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