Elder Guymon's Awesome Adriatic Adventures: 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!