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!
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| This was our sketchy short cut to church but they put a gate up and now we can't go that way! :( |
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| Yummy dinner I had this week! |
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| SUBWAY!! |
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| There was a berry festival going on all week. |
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