“We strive to do better today than we did yesterday and omorrow better than we did today. Every day, we grow stronger, bigger, and serve our communities better.”
Introduction
Some lives are shaped within one familiar world. The life of Dr. Arapi unfolded through several. Each required him to listen again, learn again, and decide which values could travel with him. The languages, institutions, professions, and expectations around him changed repeatedly, yet an inner pattern gradually became visible. He was drawn toward belief, then toward service, then toward justice, and eventually toward forms of leadership that allowed those convictions to become practical.
His story begins in a country where the outside world was kept at a distance. It later moves into an era of sudden openness, when ideas that had been forbidden became available and spiritual questions could finally be explored. From there, the journey reaches India, where service brought him into communities very different from his own, and then the United States, where survival, education, and employment had to be built together. Those experiences did not simply add places to his history. They altered how he understood people.
He came to believe that differences do not have to become divisions. Long before he applied that understanding in business, he had seen the value of approaching communities with respect rather than assumption. He learned that a message could be offered without coercion, that assistance could preserve dignity, and that listening could create common ground where argument could not. That instinct to build connections would later become part of his professional judgment.
Justice also became personal to him. It was not an abstract subject chosen for academic advancement. It emerged from seeing how power, money, and social position could influence the treatment of an ordinary person. The experience remained with him because it violated a belief he already carried: human worth should not depend on wealth. His eventual study of criminal justice gave structure to that conviction, while the security profession gave him a practical arena in which protection, prevention, and accountability could be exercised.
The United States tested his willingness to begin without comfort. His plan was not complicated. He would trust God, work hard, and study. That simplicity mattered because the larger future was not yet visible. He could control the seriousness he brought to employment, the discipline he brought to education, and the way he responded when an intended route was closed. Over time, those choices accumulated.
Education became more than a means of earning a better income. It allowed him to connect several parts of himself. Criminal justice strengthened his understanding of safety and law. Business education helped him understand finance, operations, people, and growth. Theology continued to shape the moral framework through which he viewed responsibility. Rather than abandoning one discipline when another became necessary, he allowed them to inform one another.
The same integration can be seen in his professional life. He learned security from the operational level upward. He understood what it meant to report for a shift, respond when someone else failed to appear, train personnel, manage complex assignments, oversee budgets, satisfy regulatory requirements, and answer for the performance of an entire organization. As responsibility expanded, the work became less visible but more consequential. Decisions affected employees, clients, facilities, and communities.
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
Phase 1: Behind Albania’s Closed Borders
Dr. Arapi was born in Albania in 1979, at a time when the country was governed under communism. His first eleven years were spent in southern Albania with his parents, but childhood was not rooted in one unchanging place. His father served in the army and was transferred to different parts of the country. Each transfer carried the family with him. At different times, they lived in villages, small towns, and larger towns, depending on the requirements of his military career.
His mother worked in the medical field as a registered nurse. The professions of both parents brought the young boy close to environments defined by duty. After school, time could be spent at the hospital where his mother worked or at the military base connected to his father. One setting was concerned with care and recovery; the other operated through order and discipline. Without needing to be formally explained, responsibility was present in the everyday structure of family life.
The country around him, however, was tightly closed. Albanians were not permitted to leave simply because they wished to visit another nation. Even those who possessed the money to travel could not do so freely. Movement from one city to another required permission from local authorities. The boundaries of ordinary life were therefore not only geographical. They were administrative and political, shaping what people could see, hear, and imagine.
Outside radio stations and television broadcasts were prohibited. Foreign films, music, posters, and other forms of popular culture did not enter his childhood in the way they did for young people elsewhere. There was no wall decorated with Western entertainers and no private collection of images smuggled from another world. The isolation was thorough enough that outside culture did not simply feel distant; it was largely absent.
Religion was restricted as well. Albania had declared itself an atheist state in 1967, closing churches, mosques, and other religious institutions. By the time Dr. Arapi was born, this condition had already shaped public life for years. He did not grow up with open access to the Bible or with religious instruction forming part of his early environment. Faith, as he would later know it, was not yet available to him as an ordinary choice.
Poverty added another dimension to those years. Albania was a poor and deeply isolated country. Families lived within the limits of what the system allowed, and the possibility of simply going elsewhere to seek something different did not exist. Dr. Arapi’s childhood understanding of the world was therefore formed inside a narrow frame. The lives beyond Albania’s borders could not be observed directly, and the beliefs practiced outside the state’s approved worldview could not be freely explored.
Yet the movement caused by his father’s work gave him an unusual view of his own country. He encountered different kinds of communities without leaving Albania. Village life, small-town life, and the atmosphere of larger towns each placed him among people living within the same national restrictions but in different local circumstances. These early relocations introduced change into a childhood otherwise bounded by political control.
“Faith is a mockery if it does not teach us that we can build a more complete and beautiful world.”
Phase 2 : When Freedom Made Room for Faith
The opening of Albania brought a rush of unfamiliar influences. After decades of religious prohibition, missionaries representing different faiths arrived from other countries and began speaking openly about God. For many Albanians, this was not a return to a practice they had personally known. It was an introduction to ideas from which public life had been deliberately separated.
For Dr. Arapi, that introduction became personal on 4 July 1992. He was living in western Albania, in a small town near the Mediterranean Sea, when he first heard about the gospel, the Bible, and Jesus. The date remained clear in his memory because it marked the beginning of an inner change. A subject that had once been inaccessible was suddenly placed before him, not as a distant theory but as something he could examine for himself.
He began reading the Bible. The act was simple, yet in the context of his upbringing it represented a freedom that would have been impossible only a short time earlier. He was no longer limited to the official view under which he had spent childhood. He could read, consider, believe, and allow belief to influence the direction of his life.
His interest did not remain superficial. He was drawn toward Christianity and theological thought, exploring how faith understood the individual, service, and the relationship between God and people. The new freedom gave him access to religion, but it was his own sustained study that turned access into conviction.
He later studied the life of Mother Teresa, one of the best-known Albanians and a figure whose service had been closely associated with India and with care for the poorest of the poor. Her life connected spiritual belief with visible action. Faith, in that example, was not confined to private devotion. It moved outward toward people whose needs were immediate.
The example helped him distinguish spiritual interest from spiritual commitment. Reading could introduce an idea, and theological study could explain it, but service required movement toward another person. That understanding gave direction to the freedom he had gained. He was not interested only in learning how the rest of the world thought. He wanted to discover how belief could become useful in the lives of people facing poverty, isolation, or need.
That connection mattered to Dr. Arapi. India already stirred his imagination whenever he read about it or encountered it through films. It appeared not merely as another country, but as an entirely different world. The more he learned, the more he believed that God was calling him to go there and serve. The idea of leaving Albania therefore grew from spiritual purpose rather than a desire to travel for its own sake.
“True pacifism is a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love.”
Phase 3 : Building Bridges Across India
On 13 January 2000, Dr. Arapi landed in India. Bombay was his first point of arrival, followed by the missionary base in Pune. He had come with a Christian organization to take part in service that would last approximately a year and a half. It was his first experience of living for an extended period outside Albania, and the scale of the change reached far beyond geography.
Maharashtra required him to begin learning some Hindi while also learning the rhythms of a culture he had previously encountered only through reading and films. Daily life placed him among people whose customs, food, languages, and social experiences were different from his own. Instead of remaining an observer, he entered communities as part of a team.
He served as a team leader alongside a co-leader from India. The group included doctors and nurses who provided basic medical assistance, as well as members who used songs and short performances to engage children.
Their visits often took them into some of the poorest communities around Pune and later into other parts of the country. The work was practical and personal. Medical team members attended to immediate needs, offering simple first aid and care. Others created moments of participation for children. Dr. Arapi’s responsibility was to preach.
His messages centered on love, compassion, unity, and God’s care for people. He did not understand the mission as an effort to pressure anyone into conversion. His belief in free will shaped the manner in which faith was shared. The purpose was to let a teenage boy know that companionship was available, to show a family that someone had come with concern, or to offer a community a message of hope without denying its members the freedom to decide what they believed.
That distinction became important in a nation of many faiths. In Pune, he spoke with members of the Muslim community who did not always have strong relationships with Hindus or Christians. He saw how easily religious and cultural differences could produce disagreement. His response was to search for points of connection. The work taught him that finding a bridge between people is more productive than proving the depth of a division.
The principle extended beyond religion. India revealed extraordinary diversity from one state to another. After roughly six months in Bombay and Pune, his work moved farther south. The team travelled through Hyderabad, Chennai, Kerala, and surrounding communities. Each new place carried its own atmosphere. Food alone could signal the change, from chapati in Pune to chicken dishes and biryani in Hyderabad. What appeared on a map as movement within one country often felt to him like entry into another culture.
The welcome he received left a lasting impression. In some villages, he was the only white person present. Questions about his appearance could be direct and innocent, including curiosity about why his skin looked different. Those exchanges did not make him feel rejected. He encountered friendliness, hospitality, and an openness to people from outside the community. The simplicity of the questions often revealed how little exposure some villagers had to people who looked like him, while the warmth of their reception showed that unfamiliarity did not have to become fear.
Note of Thanks
At the close of this account, Dr. Arapi offers his deepest personal thanks to Alma. Among the many people who have crossed his path, hers is the one name he wishes to place at the center of his gratitude.
He thanks her for the love with which she entered this chapter of his life and for the support she has given without making that support feel conditional. She has believed in him not only when success was visible, but also as he continued carrying the demands and uncertainties that accompany leadership. Her confidence has given him strength during moments when professional responsibility became difficult and the way forward required patience.
He is grateful that she has become someone on whom he can lean. For much of his working life, he has been expected to provide answers, accept accountability, protect others, and remain composed when circumstances became complicated. Alma has offered him the reassurance of not having to carry every burden alone.
Their reunion after many years gave both of them an opportunity to begin a new shared chapter. Dr. Arapi receives that opportunity with appreciation. He recognizes the value of her companionship, the warmth she brings to their family, and the belief with which she looks toward the future beside him.
His thanks therefore extend beyond any single act. They are for her continuing presence, her encouragement, her trust, and the quiet strength she contributes to his life. As he prepares for the work still ahead, he does so with gratitude for the woman who stands with him and reminds him that even the most ambitious journey is made stronger by love and faithful support.
thanks,
– Dr. (H.C.) Erjon Arapi