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."