Elder Guymon's Awesome Adriatic Adventures: Week 33

September 14, 2015

Hello everyone!

Not the best work week this past week but I got to go to Tirana so that was way cool!

To begin the AP's came up this week for an exchange with the zone leaders which was awesome! Honestly we have the coolest AP's ever right now they are so fun! It's also awesome to see their examples contacting and stuff because everyone has different ways to do it so there is always something to learn! I also went on an exchange this week with Elder Munci and that was fun! Sadly we spent the whole day contacting because I couldn't get a hold of a single person to meet with but it was still good, and we got a lot of numbers!

The week just kinda in general was hard to get lessons. I really feel like I'm getting tested right now to see if I will keep my faith up because I keep planning on these lessons and then just none of them show up! It's so frustrating. There was one day where we had 7 lessons planned and only 1 showed up! Our day was supposed to be packed and it just kinda turned into a well there goes another one! It just gets super discouraging after a while.

Luckily one thing I have really learned on my mission is to find joy in the little things! Like chocolate peanut butter croissants!! We found those at a store and there is no peanut butter ever - so we bought every single one the store had! It was awesome!
Something else really awesome that happened was we went to stake conference in Tirana on Sunday!

We left for Tirana by bus at 5am with our branch. It was so awesome going back to that city and seeing everyone! We got there earlier than the rest of the branches so we got to see everyone arrive and it was awesome! It was way cool seeing everyone that I knew again!

The best part was when Tirana 2nd ward showed up though and I got to see my old ward! I was standing talking to someone and someone tapped my back and I turned around and it was Faton (my first baptism)! It was awesome talking to him again! He is still totally active and doing awesome! I also got to see some of my old investigators like Kurt Koci! I got to see Eljon but he was sitting really far away during the conference and I never got the chance to talk to him! Elder Greener told me he is like one of the best members in 2nd ward though! He goes early every week to prepare the sacrament! It made me sooo happy to see them it was crazy!

Stake conference was pretty awesome. I translated for it which was kinda scary but they spoke in Tosk so it was super easy for me to understand actually! President Mema (the stake president) gave a great talk about the Sabbath day and how it's a continual covenant that we are making with God and when we don't keep the Sabbath day holy we are pretty much telling God we don't want blessings! We also got to hear from President and Sister Wieddman and a member of the 70. They talked a lot about member missionary work which was awesome!

We drove back after stake conference the same day and got a little sleep on the bus but were still pretty tired and had like 4 hours of contacting ahead of us which was not exactly what we wanted to be doing for the next 4 hours but we went out there and actually talked to some really cool people! This one couple just came and walked up to us and started talking to us and they were living in Dallas but the guy was from here originally and she was from the Boise area originally (she went to Bishop Kelly)! They were super nice and were asking a bunch of questions and when they left they were like dang we are really glad we talked to you guys, have a great time and hopefully we will see you around! It was really awesome, it's super annoying that most of the time Americans will just ignore us when they walk by and we say hi to them. Like you couldn't even just say hi back to us seriously!

One scripture that Elder Kek shared with me this week that was really good for me to hear and hit me deep was in Acts 5:
40 And to him they agreed: and when they had called the apostles, and beaten them, they commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go.41 And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.

So here it's talking about Peter and John who are out preaching as missionaries and they were told to stop preaching about Jesus and were thrown in jail but they were delivered and preached even more and they ended up getting beaten for it.

Now I haven't physically been beaten for preaching of Christ but sometimes I am pretty emotionally or spiritually beaten for it, but I just love how this verse says they rejoiced because they were worthy to suffer for Christ. It just really hit me that Christ wouldn't send me here to experience those kind of things if he didn't know I could handle it and that I am worthy to handle it.

My testimony of the Savior has grown so much since I've been here in Prishtina. I just realize how much I need Him when I see all the people that don't have Him.

Anyway have a great week everyone! Love you all!