Dear family,

So this past week, we had lots of lessons fall through.  I think we ended up having about as many lessons happen as lessons that didn't happen.  We haven't been able to meet with 3 of our investigators with baptismal dates for quite some time.  So now we really only have 1 progressing investigator who should be baptized on May 16.  Hopefully, those other investigators will be able to meet with us more often.

We went to the beach this morning and played a little ultimate Frisbee.  That was really fun.  I will have to take some pictures of the beach sometime while I'm here.  It's pretty cool.  There is trash all over the place, but other than that it isn't too bad.  It isn't a very good beach if you want to go surfing though.  There aren't really big waves or anything at this coast.

We had zone conference the other day, and they told us about this 40 day fast thing we will be doing.  We are pretty much just supposed to make a list of things we will start and stop doing and then do our best to do and not do those things for the next 40 days.  On top of that, we are all going to be reading the Book of Mormon together.  I've already been able to learn a lot from the beginning of 1 Nephi.  It's pretty cool.

Today we cleaned our house.  I did some sweeping, mopping, and cleaned off our counters and sinks.  It ended up taking from the time we got back from the beach until it was time for lunch.  It is amazing how relaxing cleaning the house is compared to missionary work.  I was thinking about it the other day, and service and all those cleaning jobs seem really fun now.  It really makes sense why missionaries aren't allowed to play electronic games or anything like that.  It probably makes all the service and stuff seem much more fun.

I recently heard that one of the investigators from Shkoder has a baptismal date.  That was exciting.  It wasn't anybody I thought it would be either.  It is this girl that Elder Thorpe and I had taught one time on exchanges where our lesson didn't go very well.  The next time Elder Fahey and I had met with her, it went better, but it's cool that she wants to get baptized now.  I also hear that this other investigator there wants to get baptized as well.

One thing I have noticed about my mission is the difficulty isn't anything I expected it to be.  I expected it to just kind of get easier the longer you were here, which it does but in a different way than I thought it would.  It is pretty much like the whole story about Alma and his people when they prayed and their burdens were made light.  The difficulties never seem to go away, but they don't seem too bad either.  I remember talking to my trainer back in Lushnje about what was probably the hardest part of the mission, and he just told me it was always hard, just in different ways. I think that's it for this week.

Love,

Elder Wallentine