Dear family,

When we do a table, basically we take out a drying rack, put a sheet on it, and lay out a ton of pamphlets.  I know some of my companions hated street contacting if it wasn't with a table because having a table makes it clear our purpose.  I'm good with street contacting, although I do enjoy having visual aids.  We haven't been going to the beach.  We have usually just been going to the Zone leaders' house every p-day where we play some fun card games.  My companion and I are getting along rather well.  It's nice.  There are a couple really good food places here.  There's one place where we can pick up fresh pasta whenever we want.  From what I hear, there is nowhere good to get suflaqes, so that's a bummer.  We can get sandwiches, pizza and pasta pretty easily.  I thought of translating on my own.  It has been a big help.  I'm not only learning new words, but I'm learning new meanings of old words as well as just figuring out how to say some phrases that I didn't know before.  Like "as it were" which I learned recently was "siç u duk" which can translate back to "as it appeared".  It's been a fun way of studying the language.  I found out that translating the testimony of Joseph Smith at the beginning of the book is a lot harder than some of the scriptures.  This week with the piano, I had more time to practice, and I had a piano to practice on.  So it went much better.  I even tried playing one of the hymns with both hands as well.

I know that sometimes in school, I was often times annoyed with the way some 20 year olds think.  It's just some people's logic just doesn't make sense, and then they are too prideful to learn correctly.  Although, I think I could also be like that sometimes.  I think I have found that there are a lot of little things that bug me when other people do them that I do as well.  So I'm trying to purge those.  I think it was especially people in honors classes that tended to bug me with their spring of knowledge.  I don't know why, but people I talk to in the street and tracting that are like that recently haven't really bugged me all that much.

Last week, we found 3 investigators.  Kristaç, Kristaç, and Rezart.  The first two were also found in the same day.  It was a pretty good week.  So this is the second time I have had 2 investigators with the same name.  It seems to be following me around.  Still yet to find a Luigi Mario combo.  I think Luigi is a lot less common of a name than Mario...

I met one of the newer senior couples recently.  They are usually down in Elbasan, but they were living in the house above us this last week doing stuff for institute.  Their name is Elder and Sister Preston.  They are pretty cool.  They were from New Zealand, but lived in America for a long time.  So they have their New Zealand accents.  Elder Preston was telling us the other day a lot about how he loved working and how he often goes trying to do service for people for somewhat selfish reasons, because he loves how he feels after he works.  He's a pretty cool guy.  I like him.  He spent the whole week fixing things up in the house above us, and he passed out tons of cards with our number on them.  If anybody is ever not motivated to get out and do some hard work, I'd probably send him over to talk to them.  It would be hard listening to him talk and then not want to work hard.  He talked also about how the whole earning bread by the sweat of your brow being a blessing rather than a cursing for Adam and Eve. Hey Caleb, I met a guy that calls people "My boy".  He's really funny.

Well, anyways, I should get going.  Hope all is well.

Love,

Elder Wallentine

Dear family,

From what I've heard, most office elders have been really relieved to leave the office and go back to regular work and that up to now, nobody has liked it.  All that says it's probably good I didn't go. I think I'd be happy with almost anything that could happen with the remaining transfers of my mission.  I hope I get to train one of these days.  That'd be cool.

We had a pretty good week.  Compared to last week's 2 lessons, this week we got 9.  We also got numbers that weren't zeros in many other areas.  So that was good.  There's this one kid that is 20ish years old name Artur who is going to dental school in Tirana.  We met him once, and he said he wasn't going to have any time due to school, so I was kind of bummed because I thought we wouldn't be able to meet with him anymore.  Yesterday however, we were going to have an empty night of street contacting or tracting since a lot of people we tried calling either didn't answer their phones or were out of town.  I tried calling Artur and asked him if he'd have some time during the week to meet, and he told us he could meet right then.  Luckily, it was during lunch, so we were able to just push the rest of lunch until later on to have a meeting with him.  He appears pretty ready to hear the gospel.  He used to be Muslim, but then he started reading the Bible and praying in the name of Christ, and he said he got answers to prayers.  So he already knows how prayer works and everything.  We asked him if he would get baptized, and he said that he had already been baptized, but that if he needed to get baptized again then he would.  So we'll explain why he needs to be baptized again later on, but up to now, he's pretty golden.  The only problem really is just the lack of time due to the need to travel back and forth from Tirana every weekday and then homework on top of that.  So hopefully we can work something out.

We met this inactive member that talks a ton last Tuesday.  He seemed pretty good from what he says, but he just doesn't act.  We committed him to meeting with us the next Friday and then coming to church with us on Sunday.  Friday came around and his sister said he forgot and would be in Tirana on Sunday.  ...yeah...  Anyways, the day right after that, we met an 85 year old guy named Ndreko, and he was really happy the whole lesson.  He is a bit slow with understanding, and hard at hearing, but he at least listens to what we have to say the best he can.  Also, that same day, we bought this cake, went home, and found out there was a dead wasp on it.  So Elder Castro-Guzman no longer wanted it, so I took the wasp out, and up to today, I've eaten almost the whole thing.  Later last week, we met Ndreko again, and he had read and had questions for us.  He can't come to church due to his paralyzed wife, so we'll have to figure something out for him.

Last Friday, we were stopped by an Orthodox Deacon.  He was really nice and had gotten a quad from missionaries while he was in America, and he said he wanted one because he left it back in America.  He was nice, but I don't think it is too possible for us to get it for him.  We are hoping to meet one of these days, and hopefully a couple other books we have will suffice.  He wanted something that explained the history of our church and something that explained the sacrament, so I was planning on giving him a True to the Faith and Our Heritage.  That pretty much takes care of what he wanted.  We'll see how all that goes.

On Saturday we had a fun time doing a table.  It appeared like it was going to start raining, so we went out and just did a table to get as much time out of it before the rain came as possible.  So we were doing the table, meanwhile we can see the lightening in the distance.  We were able to get a phone number of a kid who looked pretty interested in the gospel, and then a bit later, the rain started coming down extremely hard.  So we packed up and went home.  I was also able to talk to a guy from Montana that worked at a school where they taught Albanians how to read the Bible.  That is really handy and needed here.  So we had a good time talking.  Anyways, it is really hard to find a way to be effective when it's raining after around 7 pm.  That's when people usually start getting mad at us for it being too late for tracting, and people aren't going to want to stop to talk in the rain.  Also, within seconds, the roads here in Durrës are totally flooded.

Yesterday, I once again had to play piano in church, but it wasn't all that great since I hadn't touched a piano for 6 months.  The first and last hymns were alright, but I butchered the sacrament one.  The zone leaders here have a keyboard they can give me, so I'll be practicing for next Sunday.  Hopefully I can also get what hymns we'll be singing before then.

So far for language study, I've been able to translate quite a bit of the Book of Mormon into Albanian.  I started at 2 Ne 31 and got through Jacob 1, and then I decided to start at the beginning with the introduction and testimonies.  I noticed the other day in a lesson, that this translating thing is starting to really help me with speaking as well.  So that is fun to see.  I also get to learn usages of words that I otherwise wouldn't know.  So that's cool.  These past couple weeks, I've had to kind of be the senior companion as far as speaking goes because my companion is the French companion I had from the MTC, so he's still a bit behind in Albanian although his English is pretty darn good now.  I think by the end of his mission, he'll be pretty good at both.

All the youth, especially back in Vlorë, wanted to have our Facebook.  There were 2 members who even created a Facebook for Elder Warburton since he didn't have one so they could add him.  His family then went in and changed information that the 2 members had put for stuff like interests, but it was pretty funny to hear about.

Anyways, that's all I got for this week.  Have a good time at home.

Love,
Elder Wallentine

Dear family,

Tomorrow is when we head out for boys camp, and I haven't started packing at all today because we have been at this castle for a district trip all day.  Hopefully we will have time for me to at least pick up a couple t-shirts I can wear for the camp.  We are kind of tight on time now though.  We're way excited to go though.

Yesterday we had our baptism and it was really cool.  We picked up another investigator before church so he could come to church, so he got to see the baptism as well.  That was really cool.

Recently, our landlord came along randomly and told us she was going to clean our house.  She apparently does this every now and again, but it was kind of a nuisance for a couple days.  She was at our house practically all day cleaning, which is really nice, but I couldn't really come in at lunch and relax anymore.  She left our house way clean and everything, but I found out she had given her nephew a couple of my personal belongings because he cried about them.  That was interesting and kind of bugged me, but luckily it was nothing important.  As it turns out, giving your children what they want applies to other people's belongings as well.  Another one of those interesting culture differences.

Yesterday, we met with this guy named Agron that I got the number of, and we had a really good meeting.  He seems pretty darn ready for the gospel.  I'm pretty excited about it.  His work schedule is not set in stone or anything, so hopefully we can meet him again this week.

We had exchanges this past week and I was with Elder Thorpe.  He was the same elder that I had gone on many exchanges with back up in Shkodër.  We had a good time.  We have been in the same district now for half the time I've been in the country.  It's pretty crazy.  This Saturday we have transfer calls, so we'll see if our district changes at all.  From what I've heard, there are not going to be too many changes happening with this transfer.

Well, I'm not sure there's anything else I can add for this week, but this next week is going to be a really great ending to the transfer.  I'm pretty excited for the whole thing.  Thanks for everything!

Love,
Elder Uallentajn

Dear family,

So, in our mission we have 2 office elders who take care of a lot of financial stuff, new missionary arrivals, and general office work.  Several weeks ago, the district leaders everywhere were told to report on all the members of their districts to ask everyone if they knew how to drive stick shifts.  It was pretty obvious that they were just trying to find out the possibilities for the office elder.  I later found out at transfers that that was basically just a way president wanted to ask me if I drove a stick shift, but asked everyone to make it look less obvious, and probably also to see who else drove stick shifts.  So if I had known how to drive one, I'd probably be in the office right now.  I've heard that nobody has every liked the office, but it sounded like something I would have enjoyed.  So I will just be continuing life as a normal missionary in Durrës.

Work here in Durrës is a lot slower than in Vlorë.  We were pretty much finding all week last week, and had 2 lessons at the end.  It is weird though.  Time seems to be going by a lot faster than it was back in Lushnjë when that was all we did there as well.  It all somehow seems much more enjoyable.  We did have an English course, but it was just a bunch of noisy kids who wouldn't settle down, so we had to kick them out because there was no way we could teach anything with them there. That English course is pretty much over now.  So that is a bummer, kind of.  Hopefully we can get together with the zone leaders and start a new course together where we can get people actually willing to learn.

We also tried stopping by the house of this old investigator we found in the area book who had apparently expressed a desire to be baptized at some point, but then had to go to Italy for something.  I think it was her husband that answered the door, and he said she had gone to Bulgaria for a month.  So next month hopefully we can catch her at home and get a new investigator.

It seems kind of hard starting things up here in Durrës.  Ever since I got here, anything that needs any kind of order just seems cluttered.  The area book seems to be missing any information on less active or recently baptized members, the house was a mess, and tracting records are hard to discern.  Luckily, I had a bit of time to put the house in order a bit and hopefully we can get some information about less actives we can visit from the zone leaders here.  I know there is a lot because our member lists had a lot more people than the amount of people who came to church last Sunday.

There was a baptism last Saturday for these two kids that were 8 and 10 years old.  That was fun to see.  We even have an actual building and baptismal font here in Durrës.  That was really cool.  So far, there has been 1 convert baptism this year in Durrës, so hopefully we can double that at least in the next couple months.  We've talked to some seemingly promising people in the road that don't seem to have time when we call them, so I'm starting to think that we should start setting up meetings with people right then when we talk to them in the road.  Hopefully we can find some success through members here as well.  The branch here appears to be pretty functional so far, so hopefully somebody here can help us out with this work.

One thing that has been kind of fun to see this past week is that I feel like I have made at least some progress with missionary work.  Back in Lushnjë and Shkodër, I was probably the worst street contacter ever, and now I might be closer to average.  So that's good.  I've already gotten more numbers here in Durrës than I got back in the 6 weeks I had in Shkodër, so that is promising as well.

Emily and Caleb, I'm in a city called Durrës now.  It is pretty big.  It is starting to get colder here so we are wearing suit jackets again.  That is good because now I have a lot more pockets again. Thanks for writing to me.

For language study, I started trying to translate the English Book of Mormon into Albanian and then checking it with the Albanian Book of Mormon.  While I was at it, I started writing my translations in cursive to give that a try as well.  I think I'm getting better at both.  Well, I hope all is well back at home.  Have a good week!

Love,
Elder Wallentine

Dear Family,

So last Saturday we got called from the mission president, and I am being transferred to Durrës to be with one of my former MTC companions, Elder Castro-Guzman.  It should be a fun transfer.  Also, I will be in the same district as the zone leaders, one of whom I was companions with, and the other I had been in the same district with.  So I will already know my whole district.  I also hear that Durrës is a pretty functional branch, which means it will be the first self-sufficient branch I will be serving in, and I will be able to focus more on the missionary work that I am actually here to do.  That's kind of cool.

We got to hear the morning sessions on both Saturday and Sunday, so that was really cool.  I enjoyed the talks.  Saturday was a pretty exciting day, and was in major contrast with Friday.  On Friday, we were filling up the baptismal font for a baptism we were going to have on Saturday, but we set it up wrong, so it spilled all over the church twice.  So we spent the majority of the day sweeping water out of the church and cleaning up.

 On Saturday, however, we started out the day inviting investigators to come to the baptism, then we went to have an interview with a member which went much better than expected.  After lunch was the best part of the day.  At the baptism, a recently baptized kid, who recently started acting up all the time in our lessons and stopped coming to church, came and was well behaved.  An investigator also showed up.  Right after the baptism, we watched general conference.  Then, we went home and got to hear where we were all getting transferred and who our new companions were.  Also, we got to see how close our Transfer Madness was to what actually happened.  Transfer Madness is something that I think is pretty special to the mission here in Albania because it is so small.  We pretty much take this sheet that has the phone numbers of every missionary in Albania, and predict where everyone will be going judging from what we know.  It's pretty fun.

Another fun thing about our mission is that you have most likely seen or heard something about your next companion so you at least know who they are.  The only time this is not the case is when you're training.  With only 2 zones in the mission with only 40ish people total, you get to know people pretty quick.  Our mission is about the size of a large high school class.  It's kind of funny.

That was a cool story about the baptist minister.  It's funny how in some places in the world people know about our religion (maybe without understanding it) and they try working against it, whereas here in Albania, people have most likely never heard of us, and a lot of people think we have to be Catholic, Orthodox, or Muslim.

So far, one of the things I have come to really enjoy here in Albania is the Mosques everywhere.  They play their prayers from their towers every day 5 times a day, and it's a fun background sound here.

Anyways, that's about all that happened this week.  I'll let you all know how Durrës is next week.

Love,

Elder Wallentine