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