Dear Family,

So everyone in our district got more than 20 lessons this week.  I think Elder McGlothin and I got the least amount, but we still got 22 total lessons.  Quite a bit better than my last areas.  We should be getting more lessons, but one of our investigators is still unable to meet us, these kids we give retention lessons to haven't been showing up, and one investigator shows up, but doesn't want a lesson.  I think everything is straightened out with one of the boy's parents and he says he can get baptized.  His friend has all of a sudden just not wanted to meet with us though.  Nonetheless, we have 3 baptismal dates for May.

Recently, this investigator that the sisters have been teaching for a long time came up to Elder McGlothin and I as we were walking back home from a meeting with Elder Snow and told us that she wants to get baptized.  So just yesterday, she got baptized.  The sisters had asked her who she wanted to baptize her, and she chose me.  It turns out it was because I looked like her dad or something.  So that was cool.

The other day, we were walking home from an appointment later at night, and we passed this Red Bull stand that started shooting those big fireworks into the air randomly.  It was pretty cool, but really loud.  I'm not exactly sure why they were shooting the fireworks off, but it was still pretty cool.

We recently found out that one of the assistants went home early due to health reasons, so a couple people moved around a bit.  Our district's elders all stayed the same though.  Every transfer I've been here so far, somebody has gone home early due to medical reasons.  That's probably hard for president because we already don't have all that many missionaries here in Albania, not to mention those going home have been pretty good missionaries from what I hear.  Recently, there was an emergency transfer as well for the sisters because one of the sisters in Tirana got a couple stress fractures in her foot.  So now Sister Hall has a mini-missionary here in Vlore.  From the sounds of things, the rest of this transfer will be pretty difficult for Sister Hall.

One day we were heading home at around 9 pm in the rain from a meeting we had, and we decided to go down this road to get home quicker that has always had kids hanging out that like to bug the missionaries.  We figured that since it was late and raining, they'd be inside.  We were wrong.  From what I've seen, these kids literally just hang out on this road all day long.  They can't and don't really do anything to us, but they try to be intimidating.  It's a little difficult to be intimidating when your only weapon is a small and slightly broken plastic bat.  One kid had something sharp that he'd poke us with, but it was pretty obvious it wasn't a knife or anything dangerous.  Apparently, I accidentally moved in such a way that made the kid with the sharp object and bat run into this other kid that was on a bike.

I received the package you sent just a couple days ago when president came down for interviews.  So that was fun.  Thanks for that.

It seems like p-days here in Vlore are a lot busier than the other places I've been, but today it is a little less busy which is nice.  It seems like we go down to the beach every p-day to play games, and today we played soccer.  The beach is pretty great here.  Back in Shkoder, p-days had always seemed like just sitting around not really doing anything all day, so I started drawing.  I have a binder that I picked up where I can put everything I draw, so that's fun.  We also have a really old game of risk here in Vlore that we can play on p-days as well.

Last Thursday, we decided to go out and start picking up trash for service in order to clean up this path that we have to walk through every day.  It was funny because a lot of old people would pass and tell us that it was all just going to come back anyways.  That's one thing from which Albania is still kind of recovering from communist times.  They used to get fined whenever they littered, but as soon as that was no longer the case, people just started throwing trash everywhere.  You could even have a dumpster right next to somebody, and they'll throw their garbage on the ground.  It's kind of silly.  I also hear they used to have numbers on all the apartments during communism, but they have now painted over them all.  We did have some people come and lend us a rake to help us clean though.  That was nice.

Seminary and mutual and all that stuff seems to be pretty new here.  I don't think there are really too many youth here who have member families, so I don't think they really can have it at home like we did in Belgium.  Some people also get mad if you suggest that they have seminary some other day in the week because nobody has time.  Yet mutual was started and we have people going to that.  So seminary is only on Sundays here for 2nd hour.

When we went to the family and worked, we were in our proselyting clothes, which now is without a jacket and we can wear short sleeves.  So it wasn't all that bad.  The people there that were already working seemed to think that we didn't know how to use shovels or wheelbarrows though.  Afterwards, Elder McGlothin was telling me how they had been asking us if we had ever used them or if we knew how to use them.  It was kind of funny.  I think they just see movies where they see Americans with some kind of desk job or something like that.  I guess they didn't really think that we did physical labor like moving dirt back at home.  It was kind of funny because even if we had never used a wheelbarrow, I'm pretty sure we could figure it out.

I asked one of our investigators what he does all day for fun (he's pretty young), because I've always wondered what people here do all day.  He said they pretty much play soccer, tag, and hide-and-go-seek.  It seems like a lot of people just hang out at these small restaurants drinking coffee and hanging out with friends for extended periods of time.

Anyways, I think that's it for this week.

Love,
Elder Wallentine