Guess who has two thumbs and plays the piano? This guy! WARNING: any mothers or piano teachers please sit down for your health and well being before proceeding to the next statement* I had to play the piano in Church Sunday and boy do I wish i would have kept up with it! What's that you just heard mother? Yes I wish I would have practiced more and kept up with it after I stopped taking lessons. I really enjoy playing the piano but it was rough playing in church. I practiced a little this week but I can only play the right hand well enough and just have to sight read them. It was a little rough but we got through and it wasn't too bad but I'm going to have to play as long as I'm here or another Elder who plays better comes here. I'm going to get pretty good over the next 5 weeks though. I'm going to practice through the week so it isn't terrible for sacrament meeting. Speaking of Church we had..... 8 people this week. 4 missionaries 2 members 2 investigators. Both were the other Elders. None of ours came. Pavlo and Mimoza left town again. Mimoza's mother died so they left for Vlore and aren't coming back for a couple days. Oh and it was my week for a talk. So I had to play the piano then stand up and give a talk right after. If you've forgotten I have to give those talks in Shqip. I prepared a little and made points like I always do but I couldn't find my talk before we went to Church so I basically had to wing my talk but 15 minutes winged talk after being here 7 weeks isn't too shabby. I actually love giving talks its just hard in the language but I'm super grateful i have to give talks because it helps my language skills. My speaking ability is a lot better. My flow has increased even though I make a lot of grammar mistakes still. But those will come with time. It's hard because verbs and nouns are both conjugated. Verbs for whose doing the action and what tense it's in. So theres present simple past and imperfect and verb declinations are very hard because there are 12 ways you can change them there are three types of endings for indefinite singular definite singular indef plural and def plural. It changes based off of where it is in the sentence. One of the hard things about the language is they conjugate things with nominative accusitive and genitive/dative/ablative. It's very confusing and none of this is probably making sense but be proud of me because I'm doing decent with the language. It will come with time and hard work. My understanding is still pretty rough i can get the general idea most of the time but it's still a little rough most of the time. But the moral of this long story was that I wish I would have played the piano more and Mom always told me that I would have to use it and she was right. Mothers always know best. ALWAYS.
This week was slow as usual we get a lot of numbers but then people don't meet with us but cool story for the week. So we teach English course two times a week. We have the course then share a spiritual thought for those who want to stay. But we started a new course a couple weeks ago and this cun- (choon) ( c with the little tail it basically means young boy/ teenager/ young adult. don't know a good equivalent. This guy was like 22) came with another guy and two girls and he was a typical cun. Loud disrespectful and making dirty comments stuff like that. Wasn't really interested in coming. Made the whole class not fun and we didn't really want to teach him anymore but he came back a couple times. My comp really did not like him. Background to what happens next. We decided to go tracting one night and decided on some buildings and we knocked on a door and an old couple who wasn't interested then the second door we knock on guess who answers..... The annoying cun we don't like! We both really didn't want to go in but he invited us in and he was there with two of his friends. They all live there kind of like a dorm room. So we talked to them for a little and it turns out they were actually super cool and we taught a really good restoration lesson to them. The one we didn't like was the least interested but his two friends were really engaged and it was a really good lesson. We had run out of book of Mormons so we didn't have any to give them but left them with some pamphlets to read AND it gets better we invited them to FHE and the other two actually showed up and participated in the lesson and really enjoyed it. It was a really good lesson in judging a book by his cover and it was a really cool turn of events. We gave them book of Mormons at fhe and are meeting with them tonight so we are really hoping that they are still interested and have read. We had three other promising lessons this week. One was with a guy we contacted into while the zone leaders were up here helping us out. We speaks really good English so we gave part of the lesson in English. his friend he brought didnt' speak as well so we balanced it but they seemed really cool. They didn't seem super engaged during the lesson but they looked for like 30 minutes to find the church and still came so we are hoping we can meet with them again. They live in a fshat and have to leave town early with a frigon if they come into town. Another was a guy that Elder Roemer taught a bench lesson to when we were contacting. He taught him the Plan of Salvation and he was super interested in it and believed. He has some weird beliefs but after we taught him the Restoration and were walking back with him he was talking all about how God has given us everything and we need to follow his will and we need his help and all this stuff so we were super excited for him. But We tried to call him to set up another lesson and he answered then hung up and we called back and he ignored the call then turned off his phone. So we don't really know what's going on with him or why he lost interest. We hope he'll answer when we call back. The other lesson was a family of a lady that's a member but she moved to Sweden or somewhere but she's a super strong member and we were over by her families house and Elder Roemer was like hey we should see if we can meet them so we talked to a guy on the street to see which one exactly was the house and it turned out to be the dad an old guy and he told us we could come by that night. So we stopped by. There is a grandma and grandpa a daughter and her husband and their two kids that live in the house and it was kind of crazy because people were in and out of the room and weren't staying then the Grandpa came home during the lesson but we just talked with them for a while. The kids were super cool and the little one was really cute they were probably 8 and 5. But we just shared Helaman 5:12 and talked about having a foundation in Christ and they were just all agreeing and talking about how important he is to have as the center of your life and all this stuff and I was getting super excited but at the end we invited them to church and the grandma was just like it's too far for the kids and I'm too old to walk that far and all this stuff so i was really bummed about that but they've read a little bit of the book of Mormon before and the 8 year old knew all about Joseph Smith and the dad of the two kids was flipping through the book of Mormon the whole time and reading and they said we could come back again so we will keep working with them and at the end we invited the 8 year old to give the prayer and he was about to give an amazing prayer but the grandma started having him give the lords prayer and they all said it. The kid looked at us after like he knew that's not how he was supposed to pray though so that was super good. I was devastated when they wouldn't come to church but we'll keep working with them and trying to bring the spirit into their house. They are a super good family and I love them even just being with them that once. The grandma was hilarious and her laugh was great. I have high hopes.
Other things this week. It rained for two days. The first day it poured for a good 8 hours straight it came down. I'm really glad i had that nice umbrella it was very helpful. but I haven't had rain like that before and it was great. Way better than snow. it rained on and off the next day and hasn't rained since but it definitely brought winter. It's gotten a lot colder the last couple days and contacting is getting pretty cold at night. Time to layer up. Humid cold really cuts to the bone and it is cold! Going to be a cold winter. Oh and the second day it was clear in the morning so we didn't think it was going to rain but we were at lunch and it started and we had to walk home without umbrellas in the rain. It was off and on but we got pretty wet. Another thing we've been running every other morning and we always joke with our members that live below us that they should come with us and on Friday night we had a lesson with them and Pavlo said he was coming with us the next day and we thought he was kidding but the next day he came and knocked on the door and he ran with us. It was a pretty slow jog but he has to be upper fifties so it was impressive he came with us and he's super funny so It was great. It's gotten colder and my comp doesn't like the cold so we're not going anymore and he said no one else in the mission would go running so a little bummed about that but I just need to find a kettlebell. A funny thing Albania is weird and on these sidewalks they have holes in them because they are planting trees but it takes them forever but there is just like 10 holes in the side walk 2 1/2 feet wide and we can avoid them in the day but we were walking home and it was dark and we were walking and all of the sudden I hear Elder Roemer make a sound and turn around and he had fallen in on the holes. Just one of those only in Albania moments and luckily he didn't hurt his leg or anything but we just had a laugh that he fell in a hole. The last thing for this week is Motra Prena the crazy lady that tries to feed us terrible food and is crazy. We found out she had an accident of some kind and was in the hospital she fell or soemthing on her way to church so after church we found out what hospital she was in and went to visit her but Albanian hospital.... We walked in and there was no one at the front desk or anyone to help us so we just started walking and it was just sketchy and the best was to describe it is a hospital where they would film a zombie movie. It was just weird and there was no one walking around or to help you and it was weird. We were all a little scared about being in there but we found her walking out the hospital she was fine so it must not have been to bad but the hospital was definitely not an American one and I think i would die if i had to go to an Albanian hospital. That's all for this week. Not much success but we keep working hard. I love you all keep me in your prayers. OFFICIALLY the favorite and only missionary left. Elder Szabo
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