Dear family,

We just had a really good week this past week.  We had 18 total lessons which is only 2 short of the mission standard.  We have enough lessons planned to have more than enough, but a lot of them end up cancelling on us.  We also found a couple new investigators and we have a couple progressing.

Yesterday, we went out to do our 3 hours of proselyting on P-day, and we had to go in early because my companion was feeling a little ill.  Our phone ran out of money a couple days ago as well, so we couldn't really contact anybody.  We also didn't really have any food at the moment since we hadn't done shopping yet.  So we were basically stuck in our house all day.  Luckily we had bread, cheese, and this nucreme chocolate spread stuff, so I was able to eat throughout the day.  So this is the reason I didn't email yesterday.  Elder Fahey had to rest all day, and so consequently, I was inside all day as well.  It wasn't bad.  I just kind of continued with my normal P-day activities.

Last week, we had a really good lesson.  We were tracting this huge apartment building for the last time through before we'd be done with it, and we got in at a door that we'd been to 3 times with no answer.  We set up an appointment with them later in the week, and this next appointment was the really cool lesson.  There is an older guy named Leke, and his daughter named Tina.  Leke has pretty much lost his sight, so he has a lot of family helping him it seems.  The second meeting with them, Leke's brother was sticking around because he heard we were coming.  These people are all Catholic, and it seems like Leke's brother, named Nikol, was only sticking around to try to tell us what we were teaching was false.  The discussion that resulted ended up being different than most of these situations would end up.  Most discussions like this, the devout religious person would typically cut you off whenever you try to say anything and never let you get a word in.  This guy was different.  He was laying down quite a strong attack to defend Catholicism, but he would listen to what we said.

What was cool was that throughout the lesson, Leke and Tina would say stuff like how the Book of Mormon fulfills the Bible, and they were pretty much working with us.  At the beginning, Nikol was pretty strong against the Book of Mormon and our message, but at the end of the lesson, he told us he thought it was true.  That was pretty cool.  If he would have been there before when we knocked on the door, I'm not sure we would have gotten in and ever taught them.  We taught Leke and Tina again today, and it turns out they had tried to go to church on Sunday, but they got there too early so nobody was there, and the number they tried calling us at was wrong.  So it's good to know they tried to come to church.

Later that day, we had FHE with the branch here.  There was a pretty good turnout.  We had several less active members come including the first person baptized here in Shkoder.  It's funny because I found out later this guy was asking Elder Vail, the branch president/missionary, why nobody comes to church.  Interesting question from an inactive member.  Anyways, it ended up being pretty successful.  We had a lesson, some games, and food.  I think they all enjoyed it.

The next day, we had another good meeting with this family I may have mentioned before at some point.  The dad is blind, and they had randomly showed up to church one Sunday after the Shupes had helped contact their daughter at the castle we went to near the beginning of the transfer.  Anyways, they live in this fshat (village) called Mjed (M-yed) that was about a 20 minute furgon ride from Shkoder.  So after waiting for someone to not show up in the morning, we got in a furgon and rode down to the village.  It was a cool change of scenery.  A nice quiet village compared to the usual city.  We were able to teach most of their family.  There was the dad named Pjetri, the mom named Lindita, then 3 of their kids.  They have 5 total, but one is in Greece, and the other was at school.  It was a pretty good lesson.

This past Sunday, I was able to play a hymn with 2 hands instead of the usual right hand action.  That was cool.  I also gave a talk about reverence that I was assigned after we saw the slight lack of reverence in the last week's meeting.  I may have to be giving a lot more talks in church if I stay in Shkoder this next transfer, because there may only be one companionship here.  We'll see how everything works out.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this angry Catholic guy we tracted into one day.  We knocked on his door, and he basically yelled at us saying he was Catholic.  Another day, we were tracting the same apartment building a second time through, and when we got to the bottom, he came and yelled at us again.  To our knowledge, we weren't knocking on his door.  The third time going through the building (another day), we found out that I had made a mistake and marked that there was no answer at his door.  So he wasn't very happy.  We came out of tracting another building, and he chewed us out a little.  We also ran into another guy who yelled at us, but I marked his door down correctly.  Luckily we haven't been pushed down the stairs yet.  I hear that happened on the other side of Shkoder one time.

When the mosques sound off their prayers, it doesn't seem like anybody outside starts praying like I kind of expected to happen.  I think when muslims here pray, they typically go inside the mosque where they pray.  It's hard to learn too much about Islam at the moment because I can't understand most of what people say, and we're spending most of our time teaching about our church.  One thing I have learned is that it seems like a lot of people are confused about what their religion believes.  It seems like most people here aren't really a big part of their religion.  They just say they're Catholic or Muslim so they can have a religion it seems.

Many people here think we are Jehovah's Witnesses because they do tracting as well.  The other day, this lady was like, "You're Jehovah's Witnesses!  Leave!"  She was slightly confused when we said we had no connection with them.  Some people try to explain to us that we have to be with one of the "big" religions around here.  One person said that there are only Catholics, Muslims, Orthodox, and Jehovah's Witnesses.  Some people don't seem to understand that there are thousands and thousands of religions out there.  A problem I've heard with missionary work here is people seem to think missionaries here are Catholic for a long time, at least with Catholic people.  Even if you come out and say you aren't with the Catholic church, it doesn't really sink in sometimes.

A zero lesson is basically the first meeting with people where we tell them a little about the restoration and what our purpose is here.  It's a pretty new thing I think that Elder Christopherson said we needed to do.  It is kind of hard to get used to, but it's not too bad anymore.

Anyways, this is the last week of my 2nd transfer in the country, and this saturday, we find out if I stay here in Shkoder or head off somewhere else.  Transfer calls are always so exciting.  I don't even know why.  I also found out that I really like having shiny shoes.  I usually polish them every Monday, and they are really shiny now.  It's always a shame when it rains the next day though.  It pretty much makes the previous polishing pointless.  Anyways, I think that's all for the week.

Love,

Elder Wallentine

Dear Family,

We got 6 new investigators this week.  That is cool.  It's been progressively increasing each week it seems.  We no longer have any progressing investigators though, so that's a bummer.  I've started carrying around the Family Proclamation things around with me so I can give them to people while I'm street contacting and stuff.  We're starting up FHE for the branch here in Shkoder, so that should be fun.  We had quite a few people in church yesterday, but everyone seemed to be talking like the whole time.  Everybody seemed to be singing different paces during the hymns, and it didn't help that I had never played the third hymn before, and I didn't have time before church to practice it.  So that last hymn wasn't quite as good as it could have been.

Last Thursday we had zone conference, and it was pretty fun.  We learned a lot of cool stuff and I got a little more time to hang out with Elder Castro-Guzman and a couple other people from my MTC group.  I want to be able to meet some of the new missionaries, but I'm not sure I'll get a chance for a while.  I don't know for sure, but I think Elder Fahey and I have a pretty good chance of staying here in Shkoder.  We'll see what happens.  While we were in Tirana, we stopped by this book store before zone conference so Elder Fahey could pick up an Albanian grammar book.  They had all sorts of fun books in Albanian as well such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  That would be fun to come home with.  It would be cool to have books to read after my mission that could help me hold on to Albanian.

We've been trying to send letters to the leaders of other churches here in Shkoder in an attempt to try to build up a good relationship with the other religions here.  The other elders have been able to attend a Catholic mass thing, and they told us about it.  It sounded pretty interesting.  We went to drop off a letter at a Mosque, and we saw people praying in there.  It was a fun thing to see.  The inside of the Mosque was pretty cool looking, although I didn't really get to see too much of it.  It is really cool to serve in a place with Muslim being one of the main religions.  Throughout the day we always hear the prayer calls going off.  There are also quite a few big Catholic churches around here, so throughout the day we here the Catholic bells and the Muslim prayers going off a lot.  The Muslim prayers sound like they're singing.  It gives kind of a Middle-East feel to things when they go off.  The Muslims seem to have their own greeting as well.  People say Sallam Aleku and the response is Aleku Sallam.

This morning was pretty cool.  We met with this member called Kristian, and were able to give him a Liahona to read.  We then did some street contacting for an hour before we met this guy who wanted to learn more, so we took him to the church and gave him a zero lesson.  It went pretty well.  He said we could meet him again tomorrow, so that's cool.

It's started getting warm here.  It's similar to the change of weather down in Logan.  In Logan, we'd have a week of warm, then a week with snow, and the weather would just jump back and forth until summer came.  Here, it gets really hot for a couple days, then it rains and is cold again.  It is so much warmer when the sun is out.  It's pretty crazy how much warmer it gets, and yet people are still dressed in coats and everything when it's hot outside.  It reminds me of Italy when everyone seemed to be dressed all warm and were wondering why we were wearing shorts and t-shirts and stuff.

Hey Brandon, Happy birthday tomorrow! Anyways, that's about all I got for this week.  

Love,

Elder Wallentine

Dear Family,

Last Thursday, we went out and started painting the church.  Before, it was a gross yellow color, had holes and dents all over the place, and an ugly curtain in the back covering this giant spot where mold had started growing.  So, we filled in the holes and everything with this gunk, and we sprayed the mold and scrubbed it off the walls.  Right when we finished the second coat, it looked so much better.  We painted everything white.  The next day, we went in and found out the mold in the back had started growing again, so there was a bit of yellow showing.  Elder Fahey and I had a pretty busy day, so the other elders spent pretty much all Friday fixing it up.  They banged away at the wall until they got enough of the mold away, and then filled the hole with the gunk stuff.  Today we went back, and the gunk is now cracking because of the mold.  I'm not sure what we're going to do about it, but we might end up having to put up another curtain to cover it up or something.  The room still looks much better now than it did before.

Yesterday, we had district conference, so we all went down to Durres where there is an actual church building.  It was 2 hours of furgon riding there and 2 hours back for a 2 hour meeting.  It was cool because I got to see Elder Castro-Guzman again.  That was fun.  That took up like half the day.  We then went out and did our normal thing the rest of the day.

A lesson didn't go through yesterday, so we went tracting.  We went through this huge apartment building again, and then moved on to the identical building next door.  We went up to the 9th floor and knocked on the door.  The guy who answered was on the phone and just let us come in.  We went in, climbed some stairs to his living room area, and it looked like something you'd see some big mob boss owning in the movies.  It was way nice.  I think he was the guy in charge of this apartment or something.  We talked a little with him, and then he took us outside on the balcony, which was pretty much just the roof of this huge building.  We could see all of Shkoder from up there.  It was awesome.  Probably the coolest tracting experience so far.  We then taught him a quick lesson and gave him a Book of Mormon.  He told us he'd read it and call us if he has any questions.

We then went to see this investigator we have and it was pretty cool.  The first time we met him, he went through like 3 cigarrettes during the lesson, and this time, he didn't smoke at all.  I couldn't even smell any smoke when we were in there.  It was cool.  This was our third meeting with him, and we showed him the Restoration video and taught the first part of the plan of salvation.  It was pretty cool.

They have chocolate here, and there are some brands that I remember seeing in Belgium.  They also have these Turkish chocolates that people seem to give out a lot when we get in tracting, and sometimes they aren't that great.  I did find a bag of the cookies that we would get in Belgium.  The bag where there was one kind of cookie that was way better than the rest, and there were only like 2 or 3 in each bag.  I got one of those bags, and it was pretty good.

I just finished Doctrine and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price, and I got ahold of this Old Testament study guide.  I started using it so I can understand the Old Testament as I read it.  Maybe it will help some of the less exciting books easier to read.  I'm at the point of Abraham and the study guide pointed something out that was interesting.  The first 2000ish years of this earth's temporal existence, so1/3 of it, we have very little written about that time.  Like the time between Noah and Abraham, we don't really seem to have anything.  It's pretty fun going through this study guide.  It makes things really clear.

We had English course again this week.  Nobody showed up.  The other elders had it on Tuesday and we had it on Thursday, and nobody showed up either time.  I think we're going to try giving out more flyers for it soon, because we didn't do very good before.

It's crazy that my second transfer is now halfway over.  In 3 more weeks I will no longer be the newest group in the country.  Of course, if I stay in Shkoder this next transfer, I probably won't be seeing any of the new missionaries for quite some time.  I wouldn't mind staying in Shkoder.  I've enjoyed it.  The biggest thing I miss from Fier was being able to eat at this place called Pizza Roma.  They had delicious pizza that was oozing with cheese.  It was like half a pizza for a buck.  And we got the food almost instantly every time.

We ended up getting 9 lessons this past week which is pretty good considering there was one day where we spent all day fixing up the church.  There always seems to be at least one day that nothing goes through and we don't get any lessons.  So we got one of those as well.  So really we got 9 lessons in 5 days, which isn't too bad.  I heard that some sister missionaries in Tirana got like 27 lessons one week.  That's insane.  We might be able to get that many lessons if everybody we planned for showed up, but not many people end up showing up.

Near the beginning of this week, it was raining quite a bit, but today it is really warm and sunny.  It's really nice outside right now.  We went street contacting this morning, and we got a couple more numbers for people we can try contacting.  The time this morning seemed to go by really quick especially for the proselyting time on P-day.  Usually it goes rather slow because it's p-day.

Well, that's all I got for this last week.

Love,

Elder Wallentine

Dear family,

I just got the package with all those Valentines last Saturday.  That was cool. Thanks a lot!  I don't really know how long it takes mail to get here because when mail gets here, it goes to the mission office in Tirana so we can't get our mail until someone in our district goes to Tirana or when someone from Tirana comes here. 

Last week I went on exchanges with another elder in my district named Elder Thorpe.  It was pretty crazy; he is almost exactly like my former roommate John Burt.  I think we got along rather well.  He didn't understand too much more of what people were saying than I did, so that was interesting.  I enjoyed the method of street contacting we did.  We stood there and when people were passing, we'd try talking to them, but when there was nobody coming, we'd be able to talk a bit.  When Elder Fahey and I street contact, we typically spread out and try talking to people on our own, which has its perks, but in the down time, we can't really talk to each other.

The other day while we were tracting, we got in and taught this family that had 2 little kids.  We got their phone number and they said we could come back.  We'll see how that goes.  We also taught English for the first time this week.  This lady and her 10 year old son were the only ones there.  It went pretty good, and we showed them the Restoration video.  They seemed pretty interested.  She has another little kid as well that I think is 6.  That would be cool if both these families ended up being investigators.  The first family asked about church, so that would be cool.  We told them that they could bring their whole family to church and that it was meant to be like that, so hopefully they come.  We met them yesterday, on Sunday, after church, so hopefully they can remember for next Sunday, or even better, hopefully we can have a return appointment.

Church yesterday was pretty awesome.  We had 6 people come that weren't missionaries.  2 were really strong members, 1 was slightly inactive, and 3 were a nonmember family.  Apparently, the teenage girl, who came as part of that family, was a girl that Sister Shupe had contacted and talked to last week at the castle.  She brought her parents with her.  Elder Fahey talked to them after sacrament meeting and I think he set up a meeting with them.  That would be cool.  The dad even got up during testimony, and one of the more experienced missionaries said he didn't say any blasphemy, so that was good.  This missionary is also branch president here.  Elder Fahey is worried that when this elder, Elder Vail, goes home in April that he will become branch president.

There are many times in the morning where we have called people to set up meetings and they just never show up.  It isn't too bad though.  As we wait for people to show up, we are basically just doing street contacting, but we have checkpoints.  For example, we wait for like 15 minutes before calling them, and at about 30 minutes, we leave.  It makes gaps of 4 hours of not having lessons more bearable.

Today we decided to spend some time to buy all the food we were going to need for the rest of the week, and it took like 20 minutes.  Usually it would take us like 10 minutes a day to buy stuff for the next day, so this is a little more efficient.  And now we know exactly what we're going to be eating for the next week.  It's a good feeling to know that we have food in the house though.

I've only been here in Shkoder for 2 weeks, and it seems like it's been forever.  It still seems like I just barely got out of college though.  It's weird.  I can see these 2 years going by extremely fast.  I found out that in like 3 days or so, I will be exactly 20% done with my mission.  I was curious, so I figured out how much was 1% of my mission, and it turns out that every 1 week 3 hours and 36 minutes, I complete another 1% of my mission.  So it goes about just as fast as our computer at home would take to scan for viruses.  I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be counting down my mission by percent unless I really want these 2 years to drag on.  It is crazy to think that after this transfer I will be 1/4 of the way done though.

I just realized something kind of funny.  For the past 4 and a half months or so, my life has been focused mainly on just religion, and it's the only thing we talk to people about here.  It's weird to think that most of the people we talk to each day probably don't even think about religion throughout their day.  It just seems so weird now.  I can hardly remember what life was like before my mission.  That is probably a good thing, because I can't really compare life now to life before.  If you compared standing on the street for 3 hours straight to going to a basketball game or something like that, it would be pretty obvious that the basketball game would be more enjoyable.  I think enjoying missionary work kind of comes as you forget what everything else was like.  Mornings have been difficult occasionally, but lately they haven't been too bad.

I've realized that our heater in our room hasn't been keeping it very warm, so I asked Elder Fahey if he and the last elder here had ever cleaned the filters.  He didn't even know you could do that.  I wouldn't blame him, because I wouldn't have known if Elder Flack hadn't cleaned the filters in the house in Lushnje.  So we cleaned them, and now our room has been much warmer.  It's nice to have a warm room at night when we're trying to do language study and everything.  It's hard for me to stay awake if it's too cold while I'm studying.

I think I'm getting better at street contacting.  Well, I think I may be getting better at being a missionary over all.  Progress and change just seems to go by so slow and the only way you can really tell how much progress you've made is to jump back a month or so and see where you were then.  If I've gotten better at anything, it would probably be talking to complete strangers randomly in the street.  Today I got another person's phone number that we can try to contact this week.

I've started trying to keep track of English words that I don't really understand from the scriptures as well.  For example, the word verily.  The scriptures seem to repeat that word all the time and I never really tried finding out what it meant.  So I finally looked it up the other day, and it basically just means truthfully or something like that.

I've almost finished Doctrine and Covenants.  I think I'm in section 136 or something right now.  After I finish this, I'm going to read the Pearl of Great Price, and then I'll probably start trying to read the Old Testament.  I had tried the Old Testament sometime before my mission, but I stopped paying too much attention to what I read around Deuteronomy and Numbers.  So I figure I'll just start over.  At the pace I'm going, I think I'll be able to finish all the standard works before my half-way mark of my mission.  That would be cool.  I am also reading Libri i Mormonit (The Book of Mormon in Albanian) and I'm almost to Mosiah.  I need to finish reading that before being in the country for a year so I can go on a trip with the rest of my MTC district near the end of our mission.

Last week, we got a total of 11 lessons.  That's the most I've gotten so far.  It was pretty sweet.  It would be even more if all these people ended up wanting to investigate the church and everything.  Right now, I think we have like 3 progressing investigators, and a couple potential investigators.  It's cool to be able to write home about this kind of stuff.  You guys didn't really get to hear much about any investigators I've had before, mostly because, I haven't really had any.  I've found out it is a little difficult to make the change into teaching lots of lessons because it doesn't exactly follow the way I expected it to at first.

Thanks for the weekly emails and the Valentines and the chocolates on the Valentines.  I'll send an email next week.

Love,

Elder Wallentine

Oh yeah, and before I forget.  The "cool kids" here like to walk around the city blaring some kind of rap music on their cell phones.  It is funny.  Anyways, I gotta go.

Dear Family,

There are toilets here, but in some places they are weird.  There are toilets called Turkish Toilets, and they are just a hole in the ground.  But I have a regular toilet in my house, and my bathroom doesn't smell bad.

I got to see a castle today.  We also saw a lot of cool masks.  It was fun.

Have a good day!

Love,

Elder Wallentine