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