Welcome to the podcast Think Biblically, Conversations on Faith and Culture.

I'm your host Scott Ray, Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Christian Ethics at

Talbot School of Theology at Biola University.

We're here today with a very special guest. He's come all the way to viola's campus from his home in Albania.

His name is Florence Mené. He's a fascinating young man, he's currently a PhD student in New Testament

at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, but it's his faith journey that I'm most interested

in you hearing about today.

Florence, he goes by Lency for short, is a convert to Christianity from Islam.

And has a fascinating faith journey that we wanted you to hear about.

So, Lenzi, welcome.

We're really glad to have you on the podcast and appreciate you taking the time to be with us.

Thank you so much for having.

Tell us a little, just a little bit about your backgrounds,

growing up in Albania,

what kind of family you came from,

what was that upbringing like?

So I was born and raised in Albania at a time where communism was the rule of the day.

So up to the age of 13 years old I lived through the communist system, especially the last death

rows in which time it was the most difficult time to be alive basically in Albania

because you were lacking so many things including sometimes even things like bread for example and at that

time there was no way that you could hear the name of God being mentioned anywhere.

So one day this was 1991 right after communism fell. Albania was suddenly open and

...