Happy Birthday to me!

August 31, 2015

Alright so believe it or not I did survive to the age of 20! It wasn't exactly the best week here in Prishtina work wise but it was still pretty good and we find our ways to have fun and enjoy what we do. 
We had the most people not show up to lessons that we have had since being here, 16! We would plan so many lessons and people would say they are coming and then they just don't it's so annoying! 

  

  We talked to Kaltrina who is a catholic girl in our English course a little about her conversion from being a Muslim and it's pretty crazy just like all the other members here. So basically one Christmas she was watching tv and she watched this movie about the life of Jesus and she just said that the spirit touched her so strong and from that moment on she knew that she was a Christian. She got a bible from a Protestant church and read it all then it took her a little while to decide what Christian faith she would join and she finally chose Catholic and was baptized on Christmas a year from when she saw the film. After she was baptized her family and most of her friends all stopped talking to her and told her she wasn't allowed to come to their house. Then about a year after she was baptized her sister got married and her family let her go to that and she has been working on building her relationship with them since then. It's just so crazy how closed off a lot of this culture is because that story is pretty regular for people that become Christian. Kaltrina said that after she converted she got some threats on facebook and stuff like that and she still gets people messing with her!

  Something super awesome this week is the food we had! At Filmcity we bought a package of American beef burgers and we had those for 2 days and I just about died.  I'm not even that big of a burger guy but those things were so good and you could never find anything like that here. We had a grill (stove) day and made hotdogs and burgers! I'm really hoping we can do it again sometime next month!

 

  This week we were out contacting and Elder Holm talked to the funniest guy ever! So normally we aren't allowed to contact just because bad things can happen if it' a Muslim but this guy was Christian and so Elder Holm totally just kept him going and it was hilarious. The guy was just going off saying that Elder Holm shouldn't be here talking to people about families if he wasn't married because he couldn't help people with their family problems, and that Americans had a lot of broken families so he couldn't help the Kosovo people. Then he was just being super disrespectful and all this stuff and at the end Elder Holm was just like "you have been super disrespectful and rude to me and I would never do that to you because I understand that you have the right to believe what you want.  I hope you have a good day" and just turned around and the guy was totally speechless for a few seconds and then was just like well I'm not saying you're wrong I'm just saying you're confused and told him to read the bible and left.

  Then the opposite end of the spectrum this Muslim kid stopped and was talking to us and he was super nice and was telling us that we should read the Quran but he was super respectful and was just saying he will read our book and pray about it but we should do the same about the Quran because he believed that it would make us better people and that it would help us after this life. Ya sure he wasn't exactly a golden contact but he was just so genuinely respectful and was just another testament to me that these closed off people are everywhere its not just Muslims, Christians, or another religion it's just based on the individual. 

  One day we were out contacting on the boulevard and Bernd (one of our friends, a lawyer from Germany working here) was talking to us when this Muslim kid (you can usually tell because they have pretty dope beards, pretty much everyone has facial hair here)  came up and started asking us about our religion and not really hostily just kinda curious and after he left Bernd was like you should just tell people that you work in hospitals and help people, not that you teach people about your religion, you don't know about why they are asking you these questions. It was pretty funny cause I was like awww Bernd is looking out for us! It kinda felt like protective fatherly advice! The kid was seriously just a curious teenager though, Bernd thinks everyone is a criminal here.

  Also... It was my birthday yesterday! I have got to say on the scale of birthdays this is probably the lamest one that I have had. :) Not trying to be depressing or anything because I really didn't mind it's just birthdays can't really be big days out here! We did do some fun things though! We ate a ton of unhealthy food! I made those muffins from the mix you sent me in the morning for breakfast by baking them as a loaf of bread. Then in the evening I made the cookies from the mix you sent and put a candle in it to celebrate! Pretty weird that I'm 20 now though!  There are a ton of things that happen in the 20's... I'm probably going to get married, have kids, graduate college, and find my career all during this next decade so that's crazy! 

  On Sunday I got surprised when the Branch President told me that I had to give a talk if the member who was supposed to do it didn't come! I grabbed some scriptures and decided I was going to talk about Grace  and had it all planned and then right before Sacrament she showed up! Whew dodged a bullet! It was really cool though because when the speaker before her got up to speak they talked a little about Grace and my talked would have gone perfectly with all that they said! I know that it was revelation that made me choose Grace to use as my topic and I just love how the spirit can do that. I had no idea what they would speak about but it didn't matter because Heavenly Father did!

 Anyway I'm a big 20 year old now! I love you all - thank you so much for the birthday wishes! You're the best!

p.s.  the mission office sent me a text saying they have a package for me!  Now I just have to wait for someone to come here and give it to me!   

Birthday Cookies!

All the signs here are in Albanian and Serbian but they cross out the serbian spelling because they hate them so much.

Selfie!

Film City

August 24, 2015

Hello all pretty awesome week in Prishtina! They pretty much are all awesome of course somehow but that's just how I feel! Like I think about it and there are lots of reasons I can be mad or frustrated and I am sometimes but for the most part I'm just having an awesome time! Also today is my companions birthday so that is pretty funny! He is almost exactly a year older than me! Today was a pretty awesome P-Day but I'll save that for last!

  First thing that has been crazy is the German investigators the sisters have. So I don't know if I have told you about them but they are homeless and it's been a really weird situation but President Wieddman decided that we should be for them and gave them a hotel room for 20 days to kinda give them a kick start and since then things have just gotten crazier and crazier! Now I guess the wife Angela is having some super serious health problems and might have to get sent back to Germany to get health care idk??  We'll see what happens.

  This week we have actually had some pretty cool successful things happening! It was a good feeling week! We definitely had a lot of lessons not work out for us but we were able to get some good stuff happening and had a couple second lessons which is super awesome! We also met a really cool guy this week named, N...he is a Palestinian from Jordan! He is working for the United Arab Emirates building a hospital here in Kosovo. He has done a ton of super awesome things and has some great stories. When he found out we had the Book of Mormon in Arabic he was so excited, he has read the Bible before because a friend of his he met in the US army gave it to him but it was in English. He is also our first investigator in church this transfer! 2 months without an investigator in church but we finally got one! Sadly we are like 99% sure he's not ready to be baptised right now and will be more like a casual investigator/friend but a lot of times that is all we can ask for here and we just need to be happy improving peoples knowledge of our church and drawing them closer to God.

  We also have been doing a ton of contacting this week with the other Elders and that has been pretty fun and also pretty effective! Elder Munci puts this picture of Jesus in his front pocket sticking out so everyone can see and it's pretty funny the reaction he gets from some people! I was like dude you know people really aren't going to want to talk to you as much!  Like sometimes you will be talking to people and you can see them look at your tag and realize Jesus Christ is written in big letters and they will just stop talking and leave! But Munci is like well they are going to have to talk to him again at judgement day so might as well try to get them to talk to Him now! It was pretty funny! :) We also did a bunch of goofie things together like dancing and like each saying one word to make a whole sentence to try to get people to stop and even if it didn't work every time it got people to laugh which is always good! You have to have some fun here or it could get really depressing!

  Something kinda funny that people do here in Kosovo is they use Arabic words when they are talking to people a lot of the time just because they are so culturally Muslim (we actually had a Kosovar from England come up to us and was like "I never dreamed I would see Mormons in Kosovo what the heck are you guys doing here?! This is the 2nd most Muslim country in the world!" I don't think that is actually true but it was really funny, he was super nice and was giving us suggestions of cities here in Kosovo that would be receptive to our message!) but one thing that they do is for like good friends sometimes they will say Salam Alaikum which means may the peace of God be open to you basically - and the other person says Alaikum Salam back (basically you too) but teenagers will say it to us all the time trying to be tools because they know we are christian missionaries and they always are super surprised when we actually know what to say back! But us Elders have been out contacting together we have been thinking of other things to say back which are pretty funny but have very degrees of maybe going to get people mad at us. Like Salam in Albanian is basically Salami and so this one time in Gjakova the District Leader over there said "Alaikum Proshute" back to someone because Proshute is ham and I guess they guy give him a pretty dirty look! Sometimes Elder Holm and I will just say Konichiwa back to people that say it to us because they are saying Hi to us in a random language so we do it back in a random language. The worst though is Elder Muncy asked this one cool muslim guy who was talking to them in English how to say may the peace of Jesus be open to you because Jesus in that language is Isa so often times when we are teaching that is how we have to explain Christ to people which is super weird but the guy was like I'm not totally sure but even if I did know you should never say that to anyone because they might kill you! I was like what the heck!

  We also had this one guy come up to us this week and start talking to us in English and that conversation honestly made my day! I said hi to him in Albanian and he was like ok I guess I have nothing going on right now so I'll talk to you and then he started talking in English and he is actually a computer science major and was hilarious.  He said, "ya I'm going to be honest if you ever see me over at your church it's because I'm trying to leave this country so if you just want to kick me out when I come I won't feel offended" because he was telling us I guess he has heard that sometimes it is easier for Christians to get out of Kosovo because sometimes they are in danger living here and so some people just convert to leave. (It's next to impossible for Kosovars to leave this country, they think of it as a prison)

  Then finally this PDay was awesome! It was Elder Holm's birthday and one of the soldiers who comes to church invited us to come have lunch with him on his base which is Film City here in Prishtina!  I'm pretty sure that we are the first missionaries to ever go there and it was so awesome! It is a NATO camp so there are actual military units from like 20 different countries and it is super posh for a military camp. Brother Tucker (the member we were visiting) said he almost feels guilty working there just because he has never seen a base that nice! They have some really good restaurants and they have a Subway! It's the only one in the mission and it was seriously like stepping into America! It was so cool being there and it was really nice to visit Brother Tucker because he is a super funny cool guy.

I'm just finishing up the Book of Mormon using a student manual which has been super awesome!  I've been learning a ton of little things that have fallen through the cracks for me.  They aren't huge or anything but just cool cause the little things add up.  I'm in 3 Nephi right now so obviously getting spiritually bombed!!  Those chapters are my favorite!

  Anyway kindof a long email this week but just lots of things to write about! I'm having a great time out here and things are going crazy as usual which is just how I like it! Love you all!

This was our sketchy short cut to church but they put a gate up and now we can't go that way! :(

Yummy dinner I had this week!

SUBWAY!!

There was a berry festival going on all week.

  

Bondsteel

August 17, 2015

 Not a ton of super interesting stuff happened this week so this email is probably just going to be super short!  But life is good! 
First interesting thing is we got a new missionary in the district - Elder Muncy. I miss Razband a bunch but Elder Muncy is pretty awesome and he and Elder Kek seem like they get along super well. He is from the California Sacramento area and has been out here for about a year.

  We finally got to go to Camp Bondsteel! (US military base) It was pretty cool.   It was like walking into a little piece of America! We got checked through and then Major Hassel took us to their non denominational chapel and we had a little lesson which was super good! I feel bad for him because he isn't able to make it to church and he says he really misses it. The spirit was really strong teaching him and I knew that what we were doing was super important. Then after the lesson we went and had American Pizza, wings and breadsticks! It was awesome! Pizza here is good but there is just something about that good old American pizza that does it for me! Unfortunately the store was closed before we could make it there but next time we will be able to buy snacks and stuff. 

I found out that the soldiers and people at Bondsteel aren't allowed to take vacations in Kosovo because it's considered an active combat zone! I was like well we live out there 24/7! :)

  The craziness of branch council continues! Holy cow I'm so glad that I have learned to just laugh and appreciate the craziness. This is the second week in a row that our meeting has gone for 3+ hours. All it is is the missionaries and our branch president trying to figure out how to make this branch work! This church is so new here and to be honest it's hard to be a member here.  You honestly are risking your life!  It's hard to imagine things being normal here but we're just working hard and doing all we can.  Despite all the craziness I love Prishtina and wouldn't want to be anywhere else right now!!

Anyway I'm sorry not a lot to write about I love you all and I hope you have a great week!

Camp Bondsteel

Tank Crossing

I bought hipster glasses! :)

  

Interesting week...as usual!

August 10, 2015

Well this week, as usual, there were some interesting things that happened and best of all there was zone conference this week which was awesome!  

So to start off just some random things. First the sisters are teaching two homeless people from Germany. Its' a super weird situation, I guess they had money and stuff in Germany and then they had a bunch of bad stuff happen to them on the way here and are now homeless but they were already investigating the church in Germany. We are being super careful to make sure they aren't just doing this for money cause that is a huge problem here.  But they have been progressing and President Wieddman actually met with them and gave them a hotel room for 20 days to give them kinda a kick start so we will see how that goes!

  

Second something super cool that we don't experience in America or at least in Idaho are calls to prayer.  These are like a huge deal here and we hear them all the time! They are super awesome sounding and happen 5 times a day. When they go off you are supposed to just stop what you are doing and pray but lots of people don't practice here so they don't but still anywhere in this city you can always here a mosque when its prayer time! Just kinda a cool culture thing I get to experience here!

  Third is Bernd, this guy deserves his own paragraph just cause he is such a character! He is this German guy who actually is a lawyer in Germany but is currently working as a lawyer for NATO here in Kosovo. As missionaries here in Kosovo we are just around the same spots a lot so we have made some friends who we see regularly but aren't really interested in the gospel. Bernd is one of those guys although he has come to church a couple times! He is so funny though he hates it here in Kosovo and doesn't trust anything here! He has his water imported from Italy and pretty much only eats on the NATO base. He always tells us about the latest crimes that Kosovares have committed and says they are all animals! So ya not the greatest opinion of this place, he is pretty much just waiting to get out of here! He thinks our church is super interesting though that Serbians and Kosovares would worship under the same roof because normally they would be trying to kill each other so he is having Elder Hydrick right an article for him about our church because he is making a book about minor religions in Kosovo and he is going to be publishing it. He's a super funny guy to talk to though!

  Anyway Monday continued to pour on us and I had my first experience of contacting under an umbrella which was just super weird! It was crazy because the streets are really in disrepair and some parts are just of dirt and they like literally couldn't be driven on because it was like muddy madness!

  Wednesday I went on an exchange with Razband and it was really fun!  We had a good time together on our exchange and we actually got into my 2nd tracting lesson! Sadly, Saturday we had mini transfers and he is being transferred to Elbason so we are going to miss him but he has served here for 7.5 months so we kinda saw it coming! 

  Then Thursday was Zone Conference! It was amazing! I'm going to be honest I didn't have the greatest attitude going into it and it just totally was amazing! So it was super weird because it was going to be combined with the Tirana zone and for some reason they were bringing them all up to Prishtina instead of sending us down to them which made no sense because there are wayyy more of them! It was pretty much just a field trip for the Tirana zone so they could come and see Kosovo. Then the scriptures they told us to read to prepare us for the conference were all about baptizing and stuff and the whole missions numbers have been kinda down and I was just like jeez I really don't think that this zone needs to hear that we should get more baptisms like we are trying really hard and doing our best! There is also already sorta a feeling that the North Zone (my zone, Kosovo and Macedonia) is a separate mission and whenever they talk about getting baptisms and stuff this zone kinda shuts down just because it doesn't really happen up here as much. Plus Verushi was coming up and I wasn't sure what it was going to be like to see him again.

  So all of Tirana gets here and we start seeing everyone and I realize its' super awesome to see all the friends I made down there again! Plus there are some missionaries down there now that I haven't spent a lot of time with but I've heard so much about and I got to get to know some of them a little more, plus seeing the Macedonians is always awesome! Then I saw Verushi and it actually was way different being around him and not being his companion, it was actually good to talk to him and we went and walked around and I showed him the city and stuff! I also realized being with all of these other missionaries that being around Elder Holm has helped me to become more outgoing and stuff talking to people because I really had a great time talking to everyone whereas usually I'm not that out there! I got to see Motra Zollanger again which was way awesome and it was great talking to her and just a lot of other missionaries!

  Then after we all talked a lot, zone conference got started and let me tell you, you all should appreciate how good hymns sound in America. Here in Prishtina I've been getting used to me being one of 10 people actually singing the hymn and it's not like I sing well! In zone conference we had 50 missionaries all singing and it just sounded so good!! Then we got to hear from all the missionaries who would be leaving at the end of this transfer (their dying testimonies) so I got to hear from Elder Holm and also Sister Zollanger which was awesome! Everyones final testimonies are always super powerful! Like it's crazy that I'm going to be there at some point!

  Then President gave his training and it was so different from what I thought it was going to be! Rather than it being about us getting baptisms and stuff it was how obedience and diligence doesn't equal baptisms it equals blessings. It was really nice for me to hear. He talked about the one parable about the man who God tells to push a rock and he goes and pushes every day and nothing ever happens and he continues to do it but begins to get discouraged and after a while he asks God why he would ask him to do something impossible and God replies I didn't ask you to move the rock I asked you to push it, now that you have pushed you have grown strong and you have shown your obedience, I will move the rock now. And is was like a serious understanding moment for me! I'm not called here to move "the rock" I'm called here to push! And as long as I do it I'll grow and God will accomplish what he needs to have accomplished in the end! It was super awesome for me to hear!

  Last night we had a branch council meeting which basically means missionaries and President Telli meet and talk about ways to help the branch and it lasted 3 hours!  It was good though and I hope we got some things figured out! This branch is feeling pretty dang fragile right now so we are just trying to keep it all together and hopefully in these next few weeks we are going to have some new callings going out and stuff! The branch really relies on us missionaries and I'm not gonna lie, they love us!

  Anyway that was my week! I love you all and am still having a great time out here in case you were wondering! Lots of work but lots of fun! I'm praying for you all!

Rain for days!

Contacting out in the rain

Thousands of birds fly through the sky every night!

My crazy district!

Bought a quaran with english translation

Week 27

August 3, 2015

 Man not a whole lot happened that was super special this week so I apologize if this letter is short it's just kinda same old same old happening up here! By the end of these 2 years these letters may become just a few sentences I guess we'll see! Anyway to start again I have some questions to answer: 

   No we still do not have any progressing investigators or investigators we are meeting with regularly and we also aren't able to meet regularly with any of the inactive members either. It's pretty rough I'm not going to lie! Luckily I'm with Elder Holm so I'm still having a good time but if I didn't have a good companion I would be having a pretty rough go of it right now! 

Once again this week we just have so many people who we plan to meet the night before and then don't show up at the time we planned to meet them. We only taught 7 lessons this week but if we had actually taught everyone we planned for it would probably be triple that! It just sucks that we finally get someones number from sitting out street contacting all day and then that number doesn't even turn into anything! Heck even if we actually do get one lesson with them, we have only had one second lesson since being here so work is slowwwwwww. For how many hours we spend finding per day.... I don't know, a lot. It's pretty much all finding except for if we get a lesson and of course lunch and stuff. Probably about 6 hours plus a day not totally sure. The members haven't given us a single recommendation yet much to our dismay. We have tried to do lessons with them and tried to get them but the problem is that there are so few members that they have already all been through that routine so many times. English class is not exactly my favorite thing to do, but as a general standpoint pretty much every mission isn't a fan of english class just because you really don't know what to teach like we don't have any sort of curriculum or anything!

    One thing that was super annoying that happened was that the internet stopped working in the church after Bishop Gjini (my old bishop of 2nd ward) came and was supposed to be upgrading it and of course since everyone in Prishtina now knows that I used to work with computers I was the one in charge of making it work. Normally I would be super excited about it because I really enjoy working with computers and it was an awesome service I could do for the branch but I ended up spending all day on the phone with salt lake and the internet company trying to get this thing fixed in different ways and nothing was working and it just got super frustrating and salt lake was saying the problem was the isp and the isp was saying it was salt lake and I was the one in the middle -- so pretty much a whole day of work was wasted on that which sucked! Got to practice some more of that patience I'm learning though! :)

  Another thing that was pretty funny that happened was this teenage muslim came up and tried to sorta argue with us which is kinda annoying and happens everyone once in a while, just teenage kids trying to be funny. Personally I don't really mind but some missionaries get super worked up about it. But this one was extra funny because this kid was suuuupppperrr muslim looking like short pants, nasty not full beard and the short cut hair but best of all his voice was super high pitch sounding and so Elder Holm and I just couldn't take him seriously the whole time and it was just sooo funny! He also tried to pull out random "bible" verses to try to prove us wrong and like they were things that didn't even exist which is pretty normal for them to do. Basically all we do when they do that stuff is just agree with them and talk about how we all have one God and respect all religions.

   Later in the week there was a pretty big beer fest that happened over the weekend and that was a pretty big work killer.  There were a lot of people from outside of Kosovo and no one was really interested in talking to us. And there were a couple threats made against it so we had to stay away.

   Then Sunday we actually had an American member working with K4 here come to church so that was awesome! We had to go get him at the curb and escort him to the church for security reasons and stuff which I thought was pretty funny! He was super cool though. He was really surprised that we were allowed to fully proselyte here because I guess it's still sanctioned as a combat active zone by the EU! So that's something I never thought I would be doing! Proselyting in a combat active zone! 

  Anyway I apologize for the lack of big things happening but for real it's just a whole lot of work with not a ton of results but that's ok because I'm learning and I know that I'm just putting blessings in the bank! Honestly I can't explain how much you learn out on a mission like every second is a learning experience I swear! I love you all and I hope you all know I'm doing great! Have an awesome week! Probably won't be as awesome as mine though!

Me and Holm

This is what five mosques in one city sound like for their call to prayer

Week 26

July 27, 2015

 So this was kinda a crazy week for sure but I'm pretty sure every week is crazy here! Anyway to start with some questions to answer: No, I have not been able to go to the base yet I will be going on Thursday, and yes Elder Holm has been to the base a few times. The zone leaders went this week and we asked them to bring us back root beer and we have had root beer floats almost every day (America!!). Elder Holm has actually been in every city in Kosovo that has been opened (there are only 2 right now, used to be 4) but it wasn't in a row, he kept switching from Albania to Kosovo. And I still have 2 months with him, you have to remember our transfers are 12 weeks not 6. The work is very slow out here. Our whole district doesn't have a single real solid investigator, lots of street contacting and lots of first lessons. We bond with the branch pretty dang well considering there are only like 20 of them max and that is counting the 5 little kids. We don't eat at their homes or anything like that though ever. Usually if we meet with them we meet at the church because they don't want people seeing that they are having Christian missionaries in their homes for safety reasons. The food is good here... Big turkish influence lots of doners and stuff. They do have more European influence than Albania so you can find stuff like oreos here if you know the right stores which is awesome. We can leave the city to go explore on P-Days but it has to be within reason and there are areas we are told not to go. The zerg area in Prishtina I talked about last week we try to spend as little time in as possible because we just get weird vibes and stuff but other than that there aren't any places we aren't allowed to go. The people I'd say are a little more open after Ramazan but not like a huge night and day difference. Yes, members do worry about being a part of this church and some of them have had things proven that they do have a reason to be. Some of them get harassed at work and stuff so most of them don't tell anyone they get baptised, even their family. That is also why we now have missionaries guard the door to the church on Sunday. There is a little danger, nothing crazy but they do have to be careful being members here. That definitely wasn't a problem at all in Albania like the worst of it I saw was their family was super disappointed in them and sometimes estranged them but never danger or anything!

   Anyway to start of with last P day I had my interview with President Wiedmann and I used it way better this time. I actually asked him some questions and I learned some really cool stuff from him! He is just such a spiritual guy and its crazy how well he can answer our questions.

  Also this week I went on an exchange with Elder Kek who is actually from Layton (Caleb's hometown) and he is pretty sure he knows Caleb which is pretty cool! He also played for their ultimate frisbee team there so we had some fun talking about frisbee and stuff! He is a pretty cool guy but I was happy to get back with Elder Holm!  I'm gonna miss the big guy when he leaves!!

  A cool spiritual experience I had this week is on Tuesday while I was preparing for District Meeting I was really struggling and couldn't put my thoughts together about what our district needed and what I needed to talk about and it was really frustrating me. I had an idea in my head of what I wanted to talk about I just couldn't put it together. So I just said we should go to the church and get everything ready and hopefully it will come to me and so we got there and I started writing up everyones numbers and what our goals were and it just totally came to me what I needed to talk about and when I thought about it all the plans just totally came to my mind instantly and it reminded me of the scripture about how if something isn't right we would have a stupor of thought and if it was than we would have clarity and I definitely know that is what it was!

  Something less good is how bad our week was work wise. We didn't get very many lessons at all.. (3) and I was just pretty down about it and Friday was especially bad. I was just in a super weird mood and frustrated because I wasn't sure what more I was supposed to do! We planned 2 lessons at least every day and the people just kept not showing up! So basically Elder Holm and I sat down and we were like ok we have to change something what is it. So we decided we just needed to put like 100% effort in and just contact like crazy the next day.

   So then Saturday morning we got out there and holy cow. The blessings just poured down! So in the morning we were just out for an hour and a half and I got a pretty good amount of numbers for that time (3, my record for a whole day before that was 4) but Elder Holm went absolutely insane, he got 11 numbers! Literally every person he stopped gave him their number and it was blowing our minds like no one ever does that! It was a super cool experience for us and now we are loaded with new people to meet with next week!

   So the weird sorta sketchy experiences of the week are number one we have been handing out english course fliers saying that we are doing an english course and there is the church logo in the bottom corner and some people got mad at us saying we were deceiving people into saying we are teaching them English and then we teach them about our religion. For me it's like dude this is literally a free service we are doing if you don't like it just don't come. But some people get super mad. This one guy started like cussing at us and about the church in English saying that they were brain washers and he walked up to us super pissed and there was this surge of adrenaline that went through me and for a split second I was seriously like alright lets do this but we ended up talking him down. 

  We also had a car full of covered women (covered women are super normal) pull over and start talking to us and one of them waited in the car who was like fully covered like except the eyes (not super normal) and they were talking to us about Islam and were pretty respectful and stuff and recorded us for part of it which was kinda weird but we didn't really feel threatened.  The interesting part was after Elder Hydrick (the senior missionary) was like could you tell the fully covered one was a guy or a girl and we really couldn't so that was kinda something that I had to think about and be more careful with I guess.

   Also two people I realized I never told you about who are key to the Prishtina experience are Betim and Suad! This two guys are mid 20 year old guys who are both really smart (mechanical engineer and architect respectively) and speak perfect english and they seriously just hang out at the church and chill with the missionaries all the time! Unfortunately Suad has been having some personal safety problems so he has been having to stay away from the church recently but he is super funny. Betim used to play professional futbol in Italy but chose school over that. He is dating another member here in this branch and is basically the hope of this area. The problem is he is still a 20 year old guy and so sometimes he isn't the most reliable in responsibilities and is kinda immature which is normal but the problem is so much is riding on him in this area it's just hard. He is so fun to hang out with though I love him!

  We went tracting for the first time on Sunday and man I remembered why we didn't do tracting. Like maybe it's more effective in other areas of the world but here it's pretty much a great way to waste time! We tracted for 2 hours and only got 2 numbers and they were just like 20ish year old girls so not a lot of chance they are going to end up actually meeting with the sisters (that happens a lot). There are just so many more people ready to talk to us street contacting and the ones not really interested don't waste our time like tracting does! Also the buildings we tracted were so sketchy! There weren't lights for a few levels at a time and it got crazy dark like couldn't see! 

   Anyway that is my week in the crazy world of Kosovo I hope y'all are doing good. I'm really expecting we will have a better work week next week so keep your fingers crossed for me! Definitely seeing blessings and miracles almost every day though which is just awesome! I love being a missionary! Also apparently tomorrow is my 6 month mark for being out on my mission which is crazy! Any who have a good week I love you all!

America!

Inside a Mosque

Our fliers for English Classes

Bayram is over!!

July 20, 2015

Me ne fund!!!! (finally) Ramazan is over! This week's work was pretty much just not happening because of the big end of Ramazan stuff! So one thing kinda funny for any of you that play starcraft is that we call the Muslims zerg, and there is this part of the city we aren't supposed to really work in and we call it zerg territory and that we are on creep when we are there and so there are just a lot of nerdy jokes and stuff that come along with that! :)

  So on Tuesday we went back to Nazim's house and dedicated his wife's grave! Never thought that I would be doing anything like that anytime soon! He still just was very casual about the whole thing so I think it really is just a relief for him because she was in pain for so long it's just really interesting! He was able to come to church on Sunday for the first time in a while so that was awesome to see him there! 

  Also this week I have been fixing a ton of computer problems! It feels like I'm back at work! The Hydricks have been having me do like everything for them with their computers it's pretty funny. They actually are really cool and I like talking to them. They act so young and are so quick with jokes and poking at us it's hilarious! They showed me this really cool video the week from lds.org that I would really recommend you all watch! (https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2014-04-004-scriptures-legacy?lang=eng) It was just kinda cool and helped me to see some things in the scriptures.

  A pretty major part of this week was the ending of Ramazan and they have this big party called Bayram and basically it's like thanksgiving where all the family gathers together and has a ton of food but like even bigger. Literally nothing is open for 3 days and people just don't even leave their house so ya not exactly great for missionary work. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday just pretty much nothing going on. We literally just walked around the city exploring because we couldn't do any work! It was kinda cool to finally get to really explore the city but it definitely wasn't missionary work! Something really awesome that happened though is we were walking around in zerg territory just because we never go there and we saw one of our less actives we are working with and he was just outside his house and invited us in! We ended up teaching his two sons who aren't members and it was just awesome! Hopefully we will be able to go back some time and do it again! 

  Church this week was crazy!  I had to translate for Elder Hydrick as he presided, I blessed the sacrament, conducted the music, give a talk, and guarded the door! My talk went pretty well! I gave a 15 min. talk in Albanian so I thought it was awesome. It was about giving our whole hearts to the Lord. Also guarding the door is something new that we are doing. There have been some little security things that have happened and some of the members are starting to have reason to question their safety coming to church so the Elders are taking turns during church and "greeting" anyone who comes in the door. Basically we stop them, ask who they are, if they have been before and all that stuff! It was crazy this one guy brushed passed Holm and I when we asked him questions and went to go open the door to the sacrament hall while priesthood class was in there and I kinda just leaned against the door and kept asking him questions and he just left! Kinda an interesting experience for sure!

   Anyway I feel like I'm getting worse at writing these but I hope that they still make sense! I'm still having an awesome time and I'm excited to be here! We have some really cool investigators that we will hopefully be continuing to meet with this next week! Anyway have an awesome week everyone! Love you!

This is what it looked like for three days...literally nothing was open.

We had the whole city to ourselves.

Me, guarding the door to church.