2-22-2010

" So i got transferred but I'm not the most excited camper,lol. I got moved to a different area here in Tirana. I was really hoping to move out of the main city into a small town down south because that was an option but i some how got stuck here in the city. I'm not completely disappointed though because i have an awesome new companion. His name is elder Allen. He is from Utah and he loves sports and is a really good elder. This transfer will be 6 weeks and then after i think he is going to go Assistant to the President and i will train in the area. Today im still in my old area but tomorrow i will move into the new house. It's pretty far from where im at now and it is in the complete ghetto, lol. Im in Tirana e Re (New Tirana) right now and it equals to about the ghetto of Vegas and Ali Demi is my new area so it probably equals the ghetto of New York or worse, lol. However, i here the house is awesome. It is two floor's and i guess i have my own bathroom so thats pretty sweet =). Maybe one day i will make it out of Tirana, lol. If not that's all right ill just make the most of it.

I cant remember but i think i emailed you saying it snowed here. It has been beautiful this past week. It has been really rainy but the weather is still nice. Today is a little cold but not to bad. We just got done bowling,lol. I bowled a 162 woot woot!! =). They also had the Olympics on so we were all watching ice skatting, lol. All 8 of us were hooked on it. The only worldly stuff i'll see for the rest of my mission probably.

We did a little concecration week this week and we had 23 lessons and a Julia, an investigator, will hopefully be baptized in March!! All of us Elders joke around when we get over 20 lessons because in America or a lot of other missions people get like 30-50 lessons a week but europe is a little lower. This week we got 23 and then the two other sets of elders in our district got 23 and 22 and then the sisters got 27. So our district tore it up this week. We were so excited when we all got over 20 lessons. Sad thing is that now im leaving and another elder and one of the sisters got transferred as well so this awesome district got split up =(. The other elder is actually moving with me over to the 3rd branch district though so i am moving into another awesome group of elders. Hopefully all that made sense. Sometimes i use missionary terms and im not sure if you understand me =). If not just ask and ill clarify next time. So i have decided to do a word of the week thing with you. I will tell you a funny or cool sounding word in this case that i learned this week. This week the word is Karkalec and it means grasshoppper."

2-15-2010

"Oh man today we went on our district trip and their were 8 of us and I talked with one of the elders, who is my zone leader, for 2 hours in the van about baseball. It was so fun because he is a huge baseball fan too. We went to a place called Latch, not sure if that’s exactly how you spell it but close enough. Anyways, they had a huge church there and I guess it’s a church where miracles happen. It was really cool because it was up on the side of a hill. It was about an hour drive and it was a pretty drive once we reached the town
and drove up the hill. I wouldn’t visit again though because the church was the only cool thing to see. Then we came back and ate lunch and now im emailing you.
Transfer calls are this Saturday and I will find out where im going and who my new companion is. Im pretty excited to see what will happen. I love the area im in right now and the members are awesome but im ready to get out of the main city hopefully and see a new place. Lessons are still going well. We have about 16 every week which is pretty good here. Transfer calls are on Saturday night but I don’t leave to my new area until Tuesday. P-days are always on Mondays now even on transfers so next Monday ill still be emailing you from this area but I will at least know where im going. I’ve been looking for new scarves for you so maybe ill send another package in a month or so. Hopefully I’ll have more photos for you as well. It snowed here!!! It was crazy!! I guess its been years but we were studying in our apartment and we looked out the window at it was snowing. We live on the 8th floor or else we would have went in it. It didn’t
snow tons but it was still really cool. So I tried to have a baseball game this week with a bunch of Albanian kids and the other elders. I was way excited about it because I miss it so much. For the first 20 minutes we tried to explain how the game is played because kids were running everywhere and baseball requires discipline and honestly these dang kids here run around like they have their heads chopped off. But after 20 minutes it went really well for about the next 10 minutes,lol, because nobody could hit or throw really well so it turned into kickball and then with that just turned into soccer, lol. So it was a failure but I still had fun. Then it started to poor rain and everyone was hiding under this tiny tin roof and I pointed to one of the elders and said watch this and just ran and dove into the mud and slid. Then the other elder did to and everyone was just laughing at us. But then they realized we were having fun running and sliding
head first in the mud so about 15 kids were sliding into fake bases we had. Such a blast. I will definitely miss this area.
I also gave a talk this Sunday at church. I was really scared and I was hoping I wouldn’t have much time to talk because usually Albanians are really late to get things started and the talkers usually speak a very long time but this Sunday church got started at a decent time and the speakers were very fast so I had 10 minutes to talk and I was very scared, lol. But I ended up talking for a little over 15 minutes and I think it went really well. The members said I did awesome but that’s just because they are nice. Either way I was really happy that I got my first talk out of the way."

2-8-2010

"Alright so I don’t have tons to write in this email so hopefully you don’t mind that it will be a little shorter. First off the football game went great. I had two goals and we won!! I had a pretty big ball hog on my team which kind of stunk but I still made the best out of it. A few times I actually stole the ball from him to pass it to another one of our teammates, lol, He was so angry at me. But that’s what he gets for being like that. I don’t remember the end score but we won easily. This Saturday I’m trying to convince the other elders to get a bunch of kids together and as our weekly service project we can show them how to play baseball. So hopefully I will be playing baseball this Saturday but we will see…. So I weighed myself a few days ago and I am at 202. Im pretty happy but the sad thing is that I know it isn’t good weight, lol. But when it comes summer I will hopefully have a companion that likes to run and I will
be able to turn some of it into muscle. But as long as I’m not losing weight I’ll be happy. Every Sunday we eat at a women’s house we call Motra Lika and she always feeds us huge meals. She is the one that we ate a whole fish actually, lol. Usually they are good the fish was just an off day because this Sunday it was really good. Anyways she told me to tell you to mos kini merak dhe mos kini frike which means done be worried or scared because im in good hands here, she also did a bej te fala which in English we don’t have so the best way I can explain it is that she gives you a shout out and says wuz up, lol. I think that’s a good way to explain bej te fala.
I only have one funny story that happened to me this week. We were tracting a communist stairwell and when you go in there is a gate but they are always open so we just walk in and start at the top of the building which is usually 4 or 5 floors for a communist building and we start at the top because I think its easier to walk down the stairs after getting rejected rather than walk up them. So anyways we get to the bottom and get shut down at all the doors that open and we get to the bottom and the door is closed and locked, lol. We were like you have to be kidding me. I wanted to go up one more floor and just jump over the little edging but my companion was to scared so we started pressing buttons trying to tell people we are stuck in the stairwell and we want out but I think they thought we were dumb boys and wanted in, lol. So finally an old little grandma comes down and she cant get the door open so then another really old grandma comes down
and has keys and cant open it. And its funny because just a few minutes ago they were really rude to us at their door but after sitting they for 20 minutes laughing about what was happening they realized we were nice boys and we had a good conversation with them. Then finally we were able to find a way to open it and escape to our meeting we had. That was the only fun/exciting thing that happened to me this week. We have 3 people that are really close to baptism. One we will have a baptism date for this week and then the other two we should hopefully set a date next week. I have been lucky to be in such a good area here in Tirana e Re. The members are awesome and the work has just been amazing. I have been involved with 2 baptisms so far, Grei and Kein the two boys. And now we have 1 that will be baptized at the end of February or early March hopefully and the other 2 will hopefully be around that time also. It has been awesome teaching them
and being able to watch them grow in the gospel. It’s funny because we are teaching two kids right now who aren’t close to baptism yet but the first day I met them I remember thinking that these kids weren’t going to go anywhere because they just didn’t pay attention and were just two punks basically but we have been meeting them once or twice a week for a few months now and they have changed a lot. They have begun reading the Book of Mormon and one of them is trying to stop smoking. It has been cool to see there desire to change and just become better individuals through the gospel. Our next step is trying to get them to stop fighting because they always meet with us and have some crazy fight story, lol. They are awesome though and hopefully one day they will be ready for baptism."

Pictures

2-1-2010

"First off I know Melissa wanted to know if I’m getting transferred this week but next transfers aren’t until the 26th and I should be leaving Tirana because I have been her 4 months. Older missionaries stay in their areas for 6-9 months at a time but for new elders its rare to keep them in one spot. I hope that means I have been doing good here and they want to keep me her since I’ve been here so long. I had a hilarious conversation with an Albanian this week. I was telling him it’s really weird that everything is made out of cement here and he of course like all people went on about communism and then I told him he should build himself a nice wood house and he looked at me with a blank look and with a dead serious straight face he told me I was an idiot because it would blow away, LOL. It was so funny. I thought he was joking but then he grabbed me and
was like son you cant build houses out of wood because if it gets windy enough the dang thing will blow away. I told him all America has is wood houses and it blew his mind, lol. To say the least he is very worried about America know because he thinks we will get blown away. It was an awesome conversation and one to remember.
We have been teaching a girl named Julia and this week she told us she is ready for baptism. She is 26(or close to it) and she has an awesome testimony. Her parents and everyone will be at the baptism and I will meet them for the first time. We will set an exact date this week when we meet with her. We have been teaching her for 2 months now and im very excited for her. We also got in a few times tracting and actually have a return visit tonight at 5. We have been doing a lot of knocking doors lately and have had no success. This past week we had 15 lessons only. I shouldn’t say that though because some cities only have about 5-8 lessons a week so im spoiled here in Tirana.
Drugs are a pretty big problem here and weapons up south are a big problem. The government is very corrupt here and it is pretty sad. But there is nothing I can do about it and as missionaries we don’t have to deal with it because people respect and love Americans so we are safe from the corruption and the crime. I think the Meth house we found is pretty rare. Just a group of idiot guys deciding to ruin their lives.
Today has been a fun p-day. We went bowling as a district because we were going to go to the zoo here in town but it has been raining pretty hard the past few days and we decided to go next week to the zoo. I bowled a 145 and then a 135 or something like that the second game. It was a lot of fun and it was only 5 dollars for 2 games. I made a pretty funny language mistake today at the bowling ally. I was trying to say both sides because the lanes were connected and there were 8 of us so we wanted both lanes so I wanted to say “both sides” but I ended up saying “I love you” to the girl instead, lol. She looked at me a smiled because she knew what I meant to say but it was still funny. I knew right when I said it that I missed a letter and was embarrassed. It’s not as funny as my companions mistake that he made though. He wanted to say we need to follow the prophets and follow is ndjekim but instead he said we need to kill the
prophets, lol, which is vdesim. I don’t know why he said it because the words aren’t even close I think he just got messed up. I kind of laughed and jumped in and corrected him but it was still hilarious. The investigator was funny about it to and made fun of him."