Dear family,

So I realized the other day on exchanges while I was tracting with Elder Warburton what happens when you stick your finger in the middle of an ant line.  They walk up, and after showing a bit of confusion, they turn back around.  Only like one or two ants actually went around my finger and continued on its way.  However, today on our district trip, I tried it with some bigger ants, and they just climbed on top of my finger and tried moving it or tried to figure out what it was.  We went to a place called Apolonia today and that was cool.  We found a couple turtles walking around there.

On Saturday, We went by an investigator's house, and he was sitting there killing turtles for dinner.  They also invited us to stay to eat with them.  So we got to eat turtle.  It was interesting, and the investigator killed them in possibly the most painful way possible.  It was kind of painful to watch.  He is about 14, and his sister and cousin both are investigators as well.  They all came to church as well.  We had tons of investigators in church, and since Elder Hixson is in the branch presidency and has to sit on the stand through the meeting, I had to figure out how to sit with as many as possible as well as take care of the roll.  It was pretty tough.

Also last Saturday, we had a branch activity at Zvernec which is a pretty cool island where we played soccer and basketball.  By basketball, I mean I played the Albanian version where double dribbling is allowed, you don't take it back when playing half court, and defense is played by running into the person that has the ball so they can't possibly move.  It was interesting, but I think soccer is still the main sport of this country.  Basketball, not so much.  Anyways, it was a pretty good activity.

Recently, we also met with these two ladies who showed interest in learning more about the gospel, but when we came for the return visit, the man of the house just kept saying the same reason over and over as to why we couldn't teach them even though it was completely irrelevant.  He was not very helpful.  So instead of meeting them, we just reminded a less active kid to come to institute tomorrow.

We have recently been running into a lot of people who are willing to learn about the gospel.  After the exchanges from last Thursday, it is also interesting to see the differences in our two areas in Vlorë.  We hardly do any tracting, and yet we find quite a bit of work.  When I was in the other area, we tracted pretty much all day long.  It was surprisingly enjoyable.  We also met a couple people who seemed interested in the gospel.

Today, I got to see the inside of a huge mosque in Fier.  We went in and it was pretty cool.  When you stand in the middle of the room and talk, it seemed like you were talking in a microphone.  It was way cool.  Anyways, nobody was there except this lady who was cleaning up.  I went and asked her about getting a Koran in Arabic, and she said she could only give our group 1 since she's just a worker.  So even though I asked, it ended up being given to the sister who was going home in October.  I was kind of bummed about it because I felt like I had done the work to get it, and somebody else got it.  I did end up getting a Koran in Albanian though.  The Korans are pretty cool looking, but I will most likely not be reading it any time soon since my time would probably be best used reading the scriptures we have.   I had always thought that the Mosques were kind of like our temples for Muslims, and it kind of is concerning being kept nice and everything.  I was just surprised how it was just open to the public for anybody to go walking in.  It is interesting.

Anyways, I can't think of too much else that happened this week, so I'll just end here.  Have a good week.

Love,
Elder Wallentine