Dear family,

The area in Lushnje is the one that closed. We had then moved to Fier. However, I think some time ago (before I got here in Albania) there was quite a big apostasy where a lot of people left the church in Fier. It's kind of sad. I have met the wife and kids of the one-armed member there, but he is no longer branch president, and I'm not sure if he's active. I do know that the few active members from Lushnje attend church in Fier and the branch president is now a missionary. That's about the update with Lushnje and Fier. I do remember hearing that both those areas were really successful at some point.

At the moment, I am starting Mormon in the Book of Mormon in Albanian, and starting 3 Nephi in English.  I should be able to finish at least one of them before transfers.  Today, we also took our district trip down to this place called Gjirokaster.  It had a pretty sweet castle there that we got to see.  A lot of it was still intact. 

 We came across a couple chained up dogs that seemed unhappy as well as a ton of bats hanging out in the ceilings.  I got quite a few pictures there.  We also came across an old army tank and an American "spy plane" which had a slightly less than exciting story.  Apparently this pilot went off course, landed in Albania, and he got sent back to America while they stole the airplane and put it in museums.  The plane was in pretty rough shape as well.

Less than a week until our baptisms.  I think a couple of our investigators were pretty worried about the interviews, but they found out there was nothing to worry about.  In branch council, we found out that a lot of the members don't seem to like some of these investigators.  It's really a shame.  I think they were being too judgmental though.  We were simply asking for somebody to come to there house with us so they could help their mother come to church as well.  The members just ended up being really difficult, and it was kind of annoying.  Eris, one of the YM's presidency, said he would come with us.  We were wanting a lady from the RS to join us because obviously they could relate better with the mother, but Eris should still be good.  The main reason the members have been judging them is because they are noisy and don't quite understand some things such as the importance of church.  That all comes from time, and we can teach them that.  Plus, they are youth.

This next Saturday, we are getting transfer calls, but they will be slightly less exciting because I know there's a pretty good chance I'll be staying here in Vlore.  Mostly because this transfer is right in between the middle of a ton of work starting up with new baptisms, new investigators, and new programs.  Since my companion is going home, I will be the only one here in Vlore at the moment that knows what's going on with these things as well as where they all live.  So unless things go way weird, I'm probably staying here in Vlore for at least another transfer.

Well, I think that's about it for the week.  So next week I will update you about transfers and whatnot.

Love,

Elder Wallentine

Dear family,

This morning, we went to the beach because yesterday, the other elders and a member were wanting to go.  So I went with Elder McGlothin and a member (Denald) who we picked up so we could go to the beach with everyone.  Turns out, the other elders had something going down with their landlord, so it was just the three of us at the beach.  Their landlord has been trying to move them to a different house, but she's being kind of difficult.  Anyways, back to the beach.  We showed up, and a downpour started up.  So we ended up hiding under this tent where we played dominoes and listened to this sweet Albanian music they were playing there.

Elder McGlothin left this morning at like 9 am to go with the other older missionaries to Saranda for their death trip.  Death trip as in the cool big trip all missionaries get to go on near the end of their mission if they complete the progression program we have.  So he's been excited about that.  Now I am on exchanges with one of the zone leaders for today and tomorrow.  We went to the other elders' house for a while and played a couple games, then had lunch with the district.

This week, English went alright.  The first day, we went over all the rules and split the people into beginner, intermediate, and advanced classes.  As it turns out, every class is near the beginner level.  It was interesting, but alright.  On Saturday, we had the second class where we taught English.  We taught a greeting conversation and played a game.  We are following lessons in this book we have, so it makes things a lot easier.  Noise is still somewhat of a problem, but we should be able to handle that.  I think a lot of the noise is from our new investigators, but we should be able to take care of that.

We recently just bought the 3rd floor of the building we have for church for the institute.  We have a pretty good program started now it seems.  Today we're going to do our first FHE, so we'll see how that goes.  I'm hoping it goes well.  President Smith had to accompany the missionaries on their death trip, so us missionaries will be taking care of that.  So we'll see how all that goes.

I also need to figure something out that we can do tomorrow before we head out to Fier to meet back up with all the old missionaries.  I'm not exactly sure what we can do since Tuesday mornings are usually filled with district meeting and that's about it.  We might have to do some good old-fashioned street contacting.

I seem to be getting more and more opportunities to translate for people.  President Smith wants to interview every member in the branch, so Elder McGlothin goes into the interviews to translate while I sit outside translating between the rest of the family and Sister Smith.  So that's fun.  It seems like I can understand a lot better when I am put in a situation where I have to understand what they are saying.  I remember Elder Fahey up in Shkodër telling me how he thought he was being blessed with his language since he had a younger missionary as a companion, and I can see how that works.  This gift of tongues thing might only come when we really need it.

So a couple days ago, we went to teach an investigator family about the law of chastity, and one of the girls wanted me to teach it.  However, it didn't go anywhere, because they were making so much noise I couldn't get my first question out there, and it didn't help that I had never taught that even in English before.  So I think I'll be looking through Preach My Gospel sometime soon to look over all those subjects I have not ever taught before.

In the Book of Mormon, I just read about the stripling warriors.  That was really cool.  On top of that, I am almost done with Helaman in the Albanian Book of Mormon.  I am trying to finish that before the transfer ends.  I think I'm going at a good speed to finish then.  We met the father of one of our investigators the other day, and he was really cool.  It would be really cool if we could start meeting them, but that goes back to our current problem of not having too much time.  I never would have thought that we would have so much work that we could hardly find time for all of it.  In a couple weeks we may have a more free schedule to meet with all these other people we want to meet with since a lot of our investigators will be getting baptized.

I used that object lesson on prayer with a member family the other day.  It went pretty well, and they enjoyed it.  I let them keep the rope I gave them, and they said they'd show the rest of the family.  We also are going to have a deacons quorum president soon.  We have like 7 deacons here, so that will be awesome.

One exciting thing that happened one day here was that we were coming back from lunch, and we found out someone had lit a ton of the trash and weeds near the path we've been cleaning on fire.  I assume they were trying to help out, but now it wreaks of burned plastic.  It was kind of cool, but now we have to deal with the smell.  Luckily, I think the rain today put out the smell a bit.

So, I think there was more exciting stuff that happened this week, but I can't remember much of it.  Maybe if I remember next week I will include it then.  So for now, that's all I have.

Love,

Elder Wallentine

Dear family,

So this week was pretty great.  We got 6 baptismal dates.  This family we've been teaching has been doing really good and they really try to understand what we teach.  They are all really close, and every lesson we have with them seems to have another random relative walking in or something.  We would really like to start teaching the rest of the family.  Another one is the cousin of a recently baptized member.  His name is Ketjon and he is doing really well.  He has had a little trouble reading every day, but I think that is just because he's a 13 year old boy.  The other day, he told me he was going to read 1 Nephi 4-6 in one day, and he did.  He also told us he wants to meet with us every day this week so he will be ready for baptism.  All these baptismal dates are also set for July 4, so this should be a great 4th of July for me this year.  The week before will also be fun for the zone leaders who are going to be coming down to do the interviews with all of them.  It's really cool.  Ketjon also has 2 older brothers that we'd like to start teaching.  We've at least met them both, so that is cool.

It is starting to get really, really hot now.  It is crazy.  Luckily, we have lots of meetings, so we spend a lot of time either at the church or in people's homes.  Most people's homes do not have air conditioning though, so it is still really hot.  It is also very very humid, so that makes things fun as well.  The fan we have in our house was able to keep us cool for quite some time, but lately it doesn't seem to be doing all that much.  We'll probably have to start using our air conditioning soon.

A problem we've seen recently is that we don't know how we are going to have enough time to do a lot of things.  We have such a packed schedule that it is hard to fit in more lessons.  We have cut down a couple meetings significantly, like this family that missionaries would always go over and spend several hours at their house.  Now we are only going to meet them for an hour every time we meet them.  That will free up a lot of time.  Before, I guess missionaries would go over, play uno, eat dinner, then have a short lesson.  Hopefully now we will only be teaching a lesson and maybe eating dinner.  That should help us.  We also need to do better with finding investigators.  We're not doing too well with talking to people in between appointments, but hopefully we can fix that quickly.  We do have plenty of potential investigators though, so we plan on meeting with all of them.

We had zone conference this week, and even with that putting almost a full day out of commission from normal work, we still were able to get 27 lessons.  Zone conference was pretty great though.  I got to meet all the new missionaries.  I ate lunch with them, and we had a good time.  There is also this old investigator who had to stop meeting with us because she was busy with work and school that can now meet with us again.  She was really interested before, so I think that is going to be another baptismal date.  This is the one of the 2 baptismal dates we had gotten my first day in Vlore that obviously still hasn't gone through.

Another cool thing that happened had to do with the new missionary couple here.  The past couple was here for humanitarian purposes, so being the branch president here was just kind of a side note, and they weren't able to focus too much on it.  President and Sister Smith however, are here to help work on the Young Single Adult program here.  They are pretty much here specifically to be the branch president.  They have only been here 2 weeks, and things are starting to pick up momentum.  They want to have interviews with every member here in Vlorë, and so we've started helping them with that.  On top of that, they have called a new president and vice president of the YSA.  They are pretty raring to get this thing moving.  After meeting with them and the new YSA presidency, I got pretty excited with where everything is going.  On top of that, pretty much all the males in church came in white shirts and ties on Sunday.  The only 2 that didn't were these new baptized kids whose mother didn't let them because it was "too hot".  We may have to talk to her about that.

On top of that, this small service project we are doing cleaning up the path by our house is growing.  Now, we not only have the group of kids helping us out, but the local store knew what we were doing, so when we went to buy more trash bags and water, they donated the water to us.  Also, some random people dropped off some drinks for us saying that they weren't able to help us due to work, but that was the way they could help.  This project is turning into a great success.  We are planning on keeping this going after we finish this path and cleaning other places in Vlorë as well.  I think both my companion and President Smith had mentioned something about it being cool if we could somehow get this on TV or something to kind of help people here open up more to us.  That would be way cool.

Our new English course is starting this week as well.  The other one now has almost nobody coming, and the members that come just make noise.  So this time, we have told the members that they either come to help or they don't come at all.  I had ended up resorting to taking a lot of the noisy 12ish year old kids outside of the room we were teaching in so the lesson would be less noisy.  Last Saturday however, I was not able to do this because I was teaching the English course.  I was on splits with Elder Smith and Thorpe because Elder McGlothin had to go up to Tirana with President Smith for some branch business.  So I taught the beginners course.  I told the noisy members that if they were going to talk that they had to leave.  That did nothing.  It was pretty annoying.  They don't really seem to understand what the purpose of this English course is.  So that will be a big thing we need to fix before we start up on Wednesday.  We have been passing out tons of fliers, so hopefully we have a good turn-out.

So both me and my companion have served in Lushnjë and Shkodër where work is slower than most places, and what we figured is that we must be getting some real serious blessings from enduring those hard areas.  It's pretty great.  Last transfer, we had hit our low at like 17 lessons one week (which would have been an awesome week in Shkodër), and after that, it has just kept going up.  It is really awesome.  Thanks for that object lesson about prayer as well.  I think people here will really enjoy that.

Anyways, I think that's about all for the week.  This next week seems like it will be even more jam-packed with work than this last week.  That's exciting.  In the 3 hours of proselyting today on P-day, we have 3 lessons planned.  It's already starting out pretty great.  Anyways, I will talk to you all next week.

Love,

Elder Wallentine

Dear family,

Thanks for the idea of thinking about those object lessons.  I think I'll have to start doing that.  I should probably ask my companion about stuff that is big here that everyone knows about because he probably knows that stuff better than I do.  I'll have to keep my eyes pealed for that kind of thing from now on.  The seminary thing on Friday basically came because the young men's president didn't like having the ym and yw separated at church, so we threw it on Friday since that was when we typically had the ym and yw separated.  So they kind of just switched places.  The ym president on Sunday told us they had tried to separate the two classes before, but that it didn't work.  I think he may have just not wanted to do it, but it worked great this time.  It was almost as if we were back in a ym class in America.  It went really well.

Recently, I've had a couple chances to try to interpret from Albanian to English.  A couple weeks ago, I translated stuff for the couple who is now in Tirana, and yesterday, I did a couple translations for President Smith, the new branch president and senior couple.  It made me feel pretty great.  There are some people here that I still can't understand, but typically it is the people who mumble or just don't speak clearly.  Also, if I'm feeling a little out of it, I also don't understand.  Occasionally I do zone out, which sometimes adds to my lack of understanding.

So this past week, most of our retention lessons have turned into lessons to an investigator with a member present.  Work has been amazing for us this week.  We got like 30 lessons total.  Also, a way cool thing that happened this past week was when we did service.  We started cleaning this path by our house with the other elders, and after about an hour, this group of like 5 or 6 kids started helping us out.  We got like half the path clean, and nobody passed by telling us not to pick up the garbage.  Instead, we had a lot of people thanking us and telling us stuff like "Rrugë të mbardh" I think it was.  Which basically means like I-hope-you-do-good-in-life kind of thing.  They also told us they were going to come back to help us next Thursday, so that will be way cool.  They all seemed really excited.

I think it was last Wednesday, we had to take care of the monthly report for the branch finances, and we ended up finding out that the bank statement and our written statement didn't match up.  So we spent quite a while mashing numbers until we came up with the right numbers.  It was rather fun, but it still would have been nice to have it be a quick easy process.  We had a baptism yesterday, and I gave a talk at the baptism.  It was a last minute kind of thing because we hadn't had too much time to prepare stuff for it, but I think it went well.  At first, I think it was a little shaky, but I think it started going much better near the end.  I have also noticed that in my daily conversations with people in Albanian, it seems like I am able to speak with more and more fluidity.  I also think I'm getting to the point where I can actually feel like I can build some kind of friendships with people here.  I realized at some point that it seemed like there was just some kind of wall there due to the language that for some reason, it just couldn't happen.

So, last Saturday, we asked this investigator named Ketjon for a baptismal date, and we ended up having him pray about it and choose a date himself and talk to us later.  I think he wanted to see the baptism and confirmation of these other 2 kids before he decided.  The investigator family we found last week all came to church yesterday for the baptism as well!  All except for the mom and dad that is.  I guess the mom didn't come because she works throughout the week and then cleans the house on Sunday.  So we just need to get the kids to help clean the house on Saturday or something so she can come to church as well.  That would be way cool.  We also have been seeing a real increase in people in church each Sunday, so that is also a plus.

This morning we went to the beach and Elder Thorpe and I started building sand castles.  I was working on one, and he was working on another.  As we continued, Elder Smith started helping me, and Elder McGlothin started helping him.  They were going for more of intricate designs and fanciness, while we were going for more of big, bad, and indestructible.  It was a pretty indestructible fortress.  It was a huge mountain with a cave going to the center of it with a inner wall surrounding the mountain and the farmlands, and then a moat and an outer wall around that.  It was pretty cool.  I think some random lady started yelling at us to stop making sand castles, but we just kind of ignored that.  A lot of people here seem to like to tell us what to do or that what we are doing is wrong.  Like a few weeks ago when I pretended to eat a worm in front of this little boy, and a older guy was walking by and got all mad at me and started waving his finger at me.  That was pretty funny.

So we decided that it is not a good idea to plant flowers out where anybody can reach them.  As it turns out, all the flowers we planted have progressively disappeared, and now there are very few practically dead ones left.  So, that puts an end to our beautifying with flowers for the church, unless we can find out a way to electrically charge them so that anybody who touches them will be shocked. That would be fancy.

Lately we have been so busy with all our lessons that we haven't had much time for lunch anymore. We are supposed to have 3 hours of lunch, but some days we only end up with 1 or less.  It's pretty crazy.  

I think that's all for this week.  

Love,

Elder Wallentine