Dear family,

So yesterday, we lost our water again.  The sink just slowly lost pressure until no water was coming.  It started working by the end of the day though, so that was nice.  The insides of our toilet practically got vaporized due to the water in it being scalding hot, so we had to have a plumber come today to fix it, so we had to stay home until it was fixed.

It's pretty common for missionaries to be branch presidents here.  I think there are missionaries as branch presidents in 5 places including Lushnje, Fier, and Shkoder.  We visit members almost weekly, and they usually give us trosjes or just little snacks or something, but we don't really eat meals at members' houses.  Yesterday we went to see the Mati family, and usually we only end up teaching the oldest son, Joni.  Yesterday, we found out that he still hadn't applied to BYU for school, and the deadline for new students is today, so we spent our time trying to help him apply.  Unfortunately, there was so much that he hadn't done that is required that it was impossible to finish the process.  It was kind of a bummer.

I still am yet to find any food I just can't stand.  There was one cake stuff that was strange, but it seemed like it would be something I liked.  It was weird.  Anyways, Suflaqes still continue to seem to get better and better, and basically everything just tastes good.

This past week was an interesting week.  Last Tuesday, after district meeting, we went on splits with the elders in Fier.  I went to Fier, and they had the whole day planned out so we didn't have any time to just tract or street contacting as we do all the time in Lushnje.  I helped give a spiritual thought after this English course they do in Fier, but for some reason this lady just started arguing with everybody about everything.  It was pretty strange.  Elder Shields, the elder I was with, told me later that another guy in the class said that in the church, we are like Samurais.  We do the same things over and over again until we perfect them.  Then the lady blew up at him saying stuff like, "Why are you saying stuff about samurais?  I don't know anything about samurais!"  It was the strangest spiritual thought ever.

Wednesday morning, we went with the senior couple to help teach origami in some school, so that was fun.  After that, we had lunch, then I returned to Lushnje with my companion.  Our landlord then made us lunch, so I had 2 lunches that day, and was pretty stuffed.  I can't exactly remember what we did the rest of that day.  I think we met with the Berhamajs.

Thursday, we went to Zone conference which took pretty much all day.  It was way cool, and I got to meet a lot more missionaries here.  I was also able to catch up with a couple people from the MTC group, so that was great.  When we got back to Lushnje, we didn't really have any time to do all that much.  I think Friday was the most normal day we had this week.  In the morning, we went street contacting, and I actually enjoyed it.  Then, we did weekly planning, and had lunch, then tracted the rest of the time out.  For some reason I just didn't feel quite as good when we went tracting, but we were able to kind of teach a lesson at one guy's door.  And when I say we, it was mostly just Elder Flack teaching the lesson because I was completely lost.

On Saturday, we were planning on going down to Fier with Skerdi and Joni (the young men in our branch) to join the Fier elders at the circus for an activity.  That was going to take up the second half of the day, but then it fell through.  So things were looking like just another full day of tracting and street contacting.  In the morning, we street contacted, which I actually enjoyed, and then at noon, we cleaned the church.  After lunch, we went tracting, and we got in this one door where we were able to teach a lesson, but they didn't end up seeming too interested in the message.  We did get one guy to tell us to return next week, so we'll see how that goes.

We got a call from this inactive member named Lorenc, and he wanted to meet with us again tonight.  I feel really good about him.  I'm thinking we might be able to reactivate him.  I think he likes meeting with us, but he works on Sundays so he doesn't come to church.  I think next time we meet with him, we're going to try to commit him to come to church one day.

Yesterday, church was kinda strange.  We had 6 people there including me and my companion, and 2 of them left after the sacrament.  So Elder Flack and the 1st counselor ended up just giving talks to me and this guy that is mentally handicapped.  So that was an interesting meeting.  Then, there was the meeting with Joni that night that I explained earlier.

So I just realized today that when I wrote about the experience in Belgium, I pretty much left out all the details about my online schooling.  I'm thinking I might have to throw those in sometime.  I just finished getting caught up through last Christmas break between my 1st and 2nd semester at USU.  Then I remembered that I had forgotten some details from 1st semester, so I went back.

My language study has gotten much more effective recently because I've started writing down vocab words that fit a theme such as family, cleaning supplies, etc.  It has helped give me motivation to learn vocab again.  I've also been reading Libri i Mormonit about 2 pages a day so I will be able to finish it within my first year here in Albania.  I'm in the Isaiah chapters in 2 Nephi, and it's really hard to do anything with vocab and understand what it's saying, so I have started just working on reading speed and pronunciation.  That has made reading it a little easier.  I also figured that I need to get better at reading things in Albanian, so this is helpful.

In The Book of Mormon, I just finished 2 Nephi today in personal study, and my goal for the end of this week is to make it to Mosiah.  At the pace I'm going, I think I might be able to finish Mosiah by the end of the week.

A lot of people here are interested with pictures and where we are originally from. Would it be possible to send some pictures that might be fun to show people here.  Just like of stuff I may have done before my mission.

One thing that might be fun for Caleb to know is that in the MTC, there were these 2 Hungarian elders whose first names were Caleb and Ryan.  They were both companions too.

Anyways, I think that's about the happenings of my week.  Next week is going to be normal again I think.  Meaning we're going to spend plenty of time trying to find people to teach.  Everything here has been tracted out within the past 10 months, and the Jehovah's Witnesses have tracted everywhere too.  Lots of people think we are Jehovah's Witnesses, which is kind of annoying.  Apparently thy have a pretty big following here in Albania which is surprising because lots of people really hate them here.  Anyways, I think street contacting has become my favorite finding activity recently.  Tracting has been really good every now and then, but we haven't been able to find really any new investigators yet.  I'm hoping we can get people to teach soon.

Brandon, the mission has started getting really cool.  This past week was way different than usual though.  I got to teach origami to elementary school kids in Fier with a senior couple when I was on splits with another missionary.  It was awesome.  I'm starting to understand some of what people say, but I can only get a general idea of what they are saying.  I've heard that it takes some people like 6 months to get a good hold on the language, but hopefully I can get it a little faster than that.  Anyways, I learned a couple cool words recently.  cicmic (pronounced: tseets-meets) is tic-tac-toe, and xhiro (jeer-oh) is a walk. Emily, guess what I learned the other day?  In Albanian, Dora means the hand, so Dora the Explorer is like The Hand the Explorer.  It's kind of funny.  Another thing that is kind of funny is that some people here are named Yllber (pronounced Ewl-bear) which means rainbow.  Anyways, I love you too.

Love,
Elder Wallentine