I'll start with the subject line so you guys aren't worried the whole letter... My companionship has taken a turn for the worse.... haha Just kidding. We were doing companionship inventory last week we do it every week with weekly planning and the first question is what is the strength of your relationship. Joking around I said it was terrible and I hate him and stuff then Elder Roemer responded with ya I Almost stabbed you in your sleep last night. We just burst out laughing and went on with our comp inventory. That probably doesn't make sense to anyone and you're all just wondering what has happened to him over there! But it was hilarious and I guess it shows the strength of our relationship if we can joke around like that. He says little stuff like that all the time that just makes me laugh. Mostly things about his love for animals mostly cats... I don't understand it but he likes them a lot. I'm really blessed to have him as my trainer though. We have little arguments or disagreements sometimes but who doesn't. We're doing really good and have a really good relationship. It'll be interesting to see what I get after him.
Shkoder... That's all there really is to say about it. I think we hit an all time low on lessons this week. We had 5 total lessons and 3 of them were our recent converts which are a given because they always are willing to meet with us. We couldn't meet with our "progressing" investigator because he went to visit his family in a little fshat so he hasn't been here. The great couple we met with last week keeps prishing (prish is a verb that means to break so missionaries use it in our English and you can't just add the ing that's just americanizing it. Holy cow Americanizing is totally a word that's awesome!) us and only want lokal lessons so i dont' think they'll go anywhere which is a bummer because they were so awesome and I was excited. The one lesson we did have this week was with a guy named Lufti. He's a little guy in his 50's he's a sweeper/cleaner guy ( In albania they have people who walk around with little kart things and sweep up leaves and garbage. Yet this place still has a ridiculous amount of trash everywhere.) who elder Roemer has been talking to since he came here and he's never met with us or came to Church.I think I talked about him last week. But we finally met him this week and he was AWESOME. We only got to teach God is our loving Heavenly Father because he came late and we had another lesson ( with Gjarit and his wife who ended up prishing us so that was a bummer.) but he was just agreeing with all of it and would talk about what he believed and it was all spot on. He talked about how much God has blessed him and how we need him in our lives. I was super mad we had to end early and especially for a prished lesson but I'm glad we got to meet with him and really hope he goes somewhere. He's probably five feet tall and has darker skin but he's hilarious and loves coming to Church so high hopes.
Church this week.... Any guesses on how many people we had??? Nope. 8. Three of our four members weren't there. Mimoza and Pavlo went to Tirana for a birthday Party thing and It rained Hard in the morning so Arsen didn't come. We had Pres. Kraja, the missionaries, and the other Elders Investigator and his two kids. If they wouldn't have come we would have had 5 and almost all missionaries. It's normal now to have less than ten in church. Only in our ward would you go from giving a talk to sitting down and playing the piano for the interlude song. Elder Anderson did that. We do everything and giving talks in Sacrament is going to be nothing when i get home. Every other week in Albanian. It's actually a good way to gauge how my language has improved. I love giving talks but it's tough with the language.
The other big thing this week was we had a mission conference in Durres because President Dykes and his wife came for a mission tour. I believe he's the area 70. But since it's in Durres we have to leave pretty early to get there it's about a 2 hour drive. I don't know if I've told you about our car but we have the worst one in the mission and it has lots of problems. It shifts horribly and sometimes it gets stuck in a gear for a couple seconds and just revs. Our AC will just randomly break so it only works on the highest setting. Lots of problems but still drivable. So we make our way to Durres and the car is making a weird clicking sound off and on then when we get a little bit out of Shkoder it starts making it louder and the car is struggling to accelerate then it won't accelerate at all so we pull over at a gas station and we had to end up leaving it there because there was no way it was making it. So the gas station guy called a taxi for us which was just a xhaxhi's car so we were a little cramped in the back with all three of us. So we make it to the conference on time luckily. It was really good. It's the whole mission... Jamie and molly a couple of your zones is probably about the size of my mission. We only have like 16 sisters and 70 total missionaries i think. But Durres has an actual church building!! I forgot those exist. Ours is just the bottom floor of a building and it's tiny so it was cool to see an actual building in Albania. There is a sister in our mission that reminds me a lot of Jamie so I guess we have an equivalent in each others mission. President's wife spoke then he spoke,Then President Mema spoke (Albania's stake president for the whole country... He's awesome!) President Dykes wife spoke then He Spoke. The whole thing had a faith centered thing but president Dykes wife spoke on your personal story and kind of gaining a personal testimony of things then President Dykes spoke on becoming a master teacher and some other stuff. A lot of stuff was covered and it was about three hours long so I'm just summarizing. It was super good and very enriching and it was really cool to see everyone from my mtc group. I would definitely say I got born in the hardest group. One of the kids has a cleaning lady! What is this South America!? :) but it was really good. Then came the getting home part... Remember we don't have our car. So we ended up taking a bus to Tirana and then a frigon( it's a van that drives to and from certain cities) back to Shkoder but it took a lot longer than it would have if we had our car we left Shkoder at about 7 and didn't get back until 8 30. It was about 7 hours of travel. The travel back was very long. We left Durres at about 4 I think and it took that long because we had to walk to the bus station then walk to the frigon in Tirana and wait for it for a little. It was a LONG day but the conference was very good. and we get to go back to Tirana this week and next week and we don't have a car still so yay frigons!!! This week I have to go to the U.S. embassy for my green card thing then next week we have our actual mission conference mission conference so we get to go back for that. So lots of travel this month. Seems like we do every month but it'll be harder without a car.
Some other things for this week. We were contacting on the bulevard and a guy walked by and he spoke english and he stopped and told us he owned a restaurant in town and he loves talking to english speakers so he'd show us his restaurant and he said he'd be back in 20 minutes. I didn't think he would come back but he did about 30 minutes later so we walked to his restaurant and we had never heard of the place but when we got there we realized it was the traditional place we eat at about once a week. So it made it even cooler. So had a drink with him and talked about his restaurant. He has the one we eat at in town and another one on the river and he showed us pictures and it looked super nice and delicious food. We just sat and talked for a while and he was a super cool guy. It was super cool that we got to meet the owner of that restaurant because we eat there all the time and he told us he'd give a discount. He was just a super cool guy and we spoke English the whole time because he says he likes to practice and keep it up. It was just a really cool experience though and was cool we were there at the right time and he stopped for us.
That's it for this week. We're still having no success but I love this place and know it'll pick up one day and I'm becoming such a better person. I'm excited to look back on the end of my mission and see how different and better I've become. I love you all. 8000 miles is a long ways and i hope my prayers get to you over the ocean. :) I'll be the only missionary in two weeks!!! That's weird to think about... I remember taking Molly to the MTC. Where does the time go?! Love you all keep me in your prayers.
All Packages are to be shipped to the Mission office. Postal Service will work, but the best way to do it is to use DHL.
DHL is more secure and has a much better tracking ability. The Postal Service here is not as good as it could be and sometimes packages get lost and/or it takes an extra-long time to arrive.
DHL is much more secure. It may be a little more money, I am not sure how much, but it will get here faster and in better shape.
As far as delivery before Christmas the packages are generally delivered monthly to the areas thru the Zone Leaders that come to Tirana for Mission Leaders Training and take the mail and Packages back to their area with them.
So, again, the best address to ship packages to is to the Mission office.
Make sure they use This Address:
Adriatic South Mission
Attn: Missionary Name here
P.O. Box 2984
Rruga Qemal stafa, Vila 1
Përballë Postës Nr. 22
Tirana, Albania
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