Dear family,

New Years was pretty cool.  Pretty much all day on New Year's Eve, we could hear explosions every couple of seconds.  We were allowed to stay up to watch the fireworks at midnight.  I took a video of it with my camera.  It is pretty insane.  Pretty much from 8:00 on, there was constant explosions, and at midnight, the whole city looks like a war zone.  Pretty much everyone has fireworks and shoots them all from their houses.  Luckily, all the buildings are pure cement and will not catch on fire.  One time, a couple days before New Years, we were street contacting near the center, and there was somebody behind this building close by shooting off the big fireworks.  Then, we look over one time, and one of the fireworks blew up on the ground.  It was cool looking, and judging by the fact that we didn't hear any screaming or panicking or sirens, I think everyone was alright.  Right before the explosion, we saw the guy doing it go running off.

January 1, we spent all day inside cleaning.  We also had permission to sleep until 8:30 that day.  That was cool.  The only problem, was on Sunday, my alarms were still set for 8:30 instead of 6:30, so we woke up right at the time the bus left for church.  So by 8:45ish we left and got to church in about 15 minutes when it usually takes 20-30.  It was quite the way to start off the new year.  We got the transfer calls last Saturday, and I am getting an elder from Mississippi named Elder Asquith.  He's pretty big.  I've been on exchanges with him once, and he seems like a good fellow.  He talks a lot and knows his Bible extremely well.  He's from the south, so that explains his Bible knowledge.  He's also got quite the vocabulary.  Tomorrow we all go to Tirana to get with our new companions and everything, so we'll see how all that goes.

This week, we also found this family doing some tracting in some remote area of Durrës who is really cool.  They just recently moved here from a small town north of Tirana called Mirëdita, which means good day.  They have 3 daughters ages 9, 5, and 1.  I think they have potential.  Hopefully they start reading the Book of Mormon and come to church.  Luckily, they have weekends off from work, so that's one less obstacle for them coming to church.  The only problem is they live quite a ways away from the church and they have no car.  So, we'll see what we can do about all that.  So far, they seem pretty cool.

Anyways, next week I'll probably have more info about my new companion and the new transfer.

Love,
Elder Wallentine