Dear family,

So about half of this past week, I was feeling slightly under the weather.  It felt kind of like a less severe version of what I had had the week before going to the MTC.  Last Thursday was when it started getting bad, and it happened to be on the 30 minute walk to our baptismal date's house.  I was feeling pretty horrible when we got there, but we were able to have a really good lesson with them.  It was really good.  When we returned home, I slept really well.  I then continued to sleep for most of the next day, and most of the day after that.  I also slept the majority of Sunday as well.  There were several things in that time that we really had to take care of that were kind of difficult.  We were taking over the Sisters' English course on Saturday which would be combined with our course, so we were obligated to go to that.  Then, of course we had to go to church on Sunday, and then later on Sunday, we had to teach a temple prep class.  Luckily, this just happened to be the Sunday we were having branch council so I got to hear slightly frustrated sounding people talk for an hour and a half after church.

The water in our apartment has been out for quite some time as well, so we can't really do any laundry either.  That is kind of bad since I'm running out of clothes.  Oh well.  We'll make it through.  

Luckily, I'm feeling a lot better now, and hopefully it doesn't come back.  I think this has come up mostly from stress and worry lately.  There have been a lot of things bothering me and getting me a little uneasy.  I think that along with the normal work probably didn't help me too much.  I read a talk in the conference Liahona in Albanian by President Uchtdorf about patience on Sunday night when I couldn't sleep.  That was really good.  That really is one trait that makes a really big difference in missionary work I think.  It's too bad you kind of need patience in order to get patience.  There are a lot of things like that.  Just got to use it in order to get it.

With that member that is struggling at the moment, I don't think he's going to leave the church for good, but he could stop coming to church for a period of time enough to have some bad effects.  I have sent him some text messages that I hope will help out.  He has sent me a message saying how he still thinks of me and him as buds, but he really doesn't like my companion due to some kind of confrontation deal that happened last Sunday.  That was one of those things that was kind of worrying me last week, but I think it should all turn out alright.  I just need opportunities to talk to him.  He can be a great example to all the YM and all the youth here, so it is pretty needful for this to all work out.

We got a Deacons quorum presidency called now.  The only problem was that half the presidency didn't come to church on Sunday because they were sick.  So half of them are set apart now.  Thus, we almost have it up and running.  Institute is going great.  Last Wednesday, I sent out a mass text to all the institute aged people reminding them of the activity.  We ended up getting a pretty good turnout.  There was also this really inactive member who came that I have never seen in my nearly 4 months here in Vlorë.  That was cool.  Apparently this guy has a really strong testimony, but he's just lazy.  President Neil in one of his past e-mails reminded us that we are dealing with a first generation church here in Albania and we shouldn't compare it to the church back at home.  That's another good thing to remember.  I'm sure it takes a while for people to become a delightsome people as they say in the Book of Mormon.  Another one of those patience things.

While I was sick, the zone leaders were here on exchanges with us, so my companion was able to go out and teach some lessons on Friday night and Saturday morning.  One of these meetings was with a previous baptismal date (the one who was hit by the car and now her mother is really stressed out), and she said she could leave the house after 6 pm now.  She also said she could come to church next Sunday.  That's exciting.  Hopefully we can get her sister and neighbor to come as well.  Maybe that could be our chance to teach all three of them together.  I think things with them will be looking up.

Well, that's about all I got for now.

Love,

Elder Wallentine

Dear family,

First, I did receive that object lesson book as well as the beehives' letters.  Thanks a lot.  I got a great idea when I got it that I could start trying to translate a lot of them into Albanian which could really help some of the current teachers here in Albania as well.  I talked to this member here named Ganjel who is the YM's president, and he is usually not very open to knew ideas.  However, I told him about one of the object lessons, and he told me I could teach that part, and he could do the rest.  It went well, although it was only the Friday night activity where only 1 other member showed up.  I think it was announced that it had ended due to some miscommunication, but I will make sure that gets fixed.  I forgot to announce it at church yesterday, so we may not end up having an activity on Friday this week.  That's a bummer, but we'll see what happens.

So I got an assignment from President Smith yesterday.  The Smiths are the missionary couple here serving as branch president.  Anyways, there's this member here that he is particularly worried about.  He could be a great asset to this branch here in Vlorë, or he could really hurt it.  At the moment, it appears like he is coming close to the crossroads where he will choose.  Lucky for me, I am the missionary that has been here in Vlorë the longest amount of time at the moment (besides Sister Hall who doesn't really know this member too well), so it is my job to help him out a bit.  We'll see how this all works out.

We found this really cool guy tracting the other day.  His name is Milo, and he is an 81 year old guy who knows 6 languages.  It's pretty crazy.  It doesn't seem like he changes his opinion too easily, mainly about baptism, so that could be difficult.  He is still really cool and open to what we have to say.  He also helped turn one of our days around.  Near the beginning of last week, we went up to meet one of our old baptismal dates, and the meeting went pretty out of hand.  This was the girl who had gotten hit by the car, and when we met with them, the mom was apparently really stressed out from work, so she took the stress out on us missionaries.  So at the time we were worried that we would no longer be able to go over there.  It was right after that when we had our first meeting with Milo, and he really brightened up the day.

Last Saturday, we went down near the neighborhood of the girl who got hit by the car, and she told us we could still teach them, but not right after their mom gets home from work.  The only problem now is meeting with the oldest daughter and getting the three girls to church.  Luckily, these 3 all still seem to have desires to get baptized, so the mom is currently the only problem.  I know she doesn't have work on Sundays, so maybe we could go over then when she could possibly be less stressed.  We'll see how things go.

Last week, we had 2 investigators tell us that they were going to be coming to church on Sunday, but neither ended up coming.  That was a little annoying.  Also, none of our deacons were wearing white shirts or ties, so we were lacking people to pass the sacrament.  We are going to talk to people this week, and hopefully next week can be better.  Looking just at the numbers from last week to this week, we improved in almost everything.  So that's good.  I think we still have a lot to work on, so we'll be pretty busy this week.  We probably need to start meeting with members more often.  Being in its first generation here, we probably need to strengthen our current members as much as possible.

Anyways, That's all for this week, and I'm out of time.  So, I will send another email next week.

Love,
Elder Wallentine

Dear family,

So this week's numbers appeared horrible compared to the previous 2 transfers.  However, in this one week, we had transfers, mission conference, and district conference.  So that put just about 3 days out of order.  On top of that, we had to take care of finances a couple times, so that took a while.  We still ended up with a total of 16 lessons this week, which is still a lot better than my previous areas.

The other day, we had a really cool thing happen.  We were walking home from a rather unorganized lesson with some of our previous baptismal dates, and we ran into this one kid named Mario whom we had given a Book of Mormon quite some time ago.  I asked him if he had been reading it, and he said he was on page 139 and thought it was true.  So we told him we would come back on Saturday to teach him.  When we went to his house, he wasn't home, so we went back on Sunday.  He still wasn't home.  So we just need to catch him, and I think we'll have another baptism on the way.  That would be awesome.

Meanwhile, back to the previous baptismal dates, the last lesson with them was slightly annoying.  The mom had been saying how they already knew enough for baptism, so they had no need to come to church or be taught anymore.  I think the mom is still just getting over the car accident incident even though her daughter is almost 100% better now.  I think it is a mixture of the car accident, her oldest daughter being in the hospital just a couple weeks before, and having to deal with constant visitors as of late.  I think the next meeting we have we will have to figure out a way we can help them out around the house.  We would also like to take a member over there one time so we can have an older Albanian mother talk to her and be able to relate to her.

Ketjon, one of our other previous baptismal dates, is still a bit apprehensive to be baptized.  He says he wants to wait until he knows whether or not his family is moving to Italy or not.  He said he'd read and pray every day until next fast Sunday where he will fast and pray to see when he should be baptized.  Hopefully this all works out and he ends up doing all this.  He comes to church every week and hasn't ever ditched a meeting, but I think he just forgets a lot of things.

English course last Saturday went really well.  I talked to some members beforehand and told them to help the students if they needed help instead of blurting out answers and not allowing them to learn.  Then, there's this boy that usually comes and makes noise, but I set him aside before class as well, and told him we'd play a game with his ball if he was good during class.  Luckily, in our book we teach out of, it had a game where we taught numbers with a game with a ball.  So that worked rather well.  We then taught the first part of the Plan of Salvation where a member was able to really help us.  Usually, this member is usually pretty difficult and noisy, but he did really well and said the closing prayer at the end.

It's been pretty hot around these parts, and I have decided I like the winter much better than summer.  Luckily, I think the summer is half way over, so just a bit more.  Then, when the summer is over, I'll be half way done with my mission.  That's not for another 3 months, but still, that's pretty cool.  I have a feeling that I will be leaving Vlorë in 1 or 2 transfers.  My companion here is in the branch presidency, and I think President probably put him here because he could be here for 6 months.  We'll see how things work out.  I think that even though I hate moving, I like being in different places.

I met some of the new missionaries this past week, and that was fun.  Now there are 2 groups younger than me.  I remember thinking when I first got to the country that the people with 6-9 months in the country had to be pretty great missionaries.  Now I get to see how they really were.  We have a pretty small mission, so it seems like everybody knows everybody else.  Around transfer calls, I think a lot of people do this transfer madness thing where everybody tries to guess where everybody is going to go.  I have heard that people don't really do that in other missions because there are typically a lot more people.  I usually just try to guess my current district's happenings, but I usually get mostly wrong.  It's fun anyways.

Well, this week, we are planning on getting back a lot of our baptismal dates as well as some new investigators and contacts.  From what I can see, we could potentially get 5-6 baptismal dates by the end of the week.  That would be great.  As long as things go well, I think it has a great chance of happening.

It seems that my companion left the area in quite a predicament.  It wasn't his fault at all, it was just how things seemed to work out.  Hopefully, me and my new companion can fix all the problems that have arisen and get our investigators back on the right track.  Sometimes I feel like I can easily take care of the work I have, and other times, it all just seems too overwhelming.  Lately, it seems like these cycles have been going faster.  One day I feel great, the next day not so much, and the next day, I'm feeling good again.  It's really weird, although I would much rather have a week or two of good straight.

I think that's about all I can think of for this week.  I have a good feeling about this next one.  We hit another low for our area, but last time we did that, the work exploded and went out of control... in a good way of course.  From there, it was just like the snowball effect and expanded into what it was as of last week.  We just need to keep doing our best, and things will work out.

Love,
Elder Wallentine

Dear family,

So, I had mentioned a while back that we had like 5 baptisms planned for the 4th of July, but as it turns out, none of them went through.  The first one happened because we could never meet the guy, so we have to push his date back.  Last week some time, one of the kids said he didn't want to get baptized until all his brothers can get baptized as well.  The only problem with that is that that would take another year or so since his littlest brother is only 7.  I told him to fast and pray about it last Sunday, but he forgot, so that didn't happen.  Then, last Saturday, we went to visit the three girls who were to be baptized, and we found out that one of them was hit by a car.  Luckily it was just the mirror of the car that hit her instead of the actual car.  We went to see her at the hospital, and she wasn't nearly as bad as everybody made it sound.  She was just scraped up a bit, and had slight memory issues.  I think that her memory is coming back though.  We saw her the other day and she was much, much better.

So I am getting a new companion named Elder Hixon.  I hear he's pretty cool.  He was my MTC companion's trainer in Elbason, so that is cool.  I have found out that I think I would rather move around a lot rather than stay in the same area for long periods of time.  I enjoy the changes.  Luckily, I think we still have enough work to keep us pretty busy when Elder Hixon gets here.  I do kind of think it's cool that I get to take over this area.

I have really been needing a p-day as of late.  Last Monday, when we went to Gjirokaster, it was cool and all, but spending all day riding in a van is not all that relaxing.  So it felt about just like we skipped p-day.  I was really ready for today to come.  Unfortunately, we only get about half a p-day since we had some other stuff happening, but luckily, there's not all that much we need to do still.  So luckily, we have a bit of time to relax before we have to work.  Then tomorrow, we get to all go up to Tirana for transfers.  That's kind of exciting, although it does mean a lot more riding in a furgon.  Furgons are not as much fun as they used to be.

I think a lot of the little kids who used to help us clean the path have lost hope for the area, because they have all pretty much stopped.  One girl comes usually to talk to me, and we usually end up talking about religious stuff.  So it is still really cool.  She asked me if I had any proof that God existed, and I said everything was proof, then asked if she had anything proving He didn't exist.  She brought up the whole "if there was a god, why do bad things happen to good people?" argument. That wasn't too hard to answer.  I basically just answered that we all have to go through trials so we can become better.  She then started talking about the end of the world in 2012.  Apparently, that is a fear among quite a few people here.  I told her that I didn't think it would happen, but that if it did, I wouldn't worry about it.  The path is pretty clean now, although people still throw trash all over it.  I figure it won't hurt to keep it up though.

Well, I think that's all the excitement for this week.

Love,

Elder Wallentine