Baptism!

May 30, 2016

Alright pretty awesome/crazy week as usual but super awesome because it ended with a baptism!! 

First of all last Monday was super fun!  We went over to President Weidmanns and Sister Weidmann taught us how to make bread! It was so much fun being able to hang out with them, honestly I'm so blessed to be able to work with them as close as I do! They are both just sooooo awesome! Then for FHE it was my turn for the game and I decided to do what if/then and everyone totally loved it so shout out to the Moss side of the family for me knowing that game!

  Also G. has been doing super awesome! He is talking to all these people about the gospel and trying to get us referrals! He is just soooo awesome! Like this old super charismatic guy just being a total baller! He is sooo bold, we have him in lessons with people and just totally says everything exactly how it is and it's so good! Who knew the key to missionary work was an older northern grandfather!

  We also had an amazing lesson with the father of a member who we have been teaching but we have kinda been struggling with the member because she doesn't agree with some things we do and kinda works against us and so his lessons haven't been the greatest but we invited our ward mission leader (Edi) who is super awesome to come help us and it was awesome. Before the lesson the member once again told us not to set her dad on a baptismal date because he wasn't ready but we started the lesson and Edi mentioned baptism and we basically just taught all about baptism and getting him to realize he was ready because he kinda is dragging his feet because he doesn't think he is completely ready and in the end we totally got him to accept a soft baptismal date!!! It was such an empowering lesson! We got out of it and the member was like wow you guys did amazing and in our heads it was just like this is what happens when you let us do our thing!!!!!

  I forgot how bad Albania heat was and it's coming now so that'll be interesting! It's starting to remind me a lot of my time with Elder Holm because we were just sweating like 24/7. It's ridiculous, I don't really notice it's humid here until it get super hot and then you just die!!! So it'll be fun having 4 more months of this Tirana heat!

  Also it's kinda early to announce this but it's like the talk of the whole mission, there is a group coming in in Sept. and it is going to be 21 missionaries as of now!!!! Our mission size right now is 56. So ya we are growing like 50%! Sisters are going to have to double train! It's going to be super crazy!

  Of course the biggest announcement I have is we had a baptism!! His name is S. and he is 65! He is so awesome! He is like super quiet but has slowly gotten warmed up as we have been meeting with him. It's pretty cool because our first lesson was pretty good but nothing super special but what has really allowed him to get to the point of baptism is he is actually reading the book of mormon and trying to understand it! Like he mentioned Jacob 5 in a lesson and I was like holy cow!!! It made me feel pretty good, he was saying he feels like he owes me so much and will never forget me because I was the one that talked to him on the street and first invited him into the gospel! Planning his baptism was a little chaotic because the week before we didn't have a ton of time in our area and then next week is stake conference so he couldn't get confirmed then so it was either rush it a little and do it this week or wait 2 weeks! So we didn't want him to have to wait that long so we just kinda put the gas on! It was an awesome baptism though! He brought his two kids and wants his family to learn now! Super awesome!

  So I'm doing great! We are getting super blessed! We had another member invite us over to their house last night and we are now going to teach his family and another one that had a cousin over and his dad is a less active member! Like what?!? I can't believe how much we are getting blessed seriously! 

Well love you all! Have a great week!

Making bread with Sister Weidmann...so fun!

Baptism of S.!

Macedonia exchanges

May 23, 2016

  So pretty great week this week, it went by super fast! 

To start off with, no I didn't really take any pictures in Macedonia. I know, I know, I'm a terrible person! I set it as a goal this week to take more pictures so hopefully I'll be able to act upon that. It was kinda a nightmare of a trip though.  Macedonia is like super annoying to work with first of all we have so many legal problems with them and keeping missionaries there it's ridiculous. They made us buy this special temporary Macedonian insurance for 50 euro so we got there and parked in a lot and there was this sign in Macedonian with pictures and what we got out of it was we had to text our licence plate number to the phone number that was listed so we did that and went out to get food and walk around and it was awesome and we got back and...... the car wasn't there. Like at all. We knew exactly what happened though, our car got "spider-ed" (it's this type of tow truck in Kosovo and Macedonia and it has this claw thing that wraps around your car and picks it up and then they take your car away and they call it a spider. Its actually pretty cool looking!) so we had to go running around the city in a language we didn't speak trying to figure out where our car was, finally some guy wrote it on a piece of paper and told us to give it to a taxi driver and we would get there, so we went for it and found our car eventually. So then the lady at the place spoke decent English so we asked her what we were supposed to do because we thought we did everything right and she looked at our phone and saw that we had texted them and everything and so she was confused but then she asked wait, do you have a Macedonian phone number? We said we didn't and it turns out that the system only works for Macedonian phone numbers!!! It's like the most rigged thing ever I swear! But we got our car back for a price and finally went on our exchanges there and it was pretty fun. It was sooo strange and kinda frustrating not being able to speak the language! I actually missed Albanian by the end of the exchange! It was so much fun though, I love those two Elders a ton so it was way cool being able to serve with them! Then on our way back we stayed the night in Prishtina with Eddings and Farnworth and that of course was amazing! 

  Its interesting to me just how close I feel to some of the missionaries here in this mission. I feel like I'm making friends with some of the most amazing people. I feel super lucky to be here in the mission that I'm in where we are all so close. We are really a small family! We are down to 50 missionaries! Can you believe that!

  The rest of the week was just trying to meet with all our investigators because it had been so much time since we had seen them! It's been a struggle not being able to meet with them as much as we should. Our investigator S. though is doing great! He is probably going to get baptized this week or next week. He is so awesome though! He is like a 65 year old man and is so nice. He is  super quiet, but solid! It's funny because after he gets baptized our 2 most recent converts are going to be 65ish year old men! Everyone tells us we are building the High Priests Group! :)

  Those two RM's I was talking about from other cities in Albania that now live in our ward are sooo awesome! One of them is our ward mission leader it's so awesome! Having a ward mission leader that actually understands what we need and what he needs to do totally changes the game!  One thing super funny about him is that he speaks soooooo much slang when he speaks English it's crazy! Like every other word is like dope, dog, bro, or sick I swear!! 

  Anyway everything is going awesome just keeping it up! Hope you all have a great week!

When the mission approves hats ;)

Gjyshi

 May 16, 2016

Hey so we are heading to Macedonia today so I don't have a ton of time to write but I'll try to fill yall in! 
First of all I want to reiterate how good of a person B. is. So you know how people talk about how people are so nice that if you say you like something they have they will literally just give it to you? Well I always thought that it was just an exaggeration and stuff until it actually happened to me! B. was wearing this coat when we went and visited him and I was like "Hey your looking good, that is my favorite color!" and then he tried to give it to me right there and I was like no way. But then President came back from Prishtina with a bag for me from B. and it had that coat in it! I really appreciate it but it also frustrates me at the same time! Seriously though I don't understand how anyone can be like that! I definitely have a lot to learn from him!!

  Also we have this recent convert in our area named D. but we just call him Gjyshi which means grandpa and he is the most awesome guy ever! He was baptized at 67 and is from the North and like if you knew Northern older men here you wouldn't believe me! But he is the most awesome man ever! He calls us his grandkids and just totally loves us it's so awesome! Everyone in the ward totally respects him too just because he is so old and awesome! Also he has a crazy story! He used to be a millionaire but his son ended being held ransom by this Muslim group and he ended up having to give them like all of his money to get his son back! So crazy!

  The weirdest thing this week was definitely taking Elder Muncy and Sister Cheshire to the airport. They are both such big missionaries to me and seeing them leave was actually genuinely sad for me. I'm really going to miss both of them a ton. Also 2 of the sisters that were finishing their missions had their parents come pick them up and it was soooo weird seeing them with their parents it just kinda seemed like some kinda weird dream!

  On Friday this week we were stuck inside for a ton of the day it was so horrible! The office couple was gone for some stuff in Germany and someone had to stay here so it fell to us. It was so strange because I feel like premission staying inside for a long time wasn't that big of a deal to me but it was like torture!! It felt so good leaving afterwards to actually go work!

   We gave a training this week to the new missionaries because they are half way through their first transfer and it was super spiritual and cool because I knew that what we were training about was really effecting them which was an awesome feeling! Also hopefully in a couple weeks we will be having some baptisms so stay tuned!!

All in all its been a pretty great week! Super busy with stuff but awesome.

Love you all!!

Busy week!

 May 9, 2016

Alright another awesome and busy week as usual! First of all the most exciting thing for me I think is that B. got his visa to America! I'm so excited for him and so jealous that I can't be there with him! I know that he is going to have such an awesome time, there are so many people that are waiting for him to go it'll be sweet! I really hope you guys will be able to go meet him!

  Also a big happy mothers day goes out to all you mother figures that have helped me up to this point! Especially - to my mom without whom I have no idea what I would do! You are the best!! I love you!!

  I got to be in my first transfer meeting this week which was pretty cool, super hard though because we just have so few missionaries that we are having to close areas, it's really sad! It was pretty awesome to me how logical doing all the transfers was but at the same time how spiritual it was as well. It was a great example to me of how the two areas don't have to be separate. A lot of what we did was thinking about it but it was all so directed at the same time, you can tell by how clean it all comes out at the end!

  We took a missionary home this week which meant waking up at 2am again! We went to this wayyyy nice restaurant with President and his wife and the missionary though. Like it might have been one of the nicest restaurants I have ever been to! It doesn't really hit me taking missionaries home but tomorrow I'm going to have to take Elder Muncy and Sister Cheshire home and they are the two missionaries I have served the longest around so I think that is going to suck.

  Even though we didn't have a ton of time to do missionary work this week we were once again incredibly blessed. There are these 2 RM's that are from different cities in Albania that are now living here in Tirana for work and they are soooo cool. Both of them have basically grown up in the church and you can just tell that guys like these are the future of the church. They are so fun and really understand how the church needs to work so it's going to be awesome working with them! They helped us with a lesson this week and it was so good!!

  We had a lesson with a guy named E. this week which was pretty interesting. He was actually an investigator when I was in 2nd ward so I remember him and I called him the other day and we found a time to meet with him. I was pretty nervous to meet with him because he is studying to be a Hoja I think is how you spell it in English but basically it's to be the muslim version of a Priest so I know he was going to have a ton of good questions. The lesson was so crazy he sat down and he was like I want to just tell you some things before we start, first of all I believe in Islam I think that is the true religion, but I'm not saying that Mormonism is wrong. If you convince me that your religion is the true religion of God then I am fully willing to get baptized and join your church. I also want you to know that I respect you basically more than anyone else for this mission you are doing so never feel like i'm being disrespectful or anything I just have a lot of questions. And then it began from there just sooo much stuff. It was cool how the spirit helped us to answer every question he had though, we never had a single tough one! Its interesting because to be honest deep down he knows its true. He has had some spiritual experiences with the missionaries and let's be honest if he didn't feel something he would just not meet with us but he keeps coming back! It'll just be super hard to break through all the previous background he has! He was excited about how much I knew about Islam because of my time in Prishtina which was funny! 

   On Saturday we called everyone and gave them their travel plans after President called them which was pretty fun just hearing everyones reaction and getting them excited about their new areas! It was really funny just how different some people sounded about their transfer. Some people were like ya it's going to be so awesome I'm way excited! And then there were some that were just like well alright... 

  Today was a pretty awesome PDay we went ice skating!! Don't worry, no serious injuries! Just probably going to feel super sore tomorrow! I pretty much knew going into it that I was going to suffer some sort of fall. It was way fun though, totally worth the bruises!

 

Have a great week!

Awesome week!!

May 2, 2016

Well I think the biggest news this week was probably skyping with my family yesterday!  (Adam skyped us a week early since we'll be out of town on Mother's Day)  That was pretty awesome! I think this was my favorite time skyping (and my last) because it didn't really mess with me at all. Like it was cool seeing you guys and it makes me wish we could skype every week but it didn't distract me or anything! Pretty crazy that next time we talk it'll be face to face getting off the plane (hopefully with Cameron right next to me!) 

  Really pretty crazy week in general though. We had Zone Conferences so we had to do some trainings but before hand we had some meetings with president that were super awesome!  It is so cool being able to talk to him and just have a really open relationship with him like that! It definitely makes me learn a lot! 

  Zone Conferences were super cool but also scary! I had to conduct and it was my first time doing that except for my one time in Shkoder and man that stuff is so scary!! Doing trainings isn't that bad for me - but conducting is so strict I always felt like I was going to mess things up! It ended being alright though! It was so awesome at the end of Elder Befus and I's training we had a surprise and showed everyone this hilarious video of a missionary parody of Hello by Adele and everyone loved it! 

  The best part of this week for me and the best part of my life ever, was going back to Prishtina! Wow I can't believe how much I missed that place! The whole drive up I was just feeling so weird and then we got there and it honestly just felt like a dream! We got to the church and I got to see a bunch of members that I missed and then of course the absolute best part was I got to hang out with B.!!! We went and got some food together and just talked a ton! Then Elder Befus and I taught him a lesson and it was soooo amazing like man he is just so spiritual I can't believe how awesome he is! I also got to see the Hydricks and President Teli both of whom told me they really wanted me to come back and I was just like ughhh I know! I would seriously do anything to be able to go back up there. I wish I could truly describe to you all what that city means to me but I really can't I just truly thank God that I was able to have that time in Prishtina. It was perfect timing for me, perfect companions for me, and just such a growing experience. I really feel like Prishtina has changed me and made me a better person and I just love it so much!!!! I think I miss it more than I miss home a lot of the time!

  Moving on from that it really stunk because we weren't able to meet with our investigators at all this week but we still had a pretty awesome week of work which is crazy! We had a bunch of people come to church and it was pretty tough because we were like stretched too thin! We couldn't take care of them all! I feel like I say this every week but the Lord just blesses us sooo much it's insane! 

I just really hope we can help all these people like they deserve! We actually ended up giving some of our work to other missionaries just because we can't do it all! 

  Basically super awesome week! This next week should be pretty awesome too! I'm going to be a part of my first transfer meeting so I think that will be super exciting! Other than that, yall are awesome, have a great week!

KFC in Albania!!!