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