Once upon a time in Albania (October 19, 2009)

Hello all from Albania!

I hope everyone is doing well! First I would just like to wish my niece Kinsey a Happy Birthday!

So what do I talk about this week? This week has gone by fast, it is Zone Conference, which means that this transfer is already almost done. We’ve started to hear Christmas music on the road. It is hard to believe that it is almost here! Fortunately we have Thanksgiving first. We will all go to the mission presidents house and Sister Neil will cook us a meal, how lucky we are! We are also going to watch a movie. Last year they watched Remember the Titans. I would like to watch that this year. So would over half the mission. But some people are proposing lame ideas like Harry Potter. Not that that is bad, I’ve heard this one is really good actually, but its Thanksgiving!! That means Football! Well, I guess we will have to see how things play out. It won’t be long before I get to talk to yall over Skype!

So I will tell you all a little bit more about my companion. Elder Seevers comes from a little town called Pioch, in Nevada. 800 people live in his town. There is a full, strong ward there. In a nearby town of 700 people they have 2 wards. These little towns were all founded by the Pioneers. But Elder Seevers himself is a convert to the church, he has only been a member for 4 years. He played football in High School as quarterback and actually went to Boise State to play ball there. If I remember correctly Boise has a pretty good team! But he injured his shoulder really badly. And then, after a surgery and therapy, he injured it again. He finally decided to leave Boise because he felt like he was wasting their time. In reality the Lord just had other plans for him, like a mission to Albania. He has done 3 years of school, majoring in History. He wants to be a high school teacher and baseball coach (he played that too). Now he is here, stunning people with his 6ft 6in of height. He is just as I was when I came into the country, weak with the language, but not terrible. Already in 13 days or so that he has been here I have seen dramatic improvement in his language capabilities. He is also really good at calling me out on things I need to do better, in a non-holier-than-thou sort of way. Last night I was getting really irritated with the excuses and rudeness of people at doors and he very blatantly reminded me that we need to have charity for all these people. It was a good reminder. In any case, he is a great companion and I am learning many things from him. I hope he feels he is learning many things from me.

This week we went tracting for my first time in a number of weeks (I think this is why I was getting so irritated with people, I had forgotten the sort of emotions and rejections that come along with knocking on people's doors). I think the most amusing thing that happened was when we knocked on a door in a dark stairwell and the people came to the door, turned the outside light on, looked through the eye hole for about 2 seconds, and turned the light back off, leaving us in darkness, and walking away. Some people! We laughed about it though, at the utter ridiculousness of it. The J-dubs (Jehovah's witnesses) have waged Jihad on Tirana for years. Tracting really is not the most effective method here. They are uses to seeing J-dubs at their doors once ever few months or so and they confuse us with them. It makes me sad that such an obstacle has been placed in the way of a good finding method. It surprises me how strong a force the J-dubs are here. I had always thought they were a random ridiculous sect of religion that just existed, but in this part of the world they are very prominent. Elder Layton (one of the zone leaders) and I might actually be attending one of their services to represent the Church this week (we have been invited). The best thing that happened was when we knocked on one of the last doors we planned on knocking on that night and a man opened the door and invited us in. We first clarified that we were missionaries and that we had a message to share with him and he said “I know! Please come in!” His name is Ismiel and he is a really great guy! He doesn’t trust the self proclaimed religious leaders of the world because he feels like they don’t have the authority to speak for God. He disapproves of the mechanical prayers preached by various faiths and believes that we must pray from our hearts. He is not well learned with the stories of the Bible (having grown up in communism) and does not frequent any places of worship. But when we told him the story of Joseph Smith and told him that we have a prophet on the earth today with Authority from God he was very interested. I feel like he has been prepared to receive the message. We will see. He has agreed to meet with us 2 or 3 times a week for the next 3 or 4 weeks. He is aware that we are here to help him find the truth for himself and he knows that if he indeed finds that testimony, we will be inviting him to be baptized. Let us hope he progresses.

We also have another new investigator named Elida. She is catholic, but seems to be very interested in the church. We had an excellent first lesson with her and 2 member girls, but of course, as usually happens when using the untrained in lessons, later topics of discussion that at first appear strange, like baptisms for the dead, were brought up. It doesn’t seem to have weirded her out and she stayed for all of institute. If she indeed starts to progress we may hand her over to the sisters as it would just be simpler for them to teach her (we would always have to find back up when teaching her). Regardless of who ends up teaching her, I am excited for her. She had many good questions. As with Ismiel, I hope to see her walk towards the waters of baptism!

Anyway, enough of that random subject. Oh, I wanted to leave a message for Jenni, who has not yet received a letter from me this week: I indeed sent one, but I do not believe it was sent until Thursday of that week because while I was with Elder Vail in his area, while we were waiting for our trainees, we could not find a post office to save our lives, so I had to wait til I got back to my area on Thursday. Sorry its coming late, I hope it comes soon!

Alright everyone, it is time for me to go. Until next week! It will be here before we know it. Time is just flying! The crazy thing about it is people keep telling me, "You think time is flying now? Just wait til your year mark, then it starts to Rocket by." I cannot even imagine that! Time already is rocketing by! I guess it will increase to warp speed then. Well, I know that this is the Lords work and even though time is flying, I know that I am being successful. It is such a blessing to be here. Thank you all for you prayers! I love and miss you all, may God be with you!

Love
Elder Skadi

(The following are excerpts from an email Gregory asked be forwarded to his last companion who has completed his mission. Gregory indicated it would be ok to post this.)

Hey man, life is excellent! The fringo, elder Seevers, is a great guy and is trying hard. Already in the first little while that he has been here I have seen great improvement in his language capabilities. The branch is doing well, Sparti will be released soon as branch president because he is now part of the district presidency. Bro Baird is now district president. I got the photo I wanted from you, so don’t worry about that.

Ermal's baptism was awesome! The spirit was very strong there and Ermal was so happy to be baptized. The confirmation was this Sunday and it went well. He just showed up a few minutes late. Elder Shupe did the confirming. I didn’t know this, but apparently Ermal has been on the active search for the true church for the last 10 years of his life. He grew up Muslim, but decided pretty early it was wrong. Sparti is considering making him assistant to the branch clerk, or just all out branch clerk, because he is a finance graduate.

As for the gossip around the mission, I’m trying my best to stay out of it by not saying anything about anyone and not participating in listening to other people. President really wants to kill this whole gossip thing. I’m sorry to hear that you hear it is still a problem. I hope that by the time my trainee gets done with me he’ll only know mostly good things about missionaries.

The Shima family is well. Soni still doesn’t have the Aaronic priesthood but he should get it soon, Sparti has been working with him. Ermal is set to get it in just a couple of weeks and Sparti agrees with our assessment that that would be good. Ani is working hard at the Crapery. The sisters are teaching another young man that works there with Ani and now the whole crapery staff is planning on coming to English course on Wednesday. What a crazy thing it would be if the whole crapery converted?? Roni is helping us teach Ray, but I’ll be honest, I doubt we will baptize him. He lacks the desire. Elderado is good, Kitio came to district conference and Edi Losha is well… A Frenchman.

Thanks for your prayers Abli, I hope that home starts to get a little more exciting soon! Edi leaves in like 3 weeks, it'd be great if you got to see him every now and again. You have a good one, may God be with you!

Sincerely
Elder Skadi
P.S. I knew the dark knight would blow you away!