Hey family,

So I think jet lag is pretty much gone about now.  The weather has been pretty nice here, but this past week has started getting really cold.  We started setting our heater to turn on like an hour before we return home so we always come home to a warm half of a house.  The room we spend most of our time is the bedroom/kitchen since it's the half of the house that is warm.  A couple of these last days the sun has been out, and it is amazing how much warmer it is with the sun.  One day we had no sun like the whole day, and it was freezing.  But we at least have sun until about 5:30, so it's not too bad.

I started reading the New Testament in Personal Study near the beginning of this transfer for the mission progression program thing we have, and I'm almost done.  I'm in the middle of revelations right now.  This will be the first time I've really read the whole New Testament, so that's cool.  I read most of it when I was in seminary, but I only got like halfway through the epistles and stuff.  I have enjoyed reading the New Testament more than I thought I would.  It's pretty good.

We had YM with the 2 young men in our branch last Saturday where we gave a spiritual thought and then played a card game.  That was fun.  It's kinda nice that my companion is the branch president because it gives us some variety to our work.  Missionary work in Lushnje is kinda slow, and we spend pretty much all day trying to find people to teach.  In the mornings we do some street contacting, and in the afternoons we usually go tracting.  It's kinda nice because we usually get in about once a day when tracting.

We have 1 investigator sort of.  He asked some questions the other day about the church giving money to people, so we're a little worried that he only wants to join the church to get money.  We have also met with this inactive member a couple times that I hope we can get active again.  I guess at some point he was filling out his mission papers, but then he went to Greece or something and I'm not sure what all happened.

I've noticed that I am able to understand more and more of what people say.  It's a pretty slow process, but the things I think I have down now is when people tell me I need to wear a warmer coat, when people are talking to my companion about how I can't understand Albanian, and a couple other topics that come up.  I'm getting down a lot of the excuses of why people don't want to learn more about the church.  We get plenty of practice with those.

So there were a couple things I wanted to write home about. The first thing is where does the last name Wallentine come from?  Like where are my ancestors and stuff from?  That's a really common question.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this in a previous letter yet, but our shower is pretty much just our bathroom.  The shower head is just on the wall and the drain on the floor.  It's pretty funny.  The other day we discovered that every time we flush the toilet, if you look out the window, you can see everything that got flushed go shooting out into the stream thing.  I could picture Caleb sitting in the bathroom all day flushing things down the toilet and watching them come out on the ground.

The other day, our water heater pretty much exploded.  Elder Flack woke up in the middle of the night and went into the bathroom, and the heater was spraying water everywhere.  Then the power went out shortly after.  He was able to turn off the water for the house, so for the beginning of that day, we had no power or water.  That was interesting.  The power came back on pretty soon after we woke up, and the water heater was fixed around 2 when the plumber came.  So now everything is better.

I can't really think of much else that has happened this week.  Basically tracting and doing whatever we can to find people is our life right now.  We meet with a couple members every week since Elder Flack is the Branch President, so that's a nice way to break up our day a little.  I had another kind of soup recently.  I can't remember what it was called, but it looked just like this bean soup I had called Flasule I think, except it had some kind of meat in place of the beans.  I thought it was delicious.  The other day we had some crepes that were really good too.  We've also had some really good Byrek lately, and Suflaqes just seem to get better each time I eat them.  They are hard to eat though.

The other day I was reading through my journal, and I was a little bummed when I got to the part where my time at college would have been if I had written anything from college.  I wrote in my journal a couple times at college, but most of the time I was just trying to catch up with everything from the past that I had forgotten to write.  I think it was Saturday night when I started writing everything I remembered from college.  I was surprised at how much I remembered.  I think I have like 3 or 4 pages from first semester, and I'm still not quite done.  It'll be nice to have it all updated and stuff.  I've done pretty good at writing in my journal every night on my mission, and I have more than doubled what I had written before my mission.

Hey Brandon, the first week in Albania was pretty tough, but once I got past that, it hasn't been too bad.  I'm getting used to basically everything now.  So now everything is pretty much getting better. Caleb, you're good at typing! Albania does have ice cream, but I haven't had any here yet.  I have had lots of yummy food though.  Maybe I can learn how to make some of it so you can have some after my mission. There are buses here, there are also school buses.  The school buses here are really small though.  I don't ride a bicycle, but I have ridden this thing called a furgon that is a van that is just like a bus.  There are lots of things that could probably make a collection, but I haven't collected anything yet.  There are some really funny looking hats here.  Maybe I could get one of those.  I love you and I hope you have a good day! Emily and Tyler, they have a lot of cool foods here most of which I have found really delicious.  I have gone down to this city called Fier south from Lushnje where I am now for a couple district meetings with the missionaries there.  There's this place down there with some delicious pizza.  I think they spell pizza "pice" here, which ends up being pronounced almost the same.  So far I have had Suflaqe, Byrek (a pie looking thing), Qofte (looks like a hot dog almost), Flasule (bean soup), and this rice pudding stuff that tastes really good.

So far, my favorite things I've done have been when we get to teach people lessons because we have spent so much time tracting and talking to people on the road.  Not very many people want to meet with us here, but it's awesome when they do.

Anyways, I love you all and hope everything goes well at home.

Love,
Elder Wallentine