The Korab Project

The mission has embarked on a multi-year initiative with the overall goal of being ready to form a Stake in the country by the end of 2011. We're calling it "Project Korab". Korab is the highest mountain in Albania, and is on the border with Macedonia, due east and a little north of Tirana. The metaphor is that the faith, endurance, planning, and courage to climb a mountain is exactly what is needed to establish the first stake in the Balkans here in Albania. There is much to accomplish if we're to do this before the end of 2011!! We launched Korab at the last Zone Conferences, following meetings with all the District Leaders and others in creating a vision of the future: church owned buildings in Tirana; faithful members who take and magnify callings; better member/missionary teamwork; more focus on working with members to retain and reactivate; sending out 10 missionaries every year from Albania; and helping our young people find jobs that pay enough to enable marriage and the formation of families.

The missionaries are committing to teach-to-find, teach-to-teach, 3 lessons per week, daily contacting, baptismal calendars, progress records, and a minimum of 1 hour per day teach-to-find tracting, 1 hour per day of teach-to-find street contacting, and 1 hour per day of reactivation work. Since we're averaging about 18 lessons per week per companionship, fitting in more finding activity will be a challenge for them, but they're excited to do it. We've shared the Korab Project with the District Presidency, all the branch presidents, and now with all the members as we're going about doing branch conferences. It's very exciting! (I'm trying to see if actually climbing Korab is something that we could do---perhaps a few districts at a time....) Marty