This week has been full of ups and downs. Tuesday I had a split with the Zone Leaders in Tirana after zone training. I went with Elder Rawlings and stayed in Tirana for the night and Elder Roemer went with Elder Ostergard back to Shkoder. It was a great exchange!! It was exactly what I needed and Elder Rawlings taught me a lot. That night we had a couple lessons and taught English Class, helped some sisters with a lesson then went and contacted for a bit and he taught me that I should have a huge smile and wave at people and they stop a lot more. It is definitely true. That doesn't sound like very much to teach someone but it is a little difference that has helped a lot. Getting ignored and told no all day isn't really the best thing so I came up with the philosophy this week that I will treat everyone like my best friend or family who I haven't seen in two years and be as excited to see them as I would my family after two years. It really helps because it makes me excited to talk to everyone and I need to do everything I can to get them to listen to this message. Back to the exchange. After contacting we went back to the house and did planing and other stuff. They have a tradition of getting milk and cookies everynight so we bought some before we went back and had those. The next morning we have time to work out in the morning and we started and elder Rawlings played this motivation speech which i'd heard before but had forgotten about and it played on repeat about five times. It's only about 5 minutes long. Apparently he plays it every morning. But it got me super pumped to work hard and reminded me how hard I need to want to be successful. I think only Jarod will know what it is it talks about a guy goes to a guru and asks him how to be successful and they go to the beach and and the guru asks him if he wants to be successful and he says yes so he says go out into the water and they keep going farther and farther and then the guru holds him under until he almost passes out then pulls him up and says what did you just want to do? Breathe! he replies and then the guy giving the speech talks about if you want to be successful you have to want it more than you want to breathe and other things. I LOVE it and it was perfect to get me excited to work harder and do what I need to. Turns out my comp has is on his hard drive so i'm going to listen to it every morning. So that was lesson number two. Then we had personal study and then comp study and Elder Rawlings taught me how important the book of mormon is and that if they it's true they know that Joseph Smith is a true prophet which means our church is true which means we have God's authority which means they need to get baptized and become a member. It was a good lesson to learn and I definitely needed it. We ended with a talk by Elder Holland. Safety for the Soul i think it's called which is basically his testimony of the Book of Mormon. It is a powerful witness of the Book of Mormon you should all go listen to it. If i could bear that powerful of a witness this whole city would be converted right now. Another thing he told me was that the area doesn't matter its the missionaries that are there and I can turn it into the area that everyone wants to go to because it's so successful it's all up to me. So i'm am going to work as hard as I can here and turn this place around. My mission president promised me in his letter last week that there would be more than 9 people in church when I left so I just need to work to see the much promised success. He also told me that there will be more than 1 ward here one day and i'm laying the foundation for it so I'm going to do everything I can to get this place successful.
With that said this place is sllllooooowwww. Right now. We are working hard and not getting any success. We are trying to fine tune everything and get everything where it needs to be so we don't have anything holding us back. This place is going to explode soon. EXPLOSION. (Sam and Jarod you better appreciate that). Before I leave this place we are going to have so much work and success we won't be able to handle it all. I am trying to give it my all and become better everyday but bearing your afflictions with patience is a lot harder than it sounds sometimes. We will have success. Pali the guy we met with and were super excited about hasn't met with us again and said that "he'd call us" one of my favorite passive aggressive excuses and Gjergj the old xhaxhi we were teaching said he's too old to learn anything else which I guess is a super common excuse with the older people here But Saturday we tracted into this older couple and had a pretty good lesson with them and they said we could come back so we're going to call and try to set up a return appointment. He's catholic and she's muslim but both were super receptive and attentive so it was good. People struggle with praying here. We explain it and explain it and they don't really understand. So we usually end up just doing it but we'll get better and teaching it it's just weird for people here and Sunday we had a lesson with a guy we contacted into last week. He brought his son and we taught them the restoration. He didn't seem too solid but his son was pretty receptive. The guy was probably 50 and his son was in his 20's. hopefully we can set up another lesson with them but they didn't seem too promising. We will get a progressing investigator soon. This isn't a good thing but when I see people actually progressing and learning this gospel it's weird for me to see. This was a great city to be born into!!! :D Speaking of being born. You wanted to know more about my father. His Name is Elder Roemer. He is from A little town in Nevada call Alamo. The best way to describe him is he's half Swiss and he loves animals. His dad is from Switzerland and runs a watch company. So he's literally half swiss. and He LOVES animals. The members that live below us have two little puppies and they are super cute but he loves them. Whenever we see a cat in the street he always tries to pet it. He's great though! He is on the quieter side but he's not super shy or anything. We grow closer everyday. On Wednesday before one of our prayers I said I have a goal to make this an area where everyone wants to come to and he looked over at me and said is that the Lords goal?! and we both just bust out laughing. It's great. We get along and there isn't really anything that bothers each other. He's a great Dad. If you have any other specific questions about him or anything let me know!
I Love you all. READ YOUR SCRIPTURES. Those things are great. I love you and miss you all like cray. Keep me in your prayers. 1 month away from being your favorite missionary. Elder Szabo


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