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