Dear Family,

The word of wisdom lesson went ok.  We didn't prepare quite as much as we should have.  Today we are teaching the third lesson, and we've practiced it a lot more, so I think it will go much better this time.

I am planning on trying to break the mile record sometime next week.  Last week I was doing a lot of training, and this week I will be doing some training, but not too much.  Hopefully I can do it.  Last Saturday I did a time trial, and I got 5:39 for my mile with people getting in my way and slowing me down.  So as long as I can improve by next Monday or Tuesday, I should be able to do it.

I got the Christmas letter, and it was great to hear about what everyone is doing.  I just barely got the package today as well.  I haven't had too much time to look through it yet, but I'm excited.

Yesterday Elder Neil L. Anderson came and spoke to us.  It was pretty cool.  Yesterday, I started feeling a little sick, and this morning I was feeling pretty bad, but I took a couple of the flu/cold pills or something and I feel fine.

Recently I was looking through my notebook with all my vocab and whatnot, and I came across some sentences I had written early on in the MTC, and I was amazed at how simple they were.  It gave me some confidence that I'm making a lot of progress here.

In 2 weeks I should be in Albania.  That's exciting.  This will be my second to last preparation day here at the MTC.  I can't wait.  We've been told of this one place in Albania, I think it's called Shkoder or something, that many missionaries have trouble communicating with people there because their dialect is so much different.  I'd kind of like to start there, because I probably won't be able to understand too much of what people say at first anyways, so I'm not sure it would make too much of a difference.

I recently got a referral in the RC last Friday.  I was sitting there, and I got my first inbound call, and I got the guy to agree to having the missionaries bring a Book of Mormon and a DVD to him.  I'm going to call him back sometime soon to see how things are going.

I haven't been able to get ahold of any of the old investigators I had.  It's kind of a bummer.  I'm going to call them before I leave and give them a way to reach the missionaries to learn more in case they're still interested.

Some days I have found that it is hard to stay focused, especially this morning when I wasn't feeling too good.  I've noticed I feel much better when I am able to focus and get a lot done in a day.

Love,
Elder Wallentine