Dear family,

This week was pretty cool.  We found a total of 5 new investigators.  There are quite a few people I could really see potentially progressing.  It seems like we have a ton of really good people to teach that can never meet with us.  But we just keep finding more cool people.  So that's good.  A lot of our recent success has been coming through tracting.

This Saturday will be about as cool as the last time we had General Conference because right afterwards, we'll be getting transfer calls from President Neil for where we'll be heading.  I think there's a good chance of me leaving this area.  Sometimes, I really just want to leave the area, other times I really want to stay.  I think it's just because I don't have too much time here in 4th branch, so I am just starting to get to know people.  I think that there is a good chance that no matter what happens, I could be heading off to my last area of my mission with this transfer.

Last Wednesday, I went on exchanges with Elder Smith, one of my MTC companions.  He's one of the inside zone leaders now along with Elder Moyes, another person in my MTC group.  They're in our district right now.  I was also in the same district as Elder Smith for 3 months down in Vlorë, but we never went on an exchange because the district leader was anti-exchange.  So that was lame.  So we finally got our exchange last week.

Yesterday, we were walking home to plan and wrap up the day, and this group of boys yelled out and told us to go over.  So we went and talked to them.  One of them was talking to me and saying how they smoke weed and stuff like that.  At some point I asked the kid if he ran, and he said "Jo, përtoj" which means "No, I loaf".  We had a good conversation until we look over and this lady carrying groceries trips on this rope (they use these huge thick ropes here for speed bumps it seems).  Somewhat to my surprise, half the boys ran down to help her out.  It was kind of cool.  I think most missionaries' views on boys ages 12-18ish is that they are all immature, lazy, and rude.  Something like that, but I think many missionaries forget how weird and easy to make fun of we are as missionaries.  We are young American boys dressing up in a similar fashion as the CIA or FBI walking around a foreign country talking to everybody in bad Albanian for 2 years.  I usually enjoy talking to groups of boys.  It always adds a bit of fun.

Anyways, I think that's it for the week.  Have a good spring break!

Love,
Elder Wallentine

Dear family,

Right now I'm in Shkodër where we are on our district trip.  We went up to the castle here in Shkodër and had a good time.  Last Wednesday, we had a specialized training where the president told us to come in p-day clothes.  So we came, and he said we'd do the training, and afterwards we were all going bowling.  So that was fun.  Also this week, we met this guy who seems really interested in the gospel, and he is going to have us come meet his family as well.  Then, later in the week, we met with these 3 guys we'd met in the road one day, and they were pretty cool.  They all seem somewhat interested, so hopefully they will start progressing.

Yesterday, we had district conference here in Tirana, so we had all the members and missionaries in Albania there.  That was fun.  Afterwards I was able to meet the people I knew from Durrës and Vlorë as well.  That was really cool.  My companion got a phone call the other day from president telling him that his group may have to extend their missions for another week.  They are going home in July, and so they may have a bit more time than before.  I think the MTC group coming in at that time is delayed or something.  The group that is leaving is 13 missionaries, which is about a third of the mission.  So they would rather have the new missionaries here to replace them when they leave.

Well, I can't think of too much else to add.  It doesn't sound like there's anything happening for the next week or 2 until general conference.  So we'll be doing regular missionary work.

Love,
Elder Wallentine

Dear family,

So this week, we had a pretty cool thing happen.  On Wednesday, there was this leadership training thing my companion had to go to, so I went on exchanges with Elder Castro-Guzman (my former french companion) and Elder Owens.  Elder Owens has served up in Shkodër his whole mission, and apparently he's trying really hard to speak Shkodrancë, or the dialect of Albanian up in Shkodër.  Meanwhile, I try to speak as close to how written Albanian is, so we sound completely different when speaking Albanian.  We basically just street contacted all morning, went to lunch, and then headed to the mission home to get back with our companions.  Me and my companion then went tracting, and we end up finding this lady who told us she had seen me and the other two guys in the road that morning, and that she had thought about talking to us, but then didn't because she figured we were in school or something.  So she let us in, and we had a lesson with her and her daughter.  Later on the dad came home from work, so we filled him in on what we had just talked about.  In the end of the lesson, the daughter even said the closing prayer.  So that was cool.  We have been trying to go back to meet with them again, but they've been somewhat busy.

Last Friday, we went to a recently baptized family's house who told us about the tsunami.  They said it had hit a part of Russia or China as well as Japan.  That's pretty crazy.  Luckily, I don't think Albania is in a prime spot for tsunamis.  It would have to get past Italy first.  I would hope I never have to deal with a tsunami.  I never got to see any Surviving Disaster episodes on tsunamis, so I would have no idea what to do.  In case of hurricanes, plane hijacks, house arrest, and being lost at sea I'll be fine.  House arrest is easy because I just don't work at a bank.

There is a little kid here that lives near our house that always says "Hello" to us.  He doesn't know English very well, but he greets us in English all the time.  When I was in Durrës, there were some kids by our house who would always yell "Hello, how are you good night!" whenever they saw us.  It was funny.  I recently learned a couple words in Albanian: aksh and ankth.  Aksh means so-and-so, and ankth means nightmare.

Yesterday we had a training in church where us missionaries tried to get the branch pumped up to do some member missionary work.  We'll be going around meeting with members and try to get some referrals and stuff like that soon.  I think it all went rather well so far.

Not too much else happened this week, so that's it.

Love,
Elder Wallentine

Dear family,

Last Monday, we had gone out and played basketball with some guys the zone leaders had met during the week.  They were pretty good, and all of us were pretty out of practice.  It was fun though.  The other day, we went to this Chinese restaurant here in Tirana, and it was pretty good.  I had to request chop sticks.  So now I've eaten Chinese food in Albania.  I've pretty much gotten used to my new area now.  Making it to and from the church doesn't seem like as much of a hassle anymore, and the shower doesn't seem too bad anymore either.  I think I know where quite a few things are now as well.  We've been tracting quite a bit, and we've managed to find a couple new investigators.  One new investigator we found was due to a call we got from a member in another branch here in Tirana telling us about a friend he had that was interested in meeting with us.  We've met with him twice so far, but the only problem is he doesn't want to meet us at his house.  There are also not any real good places we can meet people here in Laprakë other than people's homes.  So that makes things a bit difficult.

There are a couple kids that are about 17 years old who have showed interest in meeting with us, but they have been busy with work and school.  We've been trying to meet with them, but it's hard to set up meetings with them.  I read the book Our Search for Happiness again recently.  It took me like 2 days.  It was pretty good.  I'm reading the Book of Mormon again, and I just finished the part where Abinadi is talking to King Noah.

I talked to one of the elders from Shkodër recently who was down here in Tirana for a branch presidency meeting (he's the branch president in Shkodër) and it sounds like things have been pretty hectic up there.  They have been trying to move out of their current house and the landlord lady is being a real pain.  They had already paid the rent for March (that she had demanded) and then she was trying to kick them out of the house and steal their keys.  At some point she had apparently locked them in their house and I think she had also locked a bunch of mission-owned things in her house.  So she's pretty much been going insane by the sounds of things.  That was my landlord back when I was in Shkodër.  Meanwhile, recently there was an emergency transfer with the other companionship up in Shkodër because they were driving each other crazy.  Luckily, they have recently had a couple baptisms in Shkodër still.  Hopefully things chill out up there.

Anyways, I can't really think of all that much to write about for this week, so I'll leave it at this.

Love,
Elder Wallentine