Dear family,

Right now, the branch is doing alright.  It's kind of nice to be in a branch where the problems that missionaries have had to solve are now solved by members of the church.  Also, we have received a couple referrals from members that we will hopefully be contacting soon.  There are also a couple people from the area book we should be meeting.  From how things are looking, this week should be pretty successful.  Hopefully we can get some progressing investigators soon.

Last Thursday, my companion had a leadership training meeting up in Tirana, so I got to go to Tirana as well.  I didn't go to the meeting, but I was on exchanges with Elder Thorpe once again.  Me and Elder Thorpe were in the same district back when I was in Shkodër for a month and a half, then again in the same district in Vlorë for 4 and a half months.  In Shkodër, we also went on quite a few exchanges with each other, and we had a couple exchanges down in Vlorë too.  I think we have probably gone on more exchanges with each other than anybody else.  It's fun.  Also, he was telling me how he had recently decided to become a better missionary.  He had been kind of struggling with the mission and everything, but on this exchange, he seemed 100% different than what I'd seen before.  If he keeps it up, I think he'll be a really good missionary.  I was pretty impressed.

Two days later on Saturday, we went down to Vlorë for a baptism of Rinald, one of my investigators in Vlorë.  I got to baptize him in the sea, so that was cool.  It was pretty hard since there were tons of waves coming at us.  There was almost an unfortunate happening however.  While we were all getting prepared for the baptism, we hear this crash sound, and we looked up and saw the car of one of the members smashed against a pole.  The place we had the baptism was a beach that was next to the road that was elevated about 3 stories.  Apparently, the car had lost its brakes or something, so they went running into the pole.  The pole ended up saving them.  Also, had they been just a foot or so to the right, they would have gone flying off the cliff into tons of sharp rocks below.  Luckily, nobody was harmed.  Anyways, the baptism went well, and nobody died.  I also got to meet a couple of the new missionaries who came into the country in October.  That was fun.  I also had a good time talking to some members there as well as Elder Warburton who is still there in Vlorë.

Today, we went to this city called Kruj (Kroo-ee) where we saw this museum of Skënderbeu, who is this legendary hero of Albania who had apparently chased the Turks from Albania.  He's revered by pretty much everybody here.  They also had a ton of cool shops there full of a lot of cool nik naks.  I enjoyed it.  Elder Castro-Guzman and I were also able to get through a couple games of chess on the way there.

I'm not sure exactly what holidays are big here.  I know that I haven't seen too much big hustle and bustle around here while I've been here.  I think they might celebrate Valentine's day, they at least know about it.  In the church, we have a district Christmas party in December, so we at least celebrate that in the church.  There are the Muslim holidays like Ramadan and since many people here are Muslim, there are a lot who do that.  That is, if Ramadan counts as a holiday.  I think at the end of it they at least have the big feast thing.  Anyways, New Years, from what I've seen and heard, is the biggest holiday here in Albania.

So far, there are only branches here in Albania.  We have a building here in Durrës, but I think the attendance dropped a couple years back, so there are about the same amount of people coming here as there were going to church in Vlorë.  I think Vlorë typically had more people.  Durrës is going pretty well.  We should be contacting a member referral this Saturday, we received a new referral yesterday, and we should be meeting with a former investigator tonight that we found in the area book.  So hopefully that all works out.

Albania is not in the European Union, and I've heard of several things that would continue to keep them out of it such as the lack of regard for copyrights.  However, I have seen and heard recently that there have been meetings recently that could make it so Albanians no longer need Visas to travel throughout Europe.

Love,

Elder Wallentine