14 July 2004. More than 50 students from the Victory School were distributed Certificates from the successful completion of 8-day “Common Ground Course”, with teachers from Irish Team visiting the “Way of peace” Church, Lushnja. The team, consisting of 10 people (young and old), arrived in Lushnja on 4 July 2004. Their team leader, Peter CRAWFORD, had already been to Lushnja last year, and had, during this year, prepared a team to come and teach at the Victory School. The aim of this course was to achieve two objectives:

1. To assist the students of the Victory School to achieve higher levels of proficiency in the English language.

As the curriculum of this course was divided into two parts, morning and afternoon sessions (the latter mainly occupied with games, conversations, music, arts), the Irish team had the chance to spend almost the entire day with the students, who sometimes even invited team members to their homes for tea. The Victory School staff and the team (together with the students) also organized a picnic to Apollonia, Fier. At the end of the course, a ceremony for the distribution of Certificates was held in the premises of Victory School, with more than 70 students present. Dramas were played, songs were sung, and poems were recited by the students (trained by their Irish teachers). The ceremony was not the only success of these days, though. The students and the teachers concurred that all of them had learned from one-another’s experience. What’s more, some of the students were also attracted to our youth meeting, and the Sunday service, because of the testimony of the Irish team and the Albanian staff. As the School Director (and pastor of the church), Albert DOSTI, said: “These teams are instrumental, not only to the school, but also to the church, as they bring a fresh breeze of evangelism to our town.”