The Carney Family

Sean and Laura Carney live in Elbasan, Albania, with their two children, Alistar and Amelia. They serve on a team with their Albanian partners and friends Alban and Albina Nedelko. After university, Sean served as a global worker in Yemen for 3 years, came back to the U of A to get his master’s degree in teaching, then taught high school English in NW Arkansas for 12 years while taking an active role in a local church plant. Meanwhile, he married Laura, who had graduated from Ozark Christian College, and was eager to be his one and only partner extraordinaire, enthusiastically helping with church planting, grading papers (Oh, the life of an English teacher), and raising two spectacular children. In 2015, Sean and Laura began to feel a tug from the Spirit to go to the nations.

In 2017, God called the Carney family to serve cross culturally in Albania. Invited by their Albanian brothers to teach English in a language school and assist in discipleship, and sent by their New Heights Church family, they set out for the Balkans. During the first couple years in Albania, God knit their hearts to Alban and Albina Nedelko, who had a passion to see more church plants in Elbasan. In 2019, the two couples began Life Spring Church and Language Center. Sean shares a pastoral role in the church with Alban and administrates the language school. Laura teaches homeschool to Alistar and Amelia and leads worship in the church. The kids serve the children's ministry, helping with everything from crafts to setting up chairs to blowing up water balloons.