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