Elder Guymon's Awesome Adriatic Adventures: July 2015

July 13, 2015

Alright so second week here in Kosovo!

This week we lost water for a few days. I had to shower by dumping a 5 liter bottle on my head. And we just had to use a bunch of reserve water we had for anything. (There's more of a story to this that I won't put in the blog)

We also had our first zone meeting this week and I finally got to meet the Macedonian missionaries. Holy cow those kids are crazy! I had a lot of fun with them for the half a day I hung out with them! The thing is they really are basically not a part of our mission just because no one ever goes there and they don't speak our language and don't come to a lot of things so not a ton of super vision! They are really cool though and to be honest their work isn't too much harder than it is here. It's just that they are stuck there for 2 years like that!

The food here is some awesome! One place we go to is called Tip Top and it basically looks like a 70's diner and the food is only $1.50 a person and it's pretty good but just super greasy and not very healthy so I can only eat there a couple times a week! :) It's so awesome how cheap food is here though! Also we found a soft serve ice cream place and it tastes exactly like frosties! Best discovery ever!!

Finally my gheg is coming along and I'm starting to use it! It for sure isn't easy but I understand people now which is better than last week! It's crazy I've been studying it more and there are just so many essential things that are changed it feels so different! Like you really have to be thinking to speak it one way or another it's not just a little slip into a different way to speak!

This week we met 3 really awesome people contacting! The first 2 are a couple who speak perfect English and are actually working for a Canadian company here - both agnostic but are pretty interested in learning more about what we believe and wanted to read the Book of Mormon to see if they really could find an answer.

The 2nd guy is Kosovar but he lived in Australia for 4 years during the big war so his English is perfect too and he was super interested in what we taught and talked about how he really considers himself spiritual. We taught him this week and he has some weird ideas but he wasn't too far off from the truth in some ways and just needs some little adjustments! What a help priesthood and revelation are holy cow!

Something funny contacting this week was I got to rebuff one of the classic Muslim arguments. I was talking to this guy and I could tell he was not really interested and just kinda wanted to prove he was right and one thing he said was why do you worship the cross? If Jesus died in an Electric chair would you worship that? And I was just like we don't worship the cross. We like to think about Him and the life he lived and the example He set for us. Then he got really quiet...he had no idea what to say!

Also something very crazy this week is I went to my first Funeral. Never thought that would happen out here on my mission. The 2nd councilor in the branch presidency's wife had been sick for a long time and she passed away this week and he invited us to her funeral and we really felt the need to go since we would be the only ones from the branch there. It was a muslim funeral though and man it was different! We had to take our tags off and there was this huge procession and all this stuff but all of it was done by the Hoxha and Nazim (the 2nd councilor) really had no part in the funeral or anything at all. Most of what they said was in Aarabic so most people didn't even understand anything that was being said.

We are going to go back this week and dedicate the grave.

Anyway I was kinda distracted today with other stuff so I hope this all made sense but I'm doing awesome and Kosovo is just so cool! This place is a blast!

I love you all and hope you keep doing the three easy things to keep your testimony! Pray, read your scriptures and go to church!!

Loves from Kosovo!!

This stuff is awesome!!

70s greasy diner...so good!!

Mosques are everywhere!!

Sister Missionaries

Bill Clinton!?

Our Chapel

July 6, 2015

So basically my life has never been so awesome! Sure I've had really great times in my life - but wow I'm having an absolute blast right now and seriously everything about this transfer is pretty much perfect!! Ahh! I just never realized how much fun this can and should be! I have sooo much to write about I hope I get it all and it all makes sense!

So to begin, Tuesdays were transfers. So we went to the mission office at 9am for meetings and training for District leaders and stuff which was good. President made an example of me a couple times just asking me if I was nervous for being such a young district leader and but it was all good. Then just so much craziness! I finally met Elder Holm and he is awesome - didn't really get to know him much at that point we just talked a bit. So our bus to go to Prishtina was leaving at 4pm so we thought we were going to have a lot of time sitting around but I was busy the whole time! A bunch of the new missionaries went to the Police office to do somethings with visas or something idk but they didn't accept three of our passport photos because "the background wasn't white enough" like what the heck these things are good enough for America!! So then we were running all over Tirana looking for a place to get passport photos done but we found a place. Then we had to help people with moving around luggage and stuff and getting it loaded into cars and by the end of all this craziness it was 3:45pm and we're worried that we were going to miss the bus and have to spend the night there! Luckily we made it and then began our bus journey! It was a 4 and a half hour bus ride and it was a super pretty drive up through the mountains and Holm and I finally got time to talk a lot and stuff.

So Elder Holm is awesome we get along super well and I'm so happy! He just got off a difficult transfer so we are both just super grateful to be with each other and we are pretty similar! He has an immense amount of geek knowledge like me! Like he has played pretty much every video game I have played and his favorite movies are star wars! Its awesome! He is also hilarious like everyone in the mission loves him just because he is so funny and fun to be around and he just jokes around with everyone! He didn't go to college before coming here but this is his last transfer and he is planning on going to BYU Provo and study mechanical engineering. We seriously just get along super well!!

Finally we made it to Prishtina and we went to our house where we discovered a pretty big clean up job waiting for us. The elders who were in our apartment last left it a huge mess!! Elder Holm really likes to have the house clean which is pretty awesome so those first few days we just totally deep cleaned the place and finally it's getting up to shape. Our fridge had some nasty stuff and we had to bleach out the whole thing which was a sucky job. But our house really is pretty nice!

So first impressions of Prishtina, HOLY COW ITS SO NICE! The city is super pretty and there are more trees and not as much trash and dirt. So the language is definitely Albanian but its pretty darn different! My first day there were a few people that I absolutely did not understand. And some people don't understand me here because my language is too Southern but it's getting easier as the week goes on. Also I don't know if you know this but we use the Euro here which is dope! The food has been awesome so far! They have a Thai restaurant here which is clutch!! SO money! And they give missionaries discounts because we have been coming for so long! For fourth of July we had burgers at a place that were so good. Like some real burgers it was awesome! Also Byrek here is made more like Spring roles which is super weird! Today we had Doners that were money, they were more Turkish than they are in Albania so they had more spice and stuff which is so good.

So in my district it's me and Elder Holm, The Zone leaders (Elder Kek and Elder Razband), Motra Ariza and Motra Cuni (a chilean and an Albanian! We don't have american sisters), and a senior couple Elder and Sister Hydrick! The zone leaders are so fun I love both of them and we do a lot of stuff with them! We also do a decent amount of stuff with the sisters too! And the Hydricks are awesome! So something funny about Prishtina is something called the bubble! Basically all missionary work is done within this little bubble. The church and all the missionary houses are within about 5 minutes of each other which means that us missionaries are together pretty frequently which is awesome and also the area where we do most of our street contacting (The Boulevard) is about a 7 min. walk down from all of our houses! It's so nice being so close to everything.

There are way more tourists and foreigners here in Prishtina I mean it's not over flowing by any means but you probably see a couple foreigners a day. Most are from Germany or Scandinavia but occasionally you'll get an American or British dude thrown in. There are actually these 2 girls who are doing internships from America that we have talked to a couple times! It's really awesome being able to talk to Americans and at first talking to them they were just wondering what we were doing and we talked about random stuff but then they are starting to ask questions about the church and are beginning to become interested, it's interesting to see the change. We aren't converting them by any means but I'd put money down that if they saw missionaries again back in America they would go talk to them.

So in Prishtina the work is very different! We pretty much do contacting all day. Elder Holm is pretty dang good at street contacting! Especially because here if you even mention Jesus Christ people will pretty much instantly just leave. It's interesting Motra Zollanger told me before I came here that my testimony of Christ would grow a ton because he gets ripped out here and it's true. I really miss being able to talk about Christ. Obviously when we teach and when we have church we get to talk more about Jesus but out on the street it just means you aren't going to have any success if you talk about him. So Elder Holm is really good at talking about families and we get a lot of good numbers doing that! It's also extra hard right now because Ramadan is going on so the more religious Muslims are fasting during the days and so they are a little more irritable and less willing to listen to us because they are constantly reminded of their religion. Most people are pretty nice though - there are some people that really try to argue with us and tell us we are bad people but that's all good! Something that has helped me is Holm showed me this talk from BYU called "Understanding Islam" and that is super important to listen to if you serve here in Kosovo.

So a little about the branch - Ya it's a branch and it has about 25 active members but of those 25 active members there are about 5 that are really solid like you can ask them to do callings or clean up the church or stuff like that, maybe 6, so if that puts things into perspective for you people in Utah. I never could have imagined what this would be like. There are these 2 really awesome members named Betim and Suade and they are both mid 20's and pretty smart guys, they speak English perfectly and are so fun! They are just super cool and a lot of fun to hang out with. They have also both been members for only a year but a lot falls on them because they are the only ones willing to do things! Then the branch went through a major change just a couple months ago where the branch president used to be an American from the base but it has now switched to an Albanian and there have been some problems that have come with that - Elder Hydrick is 1st councilor in the presidency and the 2nd councilor hasn't been able to come to church because his wife is actually about to die from cancer but I've heard he is a pretty solid member. The thing is The Branch President really is hard to work with but we have talked a lot about how we just need to support him so the branch can grow better and that he is slowly learning just like the rest of us! He has only been active in the church for 5 years! The missionaries do a whole lot for this branch right now and we are trying to slowly move away from that without causing problems.

So we actually had 4th of July this week and believe it or not I had a pretty good American time! People from Kosovo love Americans almost as much as they hate Serbians (it's a lot). In fact they not only celebrate 4th of July for America but they have a specific day set aside (I forget when) called thank you America day!! So the big billboard at the end of the boardwalk kept playing messages about happy America independence day and there were a few American flags and stuff! We also went with the other Elders and got some amazing burgers to celebrate! And the night before there was a branch party for it which was pretty fun - I got to listen to some good old stake dance music! Then that night there was a pretty awesome firework show but sadly it got cut short because of some threat or something idk?!

So ya life is pretty awesome just having a great time here in Kosovo and an awesome time with Elder Holm. I know 100% that this is God's way of giving me a little treat after my last transfer because ya I really did learn a whole lot but man it was hard!!

I love you all and hope you're having a great time! Because I am!