10-25-2010

"This week has flown by like the last few weeks. We had 19 lessons this week with 4 new investigators and a few baptismal dates. Funny story, our shoes were stolen,lol. We played soccer last Monday and it was muddy so we left our shoes outside our door like every other Albanian does and someone came and stole them,lol. I was like are you serious!?! Who the heck is going to wear a size 12 here,lol.

It's nice to have power back and it's good that we are busy with lessons. English class continues to go really well and the age group varies a lot. some are really old some young. It's fun."

10-11-2010

" My week has been very interesting. Bowling was a blast. I ended up only getting like 120 or something but it's alright =). The baptism on Monday went amazingly!! Yesterday they received the Holy Ghost and i was able to give it to them. It was a very powerful experience. I also got my new comp. and we are having a blast. We played ping pong for 2 hours this morning,lol, and i think we are going to go play chess and a little more ping pong... I'm not sure if the people are any more receptive to the message i have now than they were when i was first here but now that i'm able to speak the language i am able to talk about much more than the Gospel itself. If i would just go walking up and down the streets all day only talking about Christ or the Book of Mormon not to many people would listen but now that i'm able to talk to people and actually get to know them i find that i gain their trust and that opens their hearts to want to learn more about the message i have. Hopefully as i continue to inhance my vocabulary they will be able to trust me more and more and i will be able to truly understand how to help them. The Gospel can help any problem that i person might have but it's up to me to first find what these people need and then show how my message fits to their needs which i am able to do a lot better with my speaking abilities... I almost forgot to mention that we have been without power for 6 days now,lol. We found out that the elders before us haven't paid the bills for over a year and a half and they just found out and turned off our power. We have been taking cold showers but then we kind of got sick so we have to go 30 mintues to another house of elders to cook sunday dinner and to take showers. We also have to do our laundry over there,lol. During the day for lunch we just workout or studay and the sun is up so its fine but at night it's pitch black and i walk around the house with my headlight on and we plan and get ready for bed in the pitch black dark. It has been quiet the experience. I am hoping we get the power back within the next couple of days because it is starting to get cold and i don't want to get sick again. For now though it's a cool mission story i think =)"

10-4-2010

"I forgot to let you know last week but we had transfers this week. Actually they are tomorrow but we had transfer calls on Saturday. Of course i'm staying because my comp. is going home. I will be getting an elder called elder Moyes. I'm way excited because he's a cool kid. He is here in Tirana and we play ping pong every monday for 2 hours for p-day. Now that we are comps im sure we will play more =). There is also another elder who i'm really close with that just got moved into Tirana to replace Moyes's spot so he will also play ping pong with us. I'm looking forward to a really fun transfer. It will be like this for at least the next 7 weeks til the next transfer. Tonight we have 2 baptisms! Manushaqe and Elidona will be getting baptised and i couldn't be more happy for them. I will send you some photos next week. Her sister will be baptised next week and then we will start teaching her 3 boys. They are an amazing family and i love teaching them. In about 30 minutes we are going bowling so hopefully i am on my A-Game and win. This past weekend we had conference which was amazing. There were some awesome talks. I think these next 3 months will fly by because there are a lot of activities going on and then we have a huge thanksgiving party to look forward to and then of course Christmas phone calls =). I hope i'm not forgetting to write anything. I doing well and feel healthy. I don't eat a lot of vegetables and i'm careful with the fruits just because there are a lot f parasites here."