Elder Guymon's Awesome Adriatic Adventures: Ramble of the week :)

April 27, 2015

Hey all! It's your favorite ramble of the week! To start off I'm going to answer some questions.

I definitely am beginning to see a difference in my language - I know that I am a lot better than when I started and I can pretty much get by talking to anyone it's just really hard and I have to ask them to repeat things or rephrase it sometimes. Also talking on the phone is pretty much impossible still. For language study it's all pretty much just vocab at this point and a little bit of grammar every once in a while. I get my words from the scriptures, church magazines, restaurant menus, just random stuff! I haven't really gone searching for any language tools besides that I bought 2 dictionaries. The milk here really isn't that different! We buy milk in bottles but you can buy box milk! It just tastes like its been cooked almost or something but I don't think it's bad or anything. I really don't miss any food other than munchies, like all the food here is soo good but man I loveeee chips and stuff like that. This next week I'm going to be specifically looking for nuts and dried fruit and stuff like that. I actually haven't thought about popcorn though so I'll have to look for that. And yes we do have a microwave. So there are just 4 missionaries in my ward, us and the sisters and our attendance is actually about 70 people. I can do anything on the internet there aren't any specific guidelines or restrictions or anything! It's basically you're a missionary so don't be an idiot, but ya I can go to links you send me and stuff! So for transfers they are pretty much all 12 weeks but there are like little mini transfers at 6 weeks just based on the revelation of the mission president. We walk quite a bit everyday, our house is actually pretty far from the church it's kinda annoying because everything we do is there or farther so going back and forth from our house like isn't an option very often. We do use public transportation quite a bit, we get monthly bus passes and so that's what we use when we have to go far somewhere. Energy wise just kinda depends on the day really. Some days we get home and I go to sleep at 9:30 and other nights I just lay in bed with my rubiks cube till after 10:30! A big influence on my energy levels is food! It definitely is good to have food in you let me tell you! With our 2 hour lunch idk we eat and chill, sometimes sleep, extra study. I have yet to eat at a members home, but I did get a $0.50 ice cream paid for by a member this week so there is something!! I see 2 adult missionary couples fairly frequently. 1 couple runs the institute and so we see them a couple times a week with investigators, the other works in the mission office and are pretty close so we just see them sometimes, DEFINITELY no tracting though, they don't speak a lick of Albanian - Don't have any in my ward though. We have district meetings every week and I actually really enjoy those! I listen to music pretty much every day while I'm working out, sometimes during lunch, and at night. I definitely feel I was a little too conservative with my music choices but all the missionaries share music on usb's and stuff so I'll slowly be gathering a collection.

Ok regular email now,

We went to a mosque and it was my first time! It was super different! It was so beautiful inside like it was really so pretty but I'm not going to lie it was just a different feeling in there, I'm not sure how to describe it.

So this week at one of our lunches with our whole district we were talking and some people started talking about first transfer munchies so this is actually a thing to be hungry all the time it's not just me! It's driving me crazy though holy cow! I wonder why it is that this happens to a lot of people. They also said that your first transfer is the worst for being tired, and then its gets bad again towards the end! Another thing they said is that your fist transfer is like super long compared to the rest so we'll see, but I haven't felt like time has been going all that slow here! Unfortunately we lost our investigator Andi this week. I kinda felt like it might be coming, he is a great guy and all but he just kinda has a good time talking to us he just isn't interested in actually converting!

Something that was kinda a bummer this week is a part of the first transfer training thing we were watching the district videos about working with the ward and members and like that pretty much isn't a thing here. Like we work with some members and stuff but things like ward council meeting or ward missionaries are not even a thing. We pray the bishop gets to church 5 min. before the meeting starts! It's just like man we really are super lonely as missionaries. You wonder why RM's are so awkward! It's because missionaries don't have real relationships for 2 years! If you don't get along with your companion you have you and you have Heavenly Father and that is it. I definitely have felt the blessing of prayer this week just to be able to talk to someone about everything. I definitely didn't use prayer to the extent I could before my mission!

I had some trouble getting along with my companion this week, he is super bothered and annoyed whenever people mess with what he thinks is a good work schedule which includes district activities which I pretty much need so that I can talk to people in english, and he tried to stop me a couple times this week from talking about things not related to missionary work (like favorite movies) and during companionship inventory I was like listen if you don't want to talk about other stuff fine but I'm going to ok. Then he was annoyed with me during the week because I was talking about movies to some other missionaries and we taught a lesson afterwards and he didn't let me say a single word. I was pissed after that one. Like idk I'm not sure we are going to get along super great for the rest of this transfer - hopefully it will get better.

Seriously the work here is so different from how the Preach my Gospel describes it goes! It's interesting as a missionary how people of different ages don't really affect you like you'd think it would be hard to tell a 45 year old how to live their life and stuff but personally I don't even notice any difference between him or a 20 year old they are both God's children that can grow.

It was awesome, on Saturday Elder Greener and I convinced our district to give it a go and play soccer every Saturday morning so we invited a bunch of members and investigators to come and only one member showed up and we were like noooo we are never going to get to do this again but we were like let's just go show up at a soccer field and see if some people will come play so we went and we ended up having a huge game of soccer with a bunch of Quns (boys)! It was soooo fun! Also the new intern (they come to study under our stake president, president mema, for political science from BYU-Idaho) is here and he came and played with us! His name is Aaron and he is from Minnesota and is half Mexican so Albanians sometimes think he is Albanian but he doesn't speak the language at all so it's hilarious!! And they all said they'd come next week and bring friends! and we shared a little spiritual message after!

This Sunday was kinda crazy! First of all we went into one of our investigators house and woke him up to come to church in the morning (his mom is a member and said it's cool) he is 20 and is totally dodging us but I feel like if we can just start getting him to show up to things we could really help him out! We also finally got this girl who we met the first week to come to church who hasn't been to church for like 5 years just because she has been super busy but she is awesome and she brought her little cousin who is 12 and after church he asked us if he could be baptized!!! We were like, ya you can man! We also got a new investigator who was taught by missionaries here in Albania 5 years ago and was ready for baptism but then he moved to England for his job but he is back and is totally wanting to join the church! Faton is still doing awesome and should be baptized in the next couple weeks!

Anyway sorry this letter is kinda all over the place! Actually I have another challenge for all yall this week! Maybe you already do this and are just better than I was but I would invite you to try a few times this week after you say your prayer to keep your eyes closed and not move and just listen for like 10-20 seconds. I have started doing that for every prayer and even if sometimes I don't always hear answers immediately they are cherished seconds where I just feel like I'm getting recharged by the spirit, it's awesome!

I had a way cool experience this week giving a priesthood blessing and I told her that she always had angels from her family tree supporting her from the left and the right and afterwards I thought hey I have been promised that too! That's awesome! It really helps when I am feeling bummed out that I have my homies from up in our family tree right here with me!

Anyway love you all have a great week! Pac Fat!