Thanksgiving was great, and Elder Holland came and answered a couple questions that people had written down and given to their branch presidents here at the MTC.  He answered each one in depth, so he only answered 3, but it was great.  I hear that a member of the 12 is supposed to speak to us on holidays, so maybe I'll be able to hear one more before I leave the MTC.  That would put me at hearing from 4 while I am here.

I was able to memorize 200 words last week, but I decided that doing that every week isn't a good idea.  There's still a lot of other stuff I need to be learning other than vocab, like verb conjugations and whatnot that I decided not to focus all my language study to vocab.  I'm getting better at being able to conjugate verbs.  It's tough though.  In Spanish there are -ar, -er, -ir, and irregular verbs, in dutch there are regular and irregular verbs, then in Albanian, there's oj, ej, aj, as, es, consonant, vowel, passive reflexive, and a whole lot of irregulars.  In past tense there are so many irregulars it's not even funny.  There are 2 different past tenses as well.  Simple where it only happens once in the past, and imperfect where it was like a process in the past.  Imperfect is pretty easy because almost all verbs conjugate the same once you know the present tense.

I have followed up with the lady from NC a couple times.  I need to call her again probably on Friday.  I got another investigator last Friday.  I found him on a chat, and he is able to send emails to a certain address where I can read it and reply to him.  I sent him a Book of Mormon as well as a number to reach the missionaries at.  He sounded really interested.

I have recently decided that after my mission I am going to want to relearn a couple languages. I think I should be able to get back in to dutch and Spanish rather easily since I have learned a lot about both languages before, so I think that's one thing I'd like to do after my mission.  Although, I would also like to learn Japanese at some point as well.  I found out that I could get a Japanese Book of Mormon, hymn book, and 501 verbs book for like $25 before a discount.  I didn't get it, but if I ever did, I'd probably just have it packed away or something until I get home.  Right now my focus is on Albanian, so unfortunately these other things will have to wait.

I was also wondering if somebody could get on Facebook or something and find a couple addresses for me.  I'd like to be able to write Max Olsen, one of my roommates that is now on a mission; Ty Henrie; and Arne.  If somebody could check that for me, that would be great.

Brother Krumwiede, one of our teachers, read this letter from a missionary in Albania that had some advice for us.  The missionary said that we should study the first principles and ordinances of the gospel more in depth before coming out into the field.  So, this week, I somewhat dedicated my personal study to studying faith.

The other day, I was working on memorizing the mission scripture, 3 Nephi 5:13, in English and Shqip (Albanian) and when I was seeing if they had the Albanian Book of Mormon online, I got curious and looked at it in Dutch.  I was amazed how much of it I understood.  But again, I'll brush up on dutch after my mission or something.

Make sure you tell Jason happy birthday for me.  I just got a letter from him.

In like 3 days, I will only have 1 month before I will leave for Shqipëria (Albania) so that's exciting.  Although, I will only be able to go to the temple like 2 more times because it will be closed from December 19 to January 4.

I think this week I have been kinda slacking with learning vocab.  Mostly because on Monday I was focusing on verb conjugations, and Tuesday we hardly have any MDT at all.  I think I'll work on that sometime today.  Although I should probably work on my lesson for tomorrow.  Tomorrow Elder Smith and I teach our first lesson in Albanian at the TRC.  It's exciting.  I think we can do it.

I bought a pocket hymnbook from the bookstore the other day, and I tried translating "If You Could Hie to Kolob" into Albanian, and I got the last 2 and a half verses translated.  That was the easy part since it's basically the same thing over and over again.

Everyone have fun and everything.

Love,
Elder Wallentine