Once upon a time in Albania (June 29 2009)

Hello from the streets of Albania!

Elections have passed and we are still in the country! Except it was very loud last night as people drove around screaming and yelling, honking their horns and shooting off fireworks. We believe that Salli Barisha has won. We will see today if there are riots, there were on Saturday in Tirana. Yesterday we stayed inside except to go to and from church, they didn't want us getting involved or getting mistaken for people from the political parties.

OH and everyone remember that Next week Emails will indeed be late. They will come sometime on Tuesday because we are having a big transfer (every other transfer happens on a Tuesday). It is almost certain that I will be losing Elder Flack and staying up here, but in reality we really don’t know for sure. I think he is going outside Zone Leader (Outside zone is every city other than Tirana and Shkoder, those 2 are in the inside zone). I also think that my next companion will be Elder Hamilton, he is an outstanding missionary with 6 months left, and is finishing his service as inside Zone Leader. The reason I think it is him is because he has hinted at coming up to Shkoder. President may have already told him where he is going (He does that sometimes). Anyway, this transfer only 2 missionaries are coming into the country and we are losing 12, but 3 months from now, when the next batch comes in from the MTC, we will be receiving 14 missionaries! There will only be 4 missionaries that are not in leadership, or training! Yikes! Anyway, I’ll let you all know whats up for real next week.

I have a request! It can be filled whenever, but I am longing for some CDs of great classical music, things like Tchaikovsky, Mozart (preferably songs from Amadeus, and my marching band show my junior year), New World Symphony, Of Sailors and Whales, Bernstein, etc. Essentially just good, powerful, moving classical music. If it is too difficult, don’t worry about it, I have some GREAT CDs that I can listen to here!

Who among you has read 1984 by George Orwell? Do you recall that in the book they are developing a language called newspeak? In newspeak there is a very limited vocab when it comes to description of feelings, only plus, double plus, and something better, or minus, doubt minus or something like that, anyway, guess what? Albanian is very much like newspeak! Something is either good, or very good, bad or very bad. That is it. Words exist for greater description, but most people do not understand them at all. Don’t get me wrong, they do have plenty of descriptive words for how things appear etc., but when it comes to most things its either mire, shume mire, keq or shume keq. LOL! I laughed when I realized the relation between it and newspeak.

Hey, since we are talking about the language, I do have something very positive to say. I had a very great experience in church yesterday. Our most active member, Alma, gave a talk. She is preparing to go to the temple, and gave her talk on that. As she spoke I understood entire phrases without translating them in my head, I completely comprehended their meaning outside of English, it was so extremely awesome! It was a realization that caused me quite a bit of exhilaration, that I am beginning to understand this language beyond straight translation into English. The Lord is most certainly blessing me with the gift of tongues, the rate at which I am learning this language is amazing, and it is far beyond my personal capacity. This is truly the Lords work!

In our scriptures we have a phrase that appears often, “the Lord of Hosts”. Now, I've always just kind of accepted that phrase, not really thinking about its meaning. But as I have been reading the Book of Mormon in Albanian I have come to see the obvious meaning that I never realized before. In Albanian they translate it as “Zoti e Ushtrieve” which more specifically means the Lord of Armies. I just thought it was a very intense title, I am glad that I now have realized it!

We met a man the other day called Toni Marku, or Tonin, not sure, that’s what it sounded like, but that would be a very strange name considering Albanian grammar. If congregated into accusative it would become Toninin, which would be confusing. As a matter of fact, because my name ends in an N Albanians have a really hard time understanding it because it doesn't make sense to them grammatically. In a week or two I’ll be getting a new name tag that says “Elder Skadi”. Anyway, I digress. 30 years ago he escaped from communist Albania by swimming across the HUGE lake that divides Shkoder from Montenegro during the World Cup when the guards were distracted. He did not tell us how long it took him, but he said he was somewhere in the middle of the lake after about 4 hours of swimming when he cramped up and started to drown. He didn't know much about religion, but he knew something of who Jesus Christ was, so he cried out for Christ to save him and immediately his body was granted renewed strength and all cramping left. Since then he has seen the Lords hand in his life so very much as he travelled to America and experienced many diverse things. Now he is some kind of artist in California, maybe someone can google search him. He says he is writing a script for his story, which sounds like a powerful story. He does have a very personal view of religion, the kind of person that believes in their own way. It will be interesting to see if his story comes out.

Anyway, I don’t have much to report about the work here. We are still hoping that our investigator Toni will progress, it has been hard to meet with him recently! I have high hopes for him. We are working hard. We hear reports that even though the work appears to be slow here we are actually doing a lot better than most of the areas in our Zone. The Lord is indeed blessing us with progress in the difficult time we are having with our members! Anyway, I hope you all are well, I miss you all and think of you often, though the Lord blesses me with strength and dedication. May God be with you all!

Love,
Elder Scadden