Harbor

Albania is one of Europe's best-kept secrets. Rugged mountains, a coastline on the Adriatic and Ionian seas that rivals anywhere in the Mediterranean, and a 2,600-year-old town like Berat where cafes and centuries-old architecture sit under an ancient hilltop castle. Spend a day there and you'll wonder why the rest of the world hasn't caught on yet.

It's also a country still finding its feet. Albania spent decades locked under harsh Communist rule, and it has only recently opened its arms to the outside world. In the capital, Tirana, you'll find young, hopeful energy. Out in the remote northern villages, you'll find families holding tightly to old traditions, often cut off from basic resources and overlooked by everyone but God. Sitting on the crossroads of the Balkans, Albania is also a place where people pass through on their way to somewhere else, carrying stories most folks never stop to hear.

Albanians value a neat appearance, calm conversation, and earned trust, so you'll learn to slow down and pay attention. It's good practice for the rest of your life.

Greece is the birthplace of so much of the world we know, and standing in front of the Acropolis in Athens you can feel the weight of it. But the thing that'll surprise you most isn't the history. It's the welcome. Hospitality in Greece is sacred, an honor and a duty, and foreigners often find themselves pulled into family homes and celebrations. Greeks even have a word for the joy that comes from gathering and sharing life together: kefi. You'll feel it.

Underneath the postcard, though, Greece has carried real weight. It has wrestled through a brutal economic crisis and one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, and for years it has been one of the main front doors into Europe for people far from home, landing on its shores with nothing. A country famous for welcome has been asked to welcome on a scale few places ever face.

And on a day off? Athens, a gyro, the white-and-blue cliffs of Santorini, a sunset over the Aegean you'll never forget.

Colombia is almost impossibly beautiful. The Andes, the Caribbean coast, the Amazon, all in one country, which makes it one of the most ecologically diverse places on the planet. Cartagena's old town glows at sunset, the coffee is unreal, and Colombians will fold you into a dance party before you know what's happening. It sits at the crossroads of Central and South America, a meeting place of cultures and people on the move.

That crossroads location means Colombia has opened its doors to a huge wave of families crossing in from Venezuela, often arriving with almost nothing and straining a country that's already stretched thin. Add the long shadows of homelessness, addiction, and the violence of the drug trade, and you've got a lot of people who feel forgotten. But God is in the business of restoration, and you can watch Him do it.

Peru hands you three worlds in one country. The Andes and the lost-in-the-clouds ruins of Machu Picchu. The vast coastal deserts and the food capital that is Lima. And the Amazon, thick and alive, stretching past the horizon. It's one of the most biodiverse places on earth and the home of ancient civilizations whose story you can still walk through in Cusco.

It's also a country where a lot of people are far from home or far from being wanted. Peru has opened its doors to one of the largest populations of Venezuelan families fleeing crisis in all of South America. Out in the Amazon, remote river communities go years without anyone coming to them. And there are kids, like the ones at the Josephine House, who were abandoned simply because they were born with special needs. Everywhere you look, there's someone who needs to be told they belong.

Brazil is pure energy. It's a rising power on the world stage, a country of beaches and rainforest and music that doesn't stop, where Christ the Redeemer stretches His arms over Rio and the people greet you with hugs and kisses on the cheek before you've even learned their names. Brazilian culture is warm, physical, and unhurried, the kind of place where being thirty minutes late is just being on time.

But the same country that throws huge celebrations for Jesus also carries deep wounds of crime, homelessness, and poverty, and a lot of people here feel completely forgotten. Brazil has also taken in families crossing its northern border with nothing, looking for a door that will actually open. Into all of it, Jesus is on the move, looking for hands and feet willing to tell the forgotten that He sees them and treasures them.

And the country itself? Rio, the Amazon out of Manaus, the thunder of Iguaçu Falls near the Argentina border. It's unforgettable.

They call it the Land of Eternal Spring, and the first morning there you'll understand why. Volcanoes on the horizon. Coffee that ruins you for anything back home. Markets in Antigua loud with color, ash-boarding down the side of Pacaya, real Mayan ruins out near the city. It's stunning.

But Guatemala sits close to the heart of one of the biggest migration stories in the world. This is a country people leave, often heading north in search of work and safety, and a country people are sent back to, with families split across borders and kids growing up missing a parent who went looking for a better life. Add the poverty that grips so many communities, and the wound of fatherlessness that gangs are all too eager to fill, and you find a whole lot of people aching for a place to belong.