Elder Guymon's Awesome Adriatic Adventures: Interesting week

June 15, 2015

Alrighty so this week has certainly been interesting, it feels like it's gone by so fast but at the same time Monday seems like a year ago!!

For any of you wondering we are given $200 a month per missionary here in this mission. Which is quite a bit of money. We never have to think about it but I have heard some missionaries are worse than others. Verushi said that a normal family of 4 lives off of $200 a month and we as two missionaries are living off of $400 so... ya.

I have a couple pretty crazy stories this week! First off I met a crazy guy! We were outside the church and this guy just came up to me and was like "can you take this notebook to the leaders of your church" in English which was super weird and he just gave off a crazy vibe and I was like uhh i dont think so and he just gave it to me and said he was so sorry for all that he has done to America and that he didn't mean what he said in his letters and then ran off. Very weird. I opened the notebook and it is in English and is like the weirdest stuff ever! This guy wrote down "letters" to America and China trying to start a war between them and talked about the inner devil of people, idk it's super weird. You better believe I kept that thing though!

I also had my first interview with President Wiedmann man that was so different than what I imagined! I pretty much got in there and we just did small talk for 30 min! :)

Another interesting thing I realized this week is how free we are! Like often times it seems like our schedules are so strict and we are always busy and then one day I was like holy cow we could just not do anything. We don't have someone watching us. And I was just thinking that it's a miracle that missionary work is being done by a bunch of unsupervised 18-22 year old kids running around! :) That really is a miracle! :)

This weeks work was awesome though! We left a bunch of our investigators that we had been teaching but just weren't progressing because we wanted to find people prepared right now for the gospel and we have found some DOPE investigators!

1. Paula, this kid is 14 and has a lisp (idk I guess we work well with speech impediments) and he is super interested in the church and school is out right now so he has infinite time to read! He also brings his cute little 4 year old sister to church! His mom wants them to join our church but she's not sure herself just cause she's so busy all the time but I bet she changes with time! Their dad is in prison for.. idk??

2. Elion, this hommie is a soldier and he's like a bigger guy with a small voice! He speaks pretty quietly and slowly but it means a lot what he says. He is pretty awesome and has read everything we have asked him to and I think he'll be baptized.

3. Gjini! This guy is 16 and is staying with this member family for the summer and he has been to church before and is super interested! His friend in the family is named Mateu and he is also 16 and totally reminds of Grant! In Gjini's prayer he said I know the BoM is true which was pretty funny but I thought it was awesome! Like why not bear your testimony to Heavenly Father?

4/5. (My personal favorites) H. and S., these two guys are NUTS!! They were given to us by the sisters (Elders are only allowed to teach guys and Sisters are only allowed to teach girls in this mission) and they are from IRAN!!!!!!! Like literally Americans got them out of Iran and they are now waiting here to be allowed into America as political refugees. Holy cow - teaching these guys blows my mind! Guys - I'm teaching the gospel to Iranians!! That's so freaking sick - I get so hyped thinking about it! I would never have dreamed of doing something so awesome! They speak Pharsee and English alright. They are pretty hard to teach because their English isn't great and we use weird words in our gospel but we have been able to find some materials in Arabic which they know as well and there is actually a district president some where around here who speaks arabic because he is an RM from Georgia or something so we might do a skype lesson with him so he can help us!

Also Idk if yall have seen my picture on the Adriatic South Facebook page here but a lot of the members here have seen it so now I'm famous as the missionary who posed with a girls fan for a picture! It was only a matter of time before I made an idiot of myself!

A very very strange thing that happened to me this week was being the last person a woman met before she had her baby. In Albania apparently this is a big deal and an even bigger deal since I am a missionary so it was a really good sign for her baby. So I was street contacting and I gave this lady a card but she wasn't interested and then 2 days later she called us and was like is this Guymon? and she was like Hey you are the last person I met before I had my baby can we meet up some time next week and so I was super confused but Verushi was like ya you have to it's normal. So I guess they give you stuff and sometimes you go out for dinner and sometimes they name their child after you?!? What are the chances of course these weird things happen to me. So we met up with her and she was super excited to see me and had this whole goody bag prepared for me and just talked about her baby and said she had been praying for it to go well and then I was the last person she met so it was a good sign and the she did the whole kiss my cheeks thing which was the first time for me....crazy! :)

This week in Futbol the kids got even more creative with my nickname! Literally the entire game these kids were coming up with new rhymes for "Pallati" (skyscraper) and holy cow these things were clever! Also Having a nickname got me in as 2nd pick which was pretty dope! But seriously these rhymes were so funny! They don't sound as good in English but 2 of the best ones were: "oh Pallati where do you keep your stairs" and "Its a Pallat without a permit! Lets destroy it!" :)

This week Faton has helped us with a couple lessons and man it's just been awesome like he totally is a huge help and he has only been a member for a few weeks it's insane! What a difference the Holy Ghost makes!

Something interesting I learned this week which is kinda sad is I learned a little about the Macedonian missionaries. idk how many there are but there are very few and they are in the same zone as the Kosovo missionaries and one of the sisters here was in that zone for a bit and saw them every once in a while and she was like man those guys were just really depressed - they pretty much stay in one spot their whole mission and never see any change because they can't do actual proselyting and stuff like that there! That would be way hard! and you better hope you like your companion!!

Also this Sunday was absolutely insane! So a ton of people were gone from our ward because of the Choir that was in Vlore and we only had the 2nd councilor in our bishopric there and Elder Verushi got a call the night before saying he had to give a talk. so we went and got H. and S. from where they live and then on the way to church (20 min. before it started) I got a phone call and the 2nd couniclor said I had to give a talk too!! I literally found 2 scriptures and just went for it because I didn't have anytime to prepare I was explaining everything to my two investigators who didn't speak albanian! So pretty much that was the 2nd time I remember really crashing and burning since that one time when I had a big head and thought I didn't need to prepare my talk when I was 10 years old. Luckily Algida said that my Albanian language was actually perfect and I didn't make a mistake there so it was just my actual talk that sucked not my language! Then I had to translate all of church from Albanian to English for my investigators and holy cow that was soooo hard. I was physically and mentally drained after church. I just went home and pretty much went into a coma! They had a really good time though and were like that is the first time we have ever been to church and it was really good thank you so much for bringing us! I'm really not a fan of translating from Albanian to English. I think I could do English to Albanian pretty easily and I'm actually beginning to try to think in Albanian but man vice versa sucks!

Anyway lots of just very crazy things this week but it's been good and I really am foreseeing some good success with these new investigators!

I hope you all are having a great week and keep doing what you need to be doing! I'll be here in Albania if you need me!!