1-31-2011

"Things here are going well. That's crazy with what's going on withe Egypt. There was another protest in Tirana Friday but here in Shkoder everything has been pretty calm. This week there are suppose to be more protests but i'm not sure how big the one in Shkoder will be or even if there will be one here. We have been advised to go inside as soon as we see crowds gathering so don't worry about me i won't be dumb. I will be inside if anything goes down here....

I did something to my foot while doing service this week and so I have been told to stay off it for a few days so friday and Saturday i was inside most of the day. We did go back to the older ladies house again and i had a blast helping her out again. We painted her house, well helped a little big with it. There was another man there who just told us to leave and he'd do it himself. I don't know why but i guess we weren't doing something right. So we ended up going to the ladies old house, her name is Prena, and we were getting things ready to move to the new house when the paint drys. Well we got done fast and then spent about 45 minutes chasing around roosters and ducks catching them for her so she could move them as well. I had a blast with Elder Morava who is a mini missionary here from Albania. It was good practice because 3 nights ago when we actually moved things Prena stuffed about 5 or 6 ducks into this small bag and the last duck had its head popping out,lol. Well of course the bag opened up and 4 birds got out and we caught 3 of them right away but one of them ran into this drain and got stuck and it took us about 1 1/2 hours to get the thing,lol. It was a fun night. My comp. hated it but i was enjoying every minute of it because then other ducks got out again and these young kids who were playing football across the street came over and started running them down with us and trying to gather all of them up. I wish i had my camera to video it because it was a blast.... This morning we met with Refiku and he's still doing amazing!! I haven't found my other family yet but i have time. Hopefully this week i will be able to get out and walk around more on my foot."

1-18-2011

"It look like i'll be in Shkoder for the rest of my mission so i better make the most of it. There are a lot more places than Shkoder and Tirana. There's Durres, Elbasan, Vlore, Fierr, Lushnja, and a couple other places we have missionaries. Shkoder is way up north and kind of separated from all the other missionaries. We are forgotten about up here,lol. So like i said it's tough to go from a big town where i was close with all the members and families to a town that has 2 active members in the entire town and no families. Like i said though it's my goal to find a family here in my six months and i know i can do it =).

.So this week has gone by fast for me which i am very thankful for. On Tuesday was the first time it rained on us but it rained TONS!! We walked about for 1 1/2 hours non-stop in the rain because it was to late to tract on doors but we couldn't street contact because nobody wanted to stop and talk in the rain so we walked for many miles. It was kind of cool because there was also a big thunders storm around us. On Wednesday i was able to go to Tirana for a training which was really cool because one of my favorite kids in Tirana, Xhino, met us at the bus stop in Tirana and walked us up to the mission home where we had the meeting so i was able to talk and laugh with him. It was great. On thursday i was able to meet my first member here in Shkoder who's name is Zef. He works security for this factory so we went to his work and it was funny because there was just a group of old men sitting around a table playing dominoes. The old men loving playing dominoes here. We ended up playing a little and we played teams and me and this other man ended up winning. The sad thing was that i didn't even realize we were playing team until the end when they said me and this other man won,lol. I had a good time. The work here mainly consists of tracting. I think i have done about 450 doors in the past 2 weeks. I made a goal to tract 3,500 doors in the next three months and right now i'm on tract to get it. It is going to be a very very long 6 months =( , lol. Oh well what can ya do, just stay upbeat and positive and reach my other goal of finding some families. On Saturday i wasn't feeling to good so we stayed in the second half of the day but come Sunday morning i felt really good. I ended up giving a talk and translating for some people at church. There were 7 members that came this Sunday so i big improvement from last week. There was an investigator who is from Austria who speaks English but not albanian so i translated for him. Today has been good so far. We had a lesson this morning and got a new investigator and i'm really excited for him because he has a lot of faith and from a strong Christian background. We are also going back to a house tonight where a family told us to come back! So be praying for me that this is the family that accepts the gospel. If not i wont get discouraged because there are a lot of people here that think we are missionaries for the catholic church like the nuns that walk around here and then when people find out that we are actually a different church they drop us. It's pretty funny. We always tell them we aren't catholic but i guess they don't believe us =)"

1-10-2011

"So i'm up in Shkoder.... Yeah it's the place where it flooded really bad because of the rain. Like i said though it hasn't been raining so i'm not really sure if it's something i'll have to worry about here while i'm here. I made a list of things about Shkoder to tell you about so i'll just go in order and hopefully it will answer your questions that you had about it =). So first off the language isn't completely different but it still has some pretty big changes that i have to adjust to it. Unfortunately i think it is a very ugly accent,lol. All the other cities of Albania make fun of Shkoder because it's very poor and the language is only spoken by rednecks and hicks so i've been in Tirana my entire mission and i am learned with a different accent and now that i'm here i don't like speaking they way they do here. However, i am finding myself mixing up my accent already because i am surrounded by people who speak hick all day and i am picking it up and using their accent. The hardest part with the accent is not so much the speaking but the understanding. If i wanted to speak like them i could probably pick to up perfectly in about 3 or 4 weeks but understanding is coming slowly but i will be fine. I have become really good at pretending like i understand,lol. I do have an awesome house up here though. It has a huge kitchen, sleeping area and another entire room where i put my suitcases and have plenty of room to workout. The nicest house i've lived in since being here. My new companion is Elder Owens. He is from Texas. We don't really have anything in common. He loves math.... I try to come up with math riddles for him and i just ask him tons of question and make him convince me why math is cool. It's pretty entertaining so far. I'll get back to you at the end of 7 weeks to let you know how it's going still =). The people here, in general, are way nicer than those in the city of Tirana. There are tons of HUGE mosques here and a HUGE catholic church here as well. Lots of people get us mixed up with the catholic church. One bad thing about the smaller towns just outside Shkoder is that they are very uncivilized and we have a few members involved in blood feuds which really sucks. We live by a huge mosque so we get a prayer wakeup call every morning at 5:45 =). Then on Fridays we get the special 1 hour prayer call during lunch. Like i said though even though the town is divided into half muslim half catholic the people are very respectful (hopefully i don't eat those words in the next few weeks =) )....We have got in tracting everyday tracting this week which was cool but i guess its pretty normal for the work up here to get in just because the people are so respectful and invite us in to feed us or give us a drink and then they listen to our message but then of course say they already have their church. Very nice people! So to talk about how i met a gentleman in the police. It was actually really random. We had a lesson cancle on us so we decided to go to these apartments to tract and on the way this guy stopped us and showed us these business cards and badge and he is like one of the very top people here on the police force. He asked if we wanted to sit down and have a drink and so we ended up walking like 30 minutes to this really really nice place outside of town and hada hot chocolate with him. He really likes our church because during the floods this year and last year the church has given hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of supplies to help the people here out and he is very thankful for our service. It was cool to talk to him. While we were there he also had a meeting with this guy who could have easily worked for the mafia, he looked like a mafia guy,lol. He was actually one of the presidents or something with red cross here. So i will for sure give one of Dads badges to him....Church was interesting this Sunday. It was actually one of my most spiritual days of church ever which was weird because for the first 30 minutes of church there were 4 people, which if you didn't know there are 4 missionaries here so yeah it was only us at church, and then at the very end one lady came in to here the last few mintues of a talk. So it was 4 missionaries and 1 lady at church. The room we meet in is about 10 ft by 20 ft or something close to that. I don't know the exact dimensions but it's small. I thought it was really cool that i was thousands of miles away from America where in sacrament there are 500 hundred people gathered together sometimes but yet in this little room of only 5 people i was able to partake of the same sacrament and feel the spirit possibly stronger than i ever have before. It was a testimony to me that a church isn't about some building but about the people and the ordinances that are performed."

1-4-11

"My week has been pretty good. We were able to visit tons more families this week since we didn't have time before Christmas so i had a lot of awesome visits with families this week which was amazing! I had a blast with it. New Years was also way awesome. I wish my camera could take a better video that way i could have sent you a video. We had two other Elders at our house so we played card games all night until midnight and then we had one of the best views ever. I think i have told you that we are on the 8th floor and we have a huge window that looks over basically the entire city. In the distance it seriously looked like Tirana was being bombed and then we were right next to the center of the city where the big ones are so we had an awesome view of those. It was a fun night. On Saturday all the missionaries stay inside and clean the house so Saturday dragged on because we were inside all day. We did go outside for a little and luckily found a place that was open to eat. Literally every place is closed down the first couple of days after new years. I know from talking to some people that it is the only days off that they get all year which is just nonsense. They also have a few days break for Bajram which is the Muslim holiday but other than that most people work 7 days a week.... For my birthday i spent the morning filling up the baptismal font but we also had a district meeting so we had a cake and then we exchanged present from a Christmas exchange that we weren't able to do on Christmas so that was cool. I was also able to sneak off from filling the font for a few hours and we had an awesome lunch.

So earlier i said that my week was pretty good. It was one of the best weeks of my mission but then on Saturday night i found out that i got transfered to Shkodër and i have a lot of mixed emotions about it. I have been in Tirana my entire mission surrounded by awesome families and have gotten so close to every family here and now i have to go to Shkodër where sometimes in church it's only the 4 missionaries. I'm also not happy because they speak a completely different dialect up there. If i went up continuing to speak like i do know most people will probably understand me but it's going to take me probably 2 months to be able to understand comfortably up there. So yeah i'm not happy that i have to spend my last 6 months of my mission up there. I know that there are people everywhere that need the gospel and so i will work my butt off to do my best and hopefully i will make a difference up there...."