I am doing great and loving the missionary life. Albania is amazing. I think I will start with some things I did this week.
1. The money is very strange. They used to have old lek, but it got to useless so that made a new lek that is worth 10 times more. It is sort of confusing. But the point is that when someone say something costs 'dhjetë mijë' (ten thousand), it actually costs 'një mije' (one thousand) (the equivalent of ten dollars, so whenever we hear mijë we just think dollar.) It is hard to get used to, but it is a cool little Albanian thing.
2. 'Do të mund të' means will be able to. That is something I will start incorporating into my speaking. And in this area they say Faleminders instead of Faleminderit for Thank you. Lots of little things to learn here for the language.
3. I finished reading Our Heritage and am now starting Jesus the Christ, just reading during car rides between Lezhë and Shkodër and when I have extra time at night or in the mornings.
4. I listened to all the sessions of general conference në Shqip Saturday and Sunday and one of them I saw twice. Once for Shkodër and once for Lezhë. My understanding was not great. But I was able to pick up some words and sentences, and the spirit filled in a little more, and I thought about it so it was a pretty great learning experience still. Elder Samuel and I are going to try to watch them in English for some companion studies. Looking forward to that.
5. Missionary Work has a lot of meetings and stuff to do other than missionary work. Add on four hours of study and two hours of Lunch every day and the commute to Shkodër on many days and there is not a lot of time. We are hoping to have a little more time this week to get some great stuff done.
6. We taught Elton twice this week. He is our investigator who comes to the lessons, but does not think he needs to get baptized because he has already been baptized.
7. We also taught Shaqir this week. He seems ready to hear the gospel. He wants to read the Book of Mormon and committed himself to do so every day, and we are hoping that he and his two children will commit to baptism this week. For some reason, his phone was off yesterday when we tried to call him to invite him to sacrament meeting, but we have high hopes for him and his family.
8. You can't really schedule lessons for days in advance here, because Albanians will forget, but most Albanians are happy to just come meet for a lesson on a moment's notice. But, another interesting thing is that Albanians don't really show up on time for lessons. Sometimes 20 minutes late. It is a shame.
9. Every day for language study, Elder Samuel and I read three chapters of the Book of Mormon out loud në Shqip. It is super helpful and by the end of this transfer, we will have finished the entire Book of Mormon out loud në Shqip. It is really helping my reading ability and pronunciation. Sometimes, just reading 3 chapters takes as long as 45 minutes. But it is awesome. I can actually understand and am learning more about the stories by reading it in Albanian. So cool.
10. Elder Samuel carved a watermelon the other day. (They don't have any pumpkins here.) He is sending a picture home to enter into the pumpkin-carving competition that he has won every year for the past few years. It is so impressive. (And I got to eat the watermelon! YES!)
11. The power for the apartment went out twice this week. It has been really rainy and thunderstormy lately. Even at the castle today. We had a candle-lit dinner last night and had to go without our nightly John Bytheway talk. That was disappointing. But always fun. It is also fun to sit in the dark and watch thunderstorms. We have a great view of it out our apartment window.
12. We went to a castle today. The Shkodër castle. It was pretty awesome. I just wish I had a Rick Steve's book for Albania so I could learn cool things about it. There was a cool cave we crawled through and so many cool walls and fields and stairs and views. I LOVE EUROPE!!!!
13. We get to eat out a lot because of how cheap it is here. The other day, I had a HUGE plate of DELICIOUS spaghetti for only dy mijë lek (like two dollars) It was awesome!
14. We got haircuts.
15. We had zone conference which took all day Thursday. Learned so many great things there and got to see a bunch of my MTC Albies there.
I know that my Redeemer lives. I know that all that I have in my life, including my amazing family, extended family, friends, and even the gospel, are blessings from God, and that if I work hard here, I will be blessed for it an hundred-fold throughout my life. I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the true church of God on the Earth. It is so cool to read the humble beginnings of the church in Our Heritage and then to see the humble beginnings of the church here in Albania where we have very few members. But it is amazing. as Han Solo would say, "It's true. All of it." I love you. Please pray for me to have a productive week.
Elder Xhansën
P.S. Most of the pictures attached are just ones I took at the castle today. Albania is SO BEAUTIFUL!
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