, Mr Ardian Came, Vice Minister of Education, as well as Ms Wein and Mr Qosja from ADA. Dr Kastrati also welcomed other important stakeholders of the project such as UNDP, Amarodrom, Terre des Hommes, Save the Children. In a strong show of support for ADRA Albania, a delegation from the Adriatic ...

Adventist Church and ADRA Leaders Meet Albania's Prime Minister Dr Berisha meets with  leaders 02 October 2012 Tirana, Albania [Julian Kastrati,  ted NEWS] A delegation from the Adriatic Union Conference headed by its President, Pastor Branko Bistrovic, held a courtesy meeting with Albania's Prime Minister, Prof Dr Sali Berisha. In this visit, Pr. Bistrovic was accompanied by Pr. Sretko Kuburic, AUC Executive Secretary, Dr Dragutin Matak, representing the Religious Liberty Association, Pr. Leo N. España, Albanian Mission (ALM) President, Pr. Julian Kastrati, ALM Executive Secretary, Pr. Sergio N. Borges, ALM Associate Treasurer as well as Dr Beatrice C. Kastrati, ADRA Albania Country Director. In his opening address, Pr. Bistrovic transmitted to Prime Minister Berisha greetings on behalf of Dr Bertil Wiklander, Trans-European Division (TED) President, who visited Albania earlier this year to mark 20 years of officially organised Church presence in the former co...

(c) tedMEDIA 2012, Trans-European Division of Seventh-day Adventists -- TED EPC Plenaries 2012

16 June 2012 Tirana, Albania [Julian Kastrati, ted NEWS] The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Albania celebrated the 20th anniversary of its offical work in the country. Although Adventist presence dates back to the 1930s, the first church was organised in Tirana in the spring of 1992. This was a result of the evangelistic meetings held by Pastor A. David C. Currie from Australia, at that time Ministerial Association Secretary at the Trans-European Division (TED) based in the UK. Pastor Currie was commissioned by the TED to start the church in what previously had been the most atheistic and isolated country in Europe and probably the world. Photos: Branko Bistrovic The special jubilee Sabbath programme will be long remembered as a joyful event where church leaders, distinguished guests as well as lay members took an active part in worship, giving praises and thanks to the Lord for the extension of His kingdom in Albania.  To start off, a video collage depicti...

ADRA Albania and Adventist Church Leaders Meet Albania's Minister of Culture  18 June 2012 Tirana, Albania  [Julian Kastrati,  ted NEWS] Dr Bertil Wiklander, the President of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the Trans-European Division, held an official meeting with the Honorable Mr. Aldo Bumçi, MP, Minister of Tourism, Culture, Youth and Sports in Albania. He was accompanied by Dr Reinder Bruinsma, President of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in  Belgium and Luxemburg; pastor Leo N. España, President of the Seventh-day Church in Albania; Pastor Julian Kastrati, Executive Secretary of the Seventh-day Church in Albania; and Beatrice C. Kastrati, Director of ADRA in Albania. Minister Bumçi thanked the guests for the role the Seventh-day Adventist Church has played in igniting and enriching the spiritual awakening of the Albanian people, following four decades of a repressive and atheistic communist regime. “I take the opportunity to express our gr...

How to cook perfect garlic bread (guardian.co.uk) Are you an old-school supermarket baguette fan, do you prefer a simple Italian-style toast or have you your own approach to combining cloves and loaves? Felicity's perfect garlic bread. Photograph: Felicity Cloake "Anyone who says they don't like garlic bread must be fibbing" declare the authors of retro recipe bible The Prawn Cocktail Years – and, as usual, I'm in complete agreement. Hot and crisp from the oven, sodden with rich, punchy butter, it's the pleasure that never, ever palls. Even the plastic-wrapped supermarket version, pallid yet powerful, has its tawdry charms: it seems garlic butter can do no wrong. That said, not all members of the pungent pantheon are created equal: Nigel Slater...

Internet Ministry Impacts Church Growth in Albania 08 March 2012 Tirana, Albania  [ ted NEWS] There were many reasons to give praises and thanks to God as churches and groups throughout Albania convened in Tirana for the “Festival of Faith” and Internet Ministry (IM) training on 25 and 26 February 2012.  Pr Julian Kastrati, Web Pastor for Albania, could not hide his enthusiasm as he gave the IM report in front of two hundred people present for the event. Just five years ago there was virtually no online Adventist presence in the Albanian language. However, the year 2012 finds the Albanian Mission and ADRA Albania online and actively involved, networking, and building friendships and bridges with the online Albanian-speaking community. Each local church now has its own webpage or blog as well as a strong Facebook presence. Moreover, just a few months after its launch in Albania, LIFEconnect  website now features over 4100 members in its Facebook group! This large ...

Luigi Amaduzzi The Guardian ,  Wednesday 3 March 2004 Article history A culinary abomination? I wish to declare an interest. I have always been in love with good food. The real thing. For this reason, years and years ago, when I first came to the UK, I adored a good plate of British roast beef or steak and kidney pie followed by a hearty portion of bread and butter pudding. I will never forget that, as a young student in the early 50s, when I was at a college in Mumbles, a small Welsh village, now famous for having given birth to Catherine Zeta-Jones, I relied on fish and chips wrapped in newspaper from a local fish and chip shop to keep me going. How good they were. Those who criticise British food are in the wrong. I believe that many British dishes, when properly and freshly prepared with the correct ingredients, are quite delicious. In my role as ambassador, when I have entertained Italian guests in this country, I have often served British dishes so as to of...

Why pray? Here are ten reasons [by superb blogger Ben Myers, www.faith-theology.com ]: 1. Our Father who art in heaven Because without prayer there is only – myself. Between the heaven of prayer and the hell of the self there is no middle way. The more I try to find myself, the more I am lost. To call on God as Father is to discover myself as someone God calls  child . 2. hallowed be thy name Not because prayer will give me what I want, but because it will knead and pummel my wants, stretching them my whole life long, until at the last hour of my life I have learned to want one thing only, the only thing worth having. And so my whole life becomes a secret sigh, an inarticulate utterance of the hidden Name of God. And so even my death will be my prayer, the sigh by which I give myself up into the presence of the holy Name. 3. thy kingdom come Because my prayer encompasses not my own life only but the entire world of which I am a part. What defines this world is scar...

www.guardian.co.uk The man survived inside his car by eating snow. Doctors said he may have hibernated, like a bear. Photograph: Scanpix Sweden/Reuters A Swedish man who spent two months snowed inside his car as temperatures outside dropped to -30C is "awake and able to communicate", according to the hospital treating him, where stunned doctors believe he was kept alive by the "igloo effect" of his vehicle. The man, believed to be Peter Skyllberg, 44, who was found near the north-eastern town of Umeå on Friday by passers-by, told police he had been  in the car  since 19 December without food, surviving only by eating snow and staying inside his warm clothes and sleeping bag. Dr Ulf Segerberg, the chief medical officer at  Noorland's University Hospital , said he had never seen a case like it. The man had probably been kept alive, he said, by the natural warming properties of his snowed-in car which would have acted as "the equivalen...

Research offers insight into who is the most effective evangelist to take the gospel to your friends and relatives. The answer might surprise you. It’s you.  A 2004 survey of Seventh-day Adventists in North America showed that most people who joined the church did so because of a friend or relative. So if relationships are the most effective form of evangelism and ministry, our denomination, then, should focus on developing disciples and teaching relationship-based ministry. This doesn’t cost much money, just an open heart. It’s about authentic relationships, not programs. I travel around the world training people in evangelism and church growth. I usually begin my seminars by asking the question, “Who is the most effective evangelist?” I always get the same predictable answers – names of TV evangelists: Doug Batchelor, Walter Pearson, Mark Finley, Alejandro Bullòn, Dwight Nelson, etc. But then when I ask how people come to the Lord and the church, I get wildly di...