Hey mom,

I got the watch and goodies yesterday.  Thanks a lot.  Tell Caleb he picked good treats for me.  A while ago, I also got a package from Uncle Eric and Aunt Lisa with letters from their whole family and a bunch of treats.  So now I have accumulated a ton of goodies in my drawer.  Tell them thanks for me.  I'll try to send a letter back to them if I have enough time.

So, I have the whole song of "Let Us All Press On" memorized in Albanian except for the third line of the third verse.  Along with that, I can sing the first two verses at a reasonably good pace.  That's pretty exciting.

We just learned how to use these things called clitics in class.  These things are way cool because they let you eliminate at least half of the sentence.  For example:  I gave the book to him.  In it's full form, it will be Unë ia jap librin atij.  However, we can shorten it to "ia jap" which technically means I gave it to him, but most of the information is still included in that.  If I really want to specify that I am giving a book, it would be "ia jap librin" but otherwise I don't need it.

Yesterday at the devotional, we got to hear Elder Dallin H. Oaks talk.  It was pretty awesome.  That's the 2nd apostle from the Quorum of the Twelve I've heard talk here at the MTC.  I hear that Elder Holland is supposed to come speak to us on Thanksgiving, so that would be really cool.

For this week, me and Elder Moyes, another elder in my district, set a goal to learn 200 words this week.  So far, I have 80 down.  We figured that if we learned 20 words every day except Sunday and Friday, then that would give us 100.  Then, on Friday, we have tons of MDT, so we will try 100 words then.  I think we can do it.  On Monday, I learned like 58 words, and yesterday I learned 22 so I could have an even 80 words down.  So if I learn 20 words today, I will already be half way done.

I have also been able to incorporate better sentences in Albanian because of the new grammar principles we've been learning.  I think Albanian is probably the funnest language I have learned so far.  There's so many cool things about it.  Some of those cool things make it difficult, but I think it's coming along.  One thing that makes it a little easier than dutch is it doesn't have like 8 vowel sounds that sound the same.  Instead there's just y and u that both make different "oo" sounds, and then dh and th that make different "th" sounds.  Y sounds more like ew, and u sounds like a long u sound.  Th is like in path, and dh is like in the.  The hardest one is the l and ll.  They both sound the same to me.  When you say the l sound, you have to have your tongue back further and it sounds lighter somehow.

I'm getting to be able to communicate with Elder Castro-Guzman better.  His English has improved a ton, and he's slowly making progress in Albanian.  Today we taught him how to use clitics, but we had to teach him all the different pronouns first so it would make sense.  There are a ton of different pronouns.  That's one of the things that makes it a little difficult.

I learned a couple more sentences that could be fun to say.  My favorite one lately has been "Ti po pi" (Tee po pee) which means you are drinking.  I like to say that whenever a companion takes a drink and I happen to see it.  My favorite words are probably shkatërroj, jashtëzakonisht, and çamçakëz which mean to destroy, exceedingly, and gum respectively.

Last Sunday, I called a lady back for the first time, and I was going to teach her just a little bit about the Book of Mormon, and it seemed like everything she said was a perfect set up to teach the restoration.  She was saying how all these different "prophets" send her mail saying to donate money, and she was saying how it was hard to tell if there was any truth in any of these churches because it seemed like all they wanted was money.  I committed her to read 3 Nephi 11 and pray about it, then she asked for the address of the nearest church building, so hopefully she can make it on Sunday.  She said she attends church almost every Sunday, she just doesn't know what religion the church is that she goes to.  She also said that she didn't feel anything when she went to the church she's been going to.  Hopefully she decides to go to church on Sunday.

Something cool about her is that she happens to live in North Carolina where Rick is.  I'm not sure if she's in his area, but that would be way cool if she was.

Anyways, you'd probably be happy to know that I've been able to make my bed every day unlike at home.  I also am able to practice the piano every now and then.  I almost have hymn 243 down on the piano, but not quite.

Love,
Elder Wallentine

Dear family,

The other day we went to a fireside for all the missionaries, and we got front seats.  That was pretty awesome.  I think one of the apostles are coming for a devotional for Thanksgiving.  That would be way cool.

So today, when we were checking mail, I went into the bookstore with Elder Castro-Guzman so he could buy stamps.  While we were in there, I ran into former roommate Elder Walker.  That was fun.  He seemed really excited.  Turns out this is his first day here.

My district goes to the Referral Center (RC) every Sunday and Thursday to take incoming calls as well as do outgoing calls.  We are encouraged to share our testimony and make callbacks with the people, so it is kind of like we are already in the field there.

I thought of an Albanian sentence I could teach you all that could be fun for some of you to say.  Ju bëtë pup. (pronounced: you but poop)  Bëj is to do or to make, and its past tense forms are: bëra, bëre, bëri, bëme, bëtë, bëmë (pronounced: bera, beray, burry, bum, but, bun.  So that is kinda funny.  So that sentence really means: You make a pop.  Maybe next week I can send a useful sentence.

One really cool thing we've learned about Albanian is that you can take a big long sentence, and shorten it to like two words without losing any information.  I don't know how to do that yet, but it sounds really cool.

I have been learning quite a bit of Albanian, and next week me and my companions are going to try to speak only Albanian.  It will be pretty hard, but I think we can do it.  I'm pretty much used to the MTC.  It's basically the same thing every day.  Oh yeah, one thing you might like is that iriq (pronounced ear-each) is hedgehog in Albanian.  So Sonic the Hedgehog would be Sonic Iriqi (iriqi pronounced ear-eachey).  I learned the word for enough, but I forgot it.

One story you might enjoy that I've heard so far is that some people like to throw bricks and floor tiles at missionaries.  My teacher had a brick thrown at him and he caught it with one hand.  The kids throwing the bricks got scared and ran off.  It sounded awesome.

Our district is only made up of people going to Albania, so it's kinda nice.  Me and my companions are getting along pretty well, and today we got celestial in our room checks.  My part of the room pretty much stays the same every week, but this time I guess the cleaning person decided we deserved better than terrestrial. 

Here are some good Albanian phrases:
Ç'kemi (Ch-kem-ey)  hello
Si dukeni? (See dook-eni) How do you appear? (How are you)

Caleb, did you know that in Albanian the word pup (pronounced poop) is just a popping noise?  So you could write PUPCALEBPUP too!

Love,
Elder Wallentine

PS I have recently been trying to memorize the Albanian articles of faith and a hymn.  I have the first 2 verses of "Let Us All Press On" memorized in Albanian, and the first 2 articles of faith memorized.

Dear Mom and others who will be reading this,

At gym when I run, there is a track on the top floor of the building, so I just run around that.  It's kinda hard because sometimes it's really crowded so I have to weave in and out between people.  It kinda turns into a game.

I've gotten to be real good friends with most people in my district.  I think me and my companion from France get along really well.  If we could speak the same language, it'd be even better.  We draw pictures on the chalk board every now and then, and they usually end up being pretty epic.

Albanian is coming along pretty well.  I've been trying to memorize 20 words a day, and I've been successful almost every day.  We have district goals, but for a while it didn't seem like anybody was real serious about it.  I think that's starting to change though.  Our goals for vocabulary has decreased for this week from learning at least 15 words to learning 10 words from a certain category.  Half the words that we put up to learn as a district are either obvious or I already have learned them at some point, so I often just find my own words.

Yesterday, my team lost a vocab game in class, so we all had to do a door approach.  We only lost the game by 1 point, so it wasn't too bad.  But I felt really good about it afterwards.  I felt like I could say almost everything I wanted to say, so it was great.

Me and this Hungarian Elder from France have this kind of rivalry in 4-square during gym.  It's really fun.  He's merciless when he goes against his companions though.  That is fun to watch as well.

Today we went to the temple again, and we missed the session we are assigned to again.  So we were 15 minutes late for lunch.  This isn't really a big deal to me, but a couple other guys in my district really want this to change.

Pretty much this whole week was more MTC.  Every week has basically been the same.  Learning gospel, learning language, gym, meals, sleep.  And we hear some pretty fun stories from one of our teachers.

We're starting to be able to say some useful phrases in Albanian as well.  Me duhet te shkoj ne banje = I need to go to the bathroom.  All the 'e's except the one in "duhet" in that sentence needs to have 2 dots above them, which makes it mean the sentence I said it means.  Otherwise, it probably doesn't make sense.

I haven't run into any Belgian missionaries yet, but a sister in my district speaks German.  We haven't tried communication with that yet.  Mostly because I think we're busy learning Albanian.  Oh yeah, and I decided today that after my mission, I want to learn Arabic.  That looks cool.  Or Japanese.  That would be cool and probably more helpful.

Anyways, have good times at home, and I'll do MTC-type stuff here.

Love,
Elder "Thunderhorse" Wallentine

Note: Thunderhorse is a self-proclaimed nickname that nobody calls me.

Hello family,

I got the letters you sent through the mail, so I guess whatever address you guys have works.  Last week seemed really hard, and all of the sudden, it seems like everything is getting much, much easier.  I don't think I had too much trouble adjusting to MTC life, so it didn't really matter that I was just tossed into the daily schedule of MTC life.  The biggest issue I had last week was that I had a ton of stuff I had coming up that I was unsure how to do.  After Saturday, when I taught my five minute lesson in Albanian, I felt much better about the progress I have been making in the language.  It didn't seem like I was making any progress until I actually started to use it.

The other day, we learned how to bear our testimonies in Albanian.  I'm continuing to try to improve my Albanian prayer and testimony so I'm not just saying the same things over and over.  I think I'm starting to see patterns with conjugating verbs, nouns, and nounitizing verbs, and verbitizing nouns.  I'm picking up quite a bit of grammar as well.  I've been reading the Book of Mormon in Albanian alongside the English one, and I've noticed that I am able to understand more and more of the Albanian verses.  I think there have been a couple verses that I have understood almost all of it without checking the English.

So far, the biggest problem I've had is probably with other people.  In high school, the most annoying people to me were know-it-all type people who pretty much had to be right.  Turns out there are 2 of them in my district.  I'd say something, and most of the time I could tell they didn't listen to a thing I said because they responded in a way completely irrelevant or just didn't respond at all.  I'm trying to not let it annoy me, and I think I'm doing better at dealing with it.

I started running at gym time, and ever since I started doing that, I've been sleeping really well.  It still seems impossible to sleep in past 6:20 am though. I sent letters to a bunch of my friends recently, and 3 of them were returned because I needed international stamps.  Now ever since I've gotten those stamps, I haven't been able to make it to the drop box with them.  Hopefully I can drop them off today.

I met these guys from another district that are on the same floor as my room, and when I told them I was here for 12 weeks they were pretty surprised.  It was pretty funny.  I think they are only here for 3 weeks.

On Sunday, we went to see the Joseph Smith movie, and I told my companion Elder Smith, "Ky karrige eshte rehatshem." (almost all those e's are supposed to have dots over them)  He then told me that he was not interested in learning dutch.  Now, I'm sure that all of you can agree with me that that sentence is not dutch.  It was indeed Albanian for "This chair is comfortable."

Make sure everybody knows that I read their letters and messages and everything and that I appreciated them.

So I always heard that when on a mission, the days seem like years and the years seem like days or something like that.  So far, the days have been going by rather quickly.  The only part that hasn't gone fast every now and then is the portion of time right before dinner where we don't have a teacher or hardly anything going on.  By that time, I've usually studied so much that I can't focus, and everybody else is falling asleep.  I'm trying to work on that so that the whole day can go by quickly.

 

I pretty much only have 10 weeks left here in the MTC, and then I get to go to Albania.  Our teachers have told us that apparently people in Albania are quite nosy, like Americans, don't like missionaries, and have almost no personal boundaries.  The dislike of missionaries was due to some event with Jehovah's Witnesses' faith or something.  One of our teachers had kids throwing bricks and floor tiles at them.  He caught a brick with one hand, and one of the kids got scared and ran off.

Love,
Elder Wallentine  or Elder Uallentain if you want Albanians to pronounce it correctly.