Not Afraid to Be First: Regent-Trained Educator Establishes Only Christian School in Albania

“Do you want your life to change?” That was the question posed to the crowd by an American missionary in the town square of Lezhë, Albania. “If you do, raise your hand,” he invited. It was 1991, and communism had just collapsed, opening the country to religious freedom.

A hand went up in response. It belonged to Dini Shahini. His wife, Klementina, who knew English, had been translating for Dini as they walked by and listened to the preaching. “He raised his hand because our life at that moment was miserable,” Klementina explains. “As a Muslim’s wife, I raised my hand, too, just to please my husband.”

The Lord saw the raised hands of these two souls that had never even heard His name, and He filled them with the hope that they desperately reached for. “This is where our story starts — a story connected to God,” Klementina says. “We got to know Him, and He changed our life from that day on.”

New Life in Christ

Although Klementina didn’t yet understand the step she was taking that day, the seed of faith had been planted in her heart. She and Dini connected with the missionaries from Harrisonburg, Virginia, and her English-speaking skills became an asset to their ministry. As she helped them translate the Bible to the local community and a small group of new believers that met in their apartment, she became personally intrigued by the word of God.

“At one point, I heard that Christianity is not a religion — it’s faith, a personal relationship with God,” she says. “So, if I want to ask God for forgiveness, I don’t go to the priest. I go to God, and I can do it anywhere. That was the time that I said, ‘Yes, this is my future.’” Sincere belief had bloomed.

Dini and Klementina were the first Christians in their town — and the first to be publicly baptized in the Adriatic Sea. They faced ridicule from peers and anger from family members, especially when they shared that God had called them to plant a church. But they weren’t swayed. They were no strangers to hardship.

Born a Survivor

Klementina was born in 1959 in Përmët, southern Albania, the youngest of seven siblings in a nominally Muslim family. Under communist rule, her early life was characterized by meticulous government control that limited everything from material possessions to knowledge about the outside world. “The words ‘democracy’ and ‘religion’ did not exist,” she says.

The daughter of a proud communist partisan rewarded for his loyalty with privileged positions, Klementina was a bright and accomplished student. She was identified early as a promising candidate for important diplomatic work and assigned to a special school that included training in English and Russian.

But when Klementina was in high school, her beloved oldest sister, who worked for a local official, wrote a letter to dictator Enver Hoxha reporting a misuse of state funds. Instead of sparking reform, this led to her sister’s 10-year prison sentence and her father’s expulsion from the Communist Party.

The punishment extended to the entire family. Klementina’s older, married siblings were forced to cut all contact with her and their parents or face harsh consequences. Klementina was ostracized at school, eating alone while former friends avoided her out of fear. “We were the enemy of the country,” Klementina says.

After her graduation in 1978, instead of beginning her promising career in diplomacy, Klementina was assigned to a labor battalion — doing hard manual labor in agriculture, factories, and on railroads, often suffering frostbite.

Someone to Share the Burden

During this difficult time, one of the few things that sustained Klementina was reading, though books were hard to find. She met a young man named Dini from northern Albania, who occasionally brought her books from his more liberal part of the country. In 1982, in hopes of a better life, she married Dini in secret — without her parents’ or the government’s knowledge. What gave her the courage? “I thought that if I have to suffer, at least I’ll have someone else,” she says soberly.

Yet even this basic desire for companionship came at a great cost. “In communism, they give you a job, a place to live, and a certain portion of food,” Klementina explains. Because the new couple had wed without permission, these things were withheld from them. “We lived a very bad life,” Klementina admits.

They shared a bedroom with Dini’s family and then lived in a single hotel room with a shared bathroom down the hall, having two children in the meantime. Klementina continued to be shunned by everyone except Roma women, already at the bottom of Albanian society, who welcomed her friendship as she worked alongside them in a filthy fish cannery — the workplace the government eventually chose for her. Finally, four years later, the Shahini family was granted a tiny apartment, though it lacked a tub or shower. “For us, it was a villa,” Klementina says.

In the decade that followed, life improved: they heard the gospel, converted to Christianity, and planted a church. Klementina earned two college degrees and worked as a teacher and school principal. At church, she taught Sunday School. She dreamed of combining the two settings, teaching both academic and spiritual lessons in the same place. She told her husband, “One day, if you become rich, I want my own school.”

An Unexpected New Direction

In 1997, civil unrest in Albania required the family to suddenly leave their home, which was completely lost to rebels, and flee to Greece for safety. There, Klementina filled out a Green Card application on a whim, and the Shahinis were approved to immigrate to the United States. They arrived in Virginia Beach in 1999, initially living with missionaries they’d known in Albania.

Dini was hired for a maintenance position at the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), despite not speaking English. His manager told the HR department, “He spoke to me with his heart.” At CBN, Dini learned about Regent University and encouraged Klementina to continue her education, as she had always wanted to do.

He was persistent enough that she finally applied for a master’s degree program in educational leadership, unsure how she would fit classes into her schedule as a full-time Christian school teacher with a part-time translation job in the evenings. It was stressful, but with her family’s support, she did it. They cried and celebrated together when she finished her last class two years later.

Another invaluable source of support was the Regent community. “I learned through the way that the professors and students around me were living the Bible — the care, the love,” Klementina says. “I was discriminated against in Europe. But here, I felt very embraced and encouraged. They were ready to help me understand the system here, which was not easy.”

Klementina wanted to write her master’s thesis on starting a Christian school, something her mentor had helped many students with. But she told him this one would be a little different — she wanted to know how to start a Christian school in Albania, a feat that had never been accomplished. With her professor’s encouragement, Klementina researched the process and learned the steps that would need to be completed — in theory, should someone ever actually start an Albanian Christian school. Who could do such a thing?

On Commencement Day in 2003, the Lord pointed at Klementina. “During the graduation, God gave me the vision that this was the time to go and implement what I learned here,” she says.

The Impossible Made Possible

Klementina knew it would be difficult, both logistically and personally. “It was not an easy decision,” she says. “It was the first time that we had a beautiful house, good jobs, and money in savings. But God’s call was stronger than what kept us here.”

She shared that call and obtained support to answer it, eventually forming a board of directors. The initial planning took seven years. Then, with only $50,000 in funds, Klementina resigned from her job as a high school English department chair, said goodbye to her adult children, and boarded a plane. She cried the entire flight to Albania, confident in her calling yet grieving for the “good life” she was leaving behind.

Dini joined her a month later, and they lived in the rented school building, which drained their funds, their energy, and their relationship. “We cleaned, we painted, we prepared everything,” Klementina says. “If we didn’t get divorced during that time, we’ll never get divorced!”

Meanwhile, Klementina pursued the special licensing needed to operate a faith-based, English-speaking school. No one else in Albania had been able to do it, and she was told she wouldn’t either. Indeed, she encountered challenge after challenge. It seemed impossible.

But, just days before the school’s inauguration ceremony, in response to Klementina’s persistent pleas, the license was granted! Lezhë Academic Center (LAC) opened in September 2011 with seven students and four volunteer teachers.

A God-Sized Dream Realized

Today, LAC is the only Christian school — and the only accredited school — in Albania. All classes are full, with 219 students and a waiting list. Ranked as Albania’s top private school, it issues dual Albanian and American diplomas, expanding further education opportunities to graduates, who have gone on to universities and careers worldwide — becoming lawyers, doctors, engineers, bankers, and more.

Drastically countercultural, LAC promotes Christian values of love and forgiveness among students and teachers alike. “At Regent,” Klementina explains, “I learned how to communicate with students, with colleagues, how to teach — because you can have knowledge but not know how to transfer it to others — and most importantly, how to incorporate faith into your teaching.”

LAC puts that faith into action not only through lessons, but with outreach and scholarships for Roma families, the social outcasts that Klementina worked with long ago in the fish cannery.

Klementina’s dream may have started out as a desire for her own school, but it evolved into a way to accomplish God’s purposes — and the catalyst was Regent University. “Regent gave me a different perspective,” she says. “We wanted to go back and bless others, the way that we were blessed.”

“Our school is not just academically focused,” she explains. “It’s a Christian school operating in a Muslim society. It’s a school that will accept students who are not Christian, so it’s a mission. And Regent is where I learned how to do mission. All the professors, everything I learned about education here — it was mission-driven.”

As Klementina has been leading the school’s growth for 15 years, her husband has been leading their church’s growth, which was struggling upon their return to Albania, and he now serves as pastor. Though both ministries have thrived, life hasn’t been without setbacks. While Klementina survived a massive earthquake in 2019 and a near-fatal case of COVID-19 in 2020, Dini battled depression. But together, they have pressed on, to the benefit of countless others and to the glory of God.

The girl whose promising future was seemingly destroyed by a corrupt regime now provides a better path forward for hundreds of Albanian children. She points them to the One who holds their future, just like He held hers. Klementina says it best: “Where we are today is what God wanted at the beginning.”