Dear family,

So we just got word from president that 2 missionaries were being sent to open up Kosavo.  They're going to Prishtina on Wednesday.  From what president said, there will be one person leaving Kosavo every transfer and a new person will go up.  That's pretty crazy.  From what I've heard, the people there are very very Muslim.  So next transfer we'll probably hear about how it's going up there in Kosavo.

This past week was pretty busy.  We had to get a couple things ready for zone conference as well as for the 3rd hour lesson we had in church since it was the 5th Sunday of the month.  This next week should be a little less busy, so we should be able to try out this new Operation Teancum that we had heard about from some other missionary.  They passed out these papers to different doors where they were going to go tracting in a couple days.  The papers had the questions of the soul, contact information, and said that we'll be coming back in 2 days.  Then 2 days later, we come back and, from what I've heard, things are a lot quicker and more efficient.  So we'll see how that goes.

Our new apartment is on the 8th floor of a building, so we have an awesome view of Tirana.  We didn't have power for a while because the bills for electricity weren't paid for quite some time, but now everything is back in order.  We still had water, but there was no hot water, so we had cold showers for a while.  There's this family we're teaching who is really cool.  They are progressing rather well towards baptism too.  Yesterday was the baptism of Taipi Lami, the father of the family I've mentioned before.  It was way cool to see.  They want us to go out there along with the Laprakë elders so we can eat some of their mulberries I think they're called.  In Albanian they're called mana and they're little white fruits.  I want to try some of them.  That'd be cool.

Anyways, I hope everything is well at home.  Not much more to report for the day.

Love,

Elder Wallentine

Dear family,

Last Saturday we got transfer calls, and oddly enough I'm being transferred, but I'm staying in the same branch.  That doesn't happen too often.  We had had an interview with President Neil a while ago, and Elder Moyes, the current zone leader, had told me afterwards that president had asked him who would be good zone leaders, and he said that he had mentioned me.  Then, in my interview, president asked how I'd feel about being a zone leader.  And now, I'm a zone leader.  So tomorrow, I'm moving all my stuff and going with Elder Smith, one of my MTC companions.  It's funny, now I will have served with both my MTC companions in Albania as well.

For this week, there were 2 baptisms last Saturday for some of the sisters' investigators, and so we tried taking several investigators to those.  That ended up taking up the majority of our day.  After the second baptism, we went to a member's house and had dinner and a lesson.

I haven't really seen too many of the effects of the protests yet.  We had that one night when we were stuck inside where me and my companion basically just played a bunch of games we had around the house the whole time.  It was pretty fun.  It was nice to have a little down time.  One day, we had gone to a restaurant that had the news on, and it said that the socialist people were going to start another protest at 5:00 that day, but apparently it wasn't a big enough of a deal for us to have to stay inside.  I think things may have cooled down for now.  We'll see how things go once they've finally decided who won the elections.

Yesterday we went to a member's house out in a village, and they insisted on taking us to a waterfall. We didn't end up making it close enough to see it too well, but it was fun getting there.  The road was ridiculously muddy as well.  We ended up washing our shoes off in this stream on the way back, and they looked just fine.  I had just shined my shoes that morning as well.  Anyways, I bought a new shirt today.  It's pretty comfortable, and it has bad grammar.  It has a picture of sneakers and says "Sneakers good may refer to America".  So that was fun.  There was also a shirt that said "A dancer love music" or something like that.  There are some funny shirts here and nobody that buys them can speak English, so it makes it even more funny.

Anyways, that's it for the week.

Love,

Elder Wallentine

Oh yeah, I also forgot to mention that this morning the bathroom locked me in.  So we took of the door knob and messed with the doohickeys until they opened.  Take that door.

Dear family,

So something cool happened yesterday.  After talking to you, we headed out to help a member take a carpet up to her house.  We got there, and she was with this boy who she said would be a new investigator.  So after moving the carpet we got his phone number and set up a meeting to meet him today at 6:00.  So that will be cool.  Hopefully he progresses.

We had also found some new investigators that we met with a member, and they also seem promising.

Today we went to some caves in a place called Pellumbas, and those were pretty cool.  I took a couple pictures there.  The path going up there also had a pretty cool view.

Anyways, I don't have too much to talk about now, but it's ok because we're running short on time today because of the trip.  Have a good week!

Love,
Elder Wallentine

Dear family,

So this week, we found this guy named Gerald who we met tracting.  So far, we have only met him once, but he seems really willing to do what it takes to get an answer.  It would be really cool to have him progress towards baptism.

Yesterday we were inside all day.  We watched the Testaments once, and then I learned a couple phrases in Chinese like "You ARE a fool!" and "You are a spector from the gods."  It sounds pretty cool.  It was pretty nice to have a regular Sunday.

This past week went by really quick and I can't really remember anything that happened.  On Saturday, we had gone to pick up these people who said they wanted to come see the baptism going on, but they didn't end up being able to come.  So that was a bummer.  On the way to the baptism, we talked to these 2 guys from Africa named John and James.  They were pretty cool.  We could talk to them for a bit before going to the baptism.  They said they live somewhere near the church and they were here for soccer.

Well, like I said, I can't remember too much more about the week.  This next week I get to go on exchanges on Wednesday (due to a leadership training), on Thursday we have interviews with president, and there are multiple baptisms happening on Saturday.  Also, I learned how to graft trees the other day at a member's house.  I'm not sure I'll ever get around to trying it out, but it's a fun thing to know.

Love,

Elder Wallentine

Dear family,

So, I'll start off by talking about Mother's Day.  So I guess you all got the email about us staying inside all next Sunday.  We will be going to an internet cafe the next week on the 15 May to call home with Skype at around 10:00am your time if that is alright.  If that isn't possible, you could call on the cell phone.  The cell phone might be a little more difficult to understand you, so it might be better if we do it with Skype.

This week we had 2 baptisms we went to.  It was pretty cool.  One of them was this guy named Spartak who is being taught by the zone leaders.  A couple days ago, I played chess against him and won.  So now every time he sees me he asks me when the next time we can play chess will be.  It's pretty fun.  He's a really cool guy.  Also, we've been working with the father of the Lami family so he can get baptized.  So far everything is going well.  He came to church yesterday.  He has also been busy digging a well near their house so they can put a pump down there to have running water in their house.  They couldn't live in Tirana very easily because they were in a rented apartment and had to pay rent every month whereas in the village, Musqeta, they own the house so they don't have to pay rent.

We met this guy from Canada this week that is married to an Albanian lady.  He was pretty cool.  We told him more about our church and he was open to hearing about it, but not too interested in changing religions.  Then later in the week, we met this lady who teaches people in the prisons how to sew and stuff so they can have skills for when they are out of prison.  She seemed pretty cool, and she said we could come back another time.  So that was cool as well.

Today, I picked up a couple of the flags that the political parties have all over the place.  They give them out for free, so that was cool.  Afterwards, we went out to lunch with this member who had invited us.  He took us to a restaurant where we had some steak and several other tasty dishes.  It was pretty awesome.  Now, we're sending you all emails.  Anyways, we're 3 weeks away from the end of another transfer, and we just don't have any idea about if either of us are moving at transfers.  I guess we'll see in 3 weeks.  I think we'd both be fine with whatever happens.

Anyways, that's about all I got for this week.  Have a good week

Love,

Elder Wallentine