12-20-2010

"This week has flown by for me, well for the most part. I got sick on Wednesday after the baptism but just with a head cold, i didn't have a fever or anything. I am back to 100% though just because i made sure to hit it fast because i always seem to get sick around this time of year. Yesterday we went to church here in Tirana and then grabbed a but to Fier for a baptism. His name is Rejmond and we were able to go to his baptism because we were the first Elders to teach him and then he moved. It was about a 2 hour drive and the entire day was a blast. We went to a members house for lunch which she calls "Beans Party" with a hilarious Albanian accent and then we lost track of time and had to hurry and find a van that was heading back to Tirana that night. We though we were going to be stuck in Fier last night but luckily we stood on the side of the road and waved down a van,lol. It was a blast..."

12-13-2010

" Sorry i don't have to much to talk about this week compared to last week but things are still going well. We have a baptism this Wednesday and i'm really excited. His name is Dorian and we have been meeting with him for the past couple of months. At first he wasn't reading the Book of Mormon and so it was hard because we couldn't really go any further with him till he did his part to receive his own answer for himself. A week ago though he just came to us and said he has been reading and trying to pray and now he is being baptized by his brother who has been a member for about 2 years. It should be a really cool experience. Since it's the Christmas season we have been busy with preparing Christmas activities for the branch and visiting lots of families and trying to help them out with any need they might have. It has been extremely cold the last few days! There is snow on the peaks of the mountains around us but what makes it more cold is the wind and the humidity. It's a different type of cold than the cold back home. Luckily i have a good scarf and jacket to bundle up in =)

ish you were in Maui,lol. Hopefully one day we will all be able to do that again. That was the funnest vacation i have ever had.... You probably already told me but for how long will you be up in Colorado? Are the roads going to be fine? Drive safely!!.... This coming up week should be a lot more exciting than this past week. We are going to the Lami families house tonight and it will be a blast. We are bringing them photographs because they have been asking to see them forever now and we just always forget. Church was probably my funnest day of the week. I went to the primary class and they are practicing a song for the district activity and i helped all of them with it. Then after that we went to the upstairs classrooms and had a lesson about how the star, lights, tree, presents and tons of other stuff resemble the life of Christ or at least how they help us to remember him. It was really cool. Then after that they taught me a song that went along with a game which we played for the last 10 minutes of class. Sundays are always so refreshing and a great day to get me going for the rest of the week. I feel like i'm just rambling on... I am out of stuff to write about."

12-6-2010

"It has been raining a lot here. We had to evacuate the missionaries who were in Shkoder and they are now here in Tirana and there is no telling when they'll head back into Shkoder. It's not good for sure. Shkoder is already very poor and it's going to hurt a lot of people. Last year it flooded but i don't think it was this bad and we sent over 22 thousand dollars of food and clothes and other stuff to them so hopefully I will have the opportunity to help out with that again.

This week has been a good week. We have been asked to visit a lot more families and build our relationships with them and just continue to strengthen them inside the homes. Usually we only visited families who weren't active, meaning they don't come to church, and the families who are strong and come we visited about once every few months. Now though we are trying to visit 4 families a week and visit them 2 times in a month. My companion and i have been having a blast with it because we are really close with the members and not to brag but they love us. We get invited to a lot of homes for visits and it makes me happy that i'm welcome here.... Yesterday we went and at lunch at the Lika families house. It's the two boys that i baptized my second month in the country. Their parents are still not members but they are absolutely amazing. When i'm at the house i feel like i'm at home. A year ago i couldn't really talk that well so it was frustrating but yesterday we had a good hour and a half lunch at their house. It was so good to be in their home again. Every time the mom sees me she always comes and gives me a hug and it's a tradition or part of the culture i should say to kiss people on both cheeks ( like France i guess) she always kisses me cheeks as well and then she always somehow has food to give me. She told me to tell you that you don't have to worry about me because while i'm here they are watching over me and taking care of me. She also told me to tell you that i need to eat more,lol. Which is crazy because she feeds us so much that it's impossible to finish it all. So yeah it was an excellent week and even though i'm not home with all you this past week i felt the Christmas spirit strongly and it's good to have people here that i love and love me."

11-29-2010

" As always i can't believe that it's already Monday again. I think Thanksgiving made it go bye super fast. I had so much food,lol. We had over 50 pounds of turkey and then tons of potatoes, stuffing, green beans, cranberry sauce, and tons of other good stuff. Then for deserts all the companion ships made desserts and so i ate tons of dessert as well. I ended up making a banana cream pie with this "Tuku" crust (Tuku is a type of Turkish chocolate that they have here that is really good). We ended up watching Toy Story 3 and it was really funny. I was hoping we would be watching Miracle or Remember the Titans but i was surprised at how funny Toy Story 3 was. Have you seen it yet? If not you should rent it because it's a cute movie. So ya, that was my Thanksgiving.

We got a lot of rain here this week. Luckily i have been bringing my rain jacket with me everywhere because i don't want to get stuck out in the rain with out an umbrella or a jacket. On Saturday there was an awesome baptism. There was a family of 5 that got baptized, a mother and 4 children, and it went amazing. The church was full of people to see the baptism and i had the opportunity to baptize the oldest daughter which was really cool. The family has been through so much and it was an awesome experience to see how happy they were after the baptism. We are hopefully going over to their house for family home evening tonight which is always a blast with them. We also found an awesome gentlemen to teach yesterday at the church. I usually sit in the back of the Sacrament hall to count how many people are at church and i noticed that i've never seen this guy before and to my luck he ended coming and sitting in the back and i started talking to him and he told me he was taught a few years ago by missionaries but he had a lot of problems and strayed away from the missionaries but then he said he told me that for a over a year things haven't gotten better and he got the impression that he should come to church and he told me that all the stress that has been on him seems to be lifted for off his shoulders while he's as church. It wasn't that his problems were gone because obviously problems don't just disappear when you come to church but i do believe that you find strength or hope and you have help to bear them. We met with him (Bledar) last night and talked with him for over 2 hours. He has a lot of stuff wrong and i really hope we can just sit down with him and be his friend and help him. It's crazy because by looking at him i would expect that he is a wealthy, well educated, successful man. It really hit me deep down inside because i don't know what these people need or how they feel but at least we have a father in heaven that does know. I have definitely learned since being here that i should judge things by the cover. Even those who seem happy have there own personal struggles and it amazes me how the restored gospel can help each and every individual no matter how different their problems may be. That's all i have for Bledar =)..... I almost forgot, on Saturday after the baptism we went to an American's family house and had a second thanksgiving dinner. There were 6 of us that went and it was a blast. The family lived in Detroit for years but then came back to Albania, i called them an American family because they basically are. The two daughters speak better english than albanian so its pretty funny. We watched a movie they had on t.v and then listened to Christmas music and then they put on some Taylor Swift which was awesome =). It will be interesting to see how fast this week goes by because we only have one day of leadership training and other than that not to much is going on."

11-22-2010

" I'm pretty excited for thanksgiving here because we will be eating tons of food together as a mission and we get to watch Toy Story 3. This past week has been a lot of fun. I found out i'm staying in this area and i couldn't be more excited. I will be with the same comp. as well which i'm pretty excited about. We get along really well and work is going really well in our area. As a bonus we have the best new year house for fireworks. We are right next to the center of town and we are on the 8th floor with a perfect view of the entire city. I remember new years last year and it was crazy i can't imagine how awesome it will be this year since i'm going to be right next to the action. You should go to youtube and check out Tirana, Albania new years, i bet they have some awesome videos. This is a 6 week transfer so i will be here at least until January 4th when i new group comes in. I have a feeling i will be going to the outside zone in January. It kind of stinks because i was really hoping to stay in Tirana my whole mission because there hasn't been a missionary that has done that so people joke around and say i am the Tirana King because i have never left. I decided it's alright though because i love Tirana. I really hope to end in 2nd branch where i was born but i could see me going down south to Vlora which would be sick because i would be in a huge apartment complex on the 9th floor that looks over the coast. It's awhile a way though so we will see. There are also rumors of Cosovo opening which means missionaries from here would be going there. I don't think i will go there to open it up but it would be cool to say i was here when a new country allowed missionaries into it. We will find more about that come March... It has started raining here and thanks goodness we are busy with work. There is an awesome family getting baptized on Saturday. They are the other elders family in our district but i was there for the families first lesson when i was on a split and i have been over there a few more times and they are amazing. We helped them move into a new house on saturday and that was way fun. We loaded everything onto a truck and then all 4 us (the missionaries) were in the back holding stuff down while this crazy Albanian driver was going around corners way to fast. One of the elders was on top of a fridge,lol, and i was trying to hold it down because it was swinging and we thought he was flying off. I wish i had my camera to take a photo and to record a video because it was crazy. Our baptism date (Dorian) has been struggling a little but i think he will be fine. It's hard to meet with him because he doesn't have a phone so it's almost impossible to meet with him when he misses a lesson because we can't reschedule... Sorry i never have anything new to write about really. I'm doing well and enjoying my mission. We are going bowling tonight and then after that we are going to go make desserts with the sisters for thanksgiving."

11-15-2010

"I don't have to much to write about this week because we have been in for most of it. Last week when we went to Shkoder my comp. hurt his knee when he tried jumping over a wall and crashed into the wall with his knees,lol. So we have been in because he has a hard time walking. For two days we had some training and it was good to get out of the house and then i'm looking forward to this week because his knee is feeling pretty good. We should be able to get out more. I have interviews with Pres. Neil this week which im looking forward too. Transfer calls are on saturday, which is hard to believe that this transfer has gone by that fast, and my district is the last group to get interviewed so i should get a hint on if i'm staying or going. I really hope i stay here in 4th branch because their are rumors that i might go out to the outside zone leader. It would be cool because then i would get a car and be able to visit tons of places on the outside but i love Tirana and i especially the branch i'm in right now. Awhile back i really wanted to get out of Tirana but now i hope i spend my entire mission here... It' crazy that it's two weeks from thanksgiving. Where does the time go? For Thanksgiving the mission will come together here in Tirana and we will having a few trainings from Pres. Neil and have a testimony meeting and then after we have a huge lunch/dinner and play some games and then we get to watch a movie. I heard we are going to watch Toy Story 3 but a few of us are pulling for a sports movie and i think Remember the Titans is also an option. I don't think we will eat any American food unless we are able to get it shipped over from America or something. Last year they had some ham and a huge turkey shipped over so i think since the mission president is rich and also the church we will have some good American food...."

11-8-2010

"Holy Cow i am exhausted! lol =). I just got back from an awesome trip to a huge castle in Shkoder and i am way tired. There were 6 of us that went and we had a blast. The castle has three separate courtyards or whatever they're called and they are all huge. I will try hard to send some photos to you again here in the next few weeks. It was so pretty up there and it started to rain on us a little which made it more of an adventure. It's the farthest i've been away from Tirana and i couldn't believe the language difference. Even though Albania is tiny there is a huge dialect difference from the people in the south and those in the north. Even locals have a very hard time understanding people from the north so it way also cool to go up there and talk to people just about random stuff just to see if we could understand. We weren't in missionary clothes so i was able to try to talk about a variety of different random subjects. This week went by a little slower but still fast. We have some awesome investigators and the weather, other than today, has been amazing. I haven't done tons of tracting or street contacting since i've been in this area just because we are able to stay so busy. English is still awesome and our class loves us. It is every tuesday and friday from 5-6 p.m and then we have about 3 people we meet with for private lessons and also talk about the church for about 15 minutes. I've met some awesome people through english course because it's a good way for people to get to know us and see beyond the white shirt and tie....."