2-21-2011

"Prenda did get baptized and it went really well and Refik ( our investigator) will be getting baptized this Saturday and i will baptize him. I'm hoping that his family will also be able to come. He lives way out of town and it's hard for his family to come because they aren't wealthy by any means but the church is going to pay for the buses to get them to Shkoder and then we go to Tirana (2 hours away) for the baptism because there is no baptismal font in Shkoder. That will be the highlight of my week this week...

So we had transfer calls on Saturday and i found out that i will be with the same companion and i will be staying here until i go home in July. President told me he plans on having me training again in April when the new group comes in."

2-14-2011

"Things here have been quiet. No protests this week, or at least none that i heard about. My foot has been feeling better. On friday we ran into that big group of kids again playing football in an alley way and i stopped and played with them for about 15 minutes which was a blast but since i had my church shoes my foot was a little sore afterwards. I keep heating it and hopefully it will be %100 soon. As far as missionary work goes it was an awesome week. We have this awesome member here called Zef. I have a photo i will make sure to send it next week. Anyways, we went to his work, where he is a guard at a factory, and we played dominoes with him and had an awesome lesson with him because he will be going to the Temple in Germany for the first time here in a few months!! He's pretty excited and i'm excited for him as well. We also visit another member called Alma who is living in Italy but her and her daughters are here visiting for a little. We hung out with them last night and she has a daughter who is an awesome violin player. I also had to do a baptismal interview for the older women that we did service for the last couple of weeks. Her name is Prenda and she's awesome. I think i might have mentioned her in an earlier email but i can't remember. She will be baptised on Saturday and we are all excited about it because then the following Saturday Refik will be baptised and i believe his family is going to come to the baptism as well!! He would have been baptized this week with Prenda but it will be better if we wait one more week. I'm excited for him he is legit =). We only had 6 people at church this Sunday but it still went really well. The church is slowly growing here and we will be moving into a way nicer church building within the next few months and i think it will help people see that the church is here to stay. We have transfer calls next week and i'm actually hoping i stay. Elder Merepeza and Morava, the other Elders here, should stay and i love being in the same district as two local Albanians. If i do stay i'll get a new companion and i think my comp. i have now is going to the office. English class starts tomorrow and i'm hoping we have a good amount of people. I talked to my old comp. in Tirana and they just started an English class up and there were about 170 people i guess. A lot of the return students were wondering where i was. They asked where the giant missionary was,lol. Here i will be happy if we have 10 =). The church can't hold more than 30 so hopefully we have less than that,lol."

2-7-2011

"Protests did continue this past week but they were all down in the Southern part of Albania so this Friday they will be up in the Northern part, so up here in Shkoder. They have been pretty peaceful for know, knock on wood, but we are told to go inside when they start up so like i said before no worries.

This week has been a successful week, at least in my eyes it was. The kids here are really annoying and like to curse at us and it's even worse because my companion is a big walking target for kids to make fun of. I feel bad for him sometimes but i tell him he brings it on himself. This week i had enough of this group of kids, about 10 or so, so i took the time to go out of the way and talk to them. My comp. wouldn't follow me but i didn't care because i was sick of these kids. At first they started talking really fast and making fun of me because they didn't think i could understand but then i picked out one of them that was being really bad,with the language, and asked if his boyfriend was going to be around soon to pick him up,lol. He didn't like it but all his friends loved it and laughed. Then i started making jokes about the other ones and how short and skinny they were. After i was done we talked for about 30 minutes about myself and where i'm from and why im learning this language. Now whenever we walk by we always talk a little and one day we sat down with a few and gave out a Book of Mormon. We are also starting up an English course next week and a few said they wanted to come so it was a big success...

I still have a lot of work to do here in Albania and i know there are still peoples lives that i can touch so i am going to soak it all in and keep pushing forward to the end."