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