Elder Scadden

Elder Scadden

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This is a moderated BLOG. Gregory does not make posts nor does he read or monitor this BLOG. His family maintains it for him.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Once upon a time in Albania (January 11, 2010)

Hello all from Albania!

Congratulations Sarah and Luis! I wish you a long, successful and happy marriage! I am disappointed I could not be there but the Lord’s work waits for no one. I am glad that Matt Bray took my place and wore my face for the pictures. That was very awesome of him so now I can pretend I was there LOLOLOLOL!

Just to clarify something for Dad. He asked me what an outside zone leader was. We only have 2 zones in our mission, the Inside and Outside zones. The Inside Zone includes all of Tirana and Shkoder. The Outside zone includes all the other cities in Albania. So I am an Outside zone leader because I am a leader over the outside zone.

So, a funny thing happened this week. I must preface it by saying that in the MTC we heard tons of stories about how horrible the mud is here in Albania. In Shkoder and Tirana I didn’t really encounter bad mud, so I wasn’t really sure what they were talking about. Now I know what they were talking about. We were going to a recently baptized member’s house to do a retention lesson. He lives right near the church in an area called Kanet. In Albanian Kanet means Swamp. It lives up to its name. The roads were like soup and were barely traversable. Elder Thackeray got both shoes completely covered with mud by missteps. One such misstep resulted in the loss of his shoe but we were able to get it back. After the lesson we asked if there was a better way and he indicated where it was. The road was much better but still a little muddy… and very slick. So as we walked along, Elder Thackeray took a mighty tumble and got mud ALL over his left side. On top of that a whole group of men were watching while it happened. I tried really hard not to laugh, after I made sure he was ok. Then we had to walk half way across the city, with him covered in mud, to the Couple’s house and they helped clean him up. It was hilarious.

Hey, so our Senior Couple here are named Ahburn. They said their son used to live in Raleigh. Did any of you know them? On top of that, Brother Ahburn has been working for CES for his whole life and he worked with Brother Lee in Idaho quite some time ago! It’s pretty cool to see how small the world can be sometimes as we meet people that have met people in the most random places.

Church in Durres was great! Not only is it in a real chapel but we did not have to do ANYTHING to make sure things ran smoothly. People fulfilled their callings, people had the things they needed and it was really great. More people here speak English than in Tirana but here they prefer to speak to the missionaries in Albanian. That is no real problem because I need to learn Albanian better. Right now here in Durres we don’t have any investigators. We had some, a woman, her daughters, her mom and her sister in-law but they didn’t answer their phones for a few days so we went over there to find out what was up. Apparently the woman’s brother came back from Italy for the holidays and was enraged that they had been investigating the church. He ripped up all their books. We could not understand everything the mom was saying because she was talking fast and hushed, but for some reason the Mom and the sister in-law are now hiding the sister in a different house that the brother doesn’t know about for her protection. It’s really jacked up if you have to be hidden from your brother for physical safety. They told us they still have a desire to be baptized but that right now it is too dangerous for them to even meet with us or talk to us on the phone. We had a special fast for them this Sunday, and have been praying much for them. I hope that things turn out ok for them.

Since we do not have any investigators, we have been doing a lot of tracting and street contacting. That has yet to yield much success but we have two potential investigators, college students. They are girls so we could not go in and meet with them at that time, but they were willing to meet with us later when we could bring a member along with us. We will continue to tract and street contact.

The weather here has been really crazy. We had a day where the temp was in the high 60s and now it is freezing again. We’ve been getting tons of rain too. I guess since Durres is on the coast it has this sort of wildness.

We also had a professor accuse us of enslaving people. Fortunately, after talking to him, he was accusing religion at large and not just our church. He had some pretty insane ideas about contextual verse universal knowledge. It was an interesting discussion but in the end we took his argument that he has to find proof for himself if something is true and turned it back on him, offering him a BoM and telling him that by it and prayer he can know for himself. He did not take it, proving the hypocrite in light of his claim as a man on a quest for personal knowledge. But he has his own choice.

The work continues to be great even though right now the fruits are slow in this area (I heard that Grej and Keins mom has a baptismal date, woohoo!). I know that this is the work of God and I am truly blessed to be a part of this work. I hope you all will take care, I love and miss you all, may God be with you all!

Love
Elder Skadi

The following was sent by Gregory’s mission president.

Dear Parents of Albania Tirana Missionaries,

You may have heard news reports of flooding in Albania, homes underwater, and forced evacuations of people. I want you to know that all of your missionary sons and daughters are safe! The entire country has been receiving a lot of rain over the last weeks, but the main problems have been in the north, in the areas surrounding the major city of Shkoder. In a number of small villages around Shkoder, homes have been inundated, and people have been evacuated to the city of Shkoder.

We have four missionaries in Shkoder, and I've been in frequent contact with them, as well as with the US Embassy, and locals who are aware of the situation. Our missionaries are in no danger, and are fine. They are continuing to work, and everyone in the city itself seem to be carrying on normally. It's reported that nearly 5000 persons have been evacuated from the outlying villages, and have been brought into Shkoder for care. The national highway connecting Tirana to Shkoder is underwater, and transport is only by military vehicle. The highway connecting Shkoder to the north is open, and there should be no problem with bringing water and supplies into the city as normal. Just in case, I asked the missionaries to get a 5 day supply of food and water.

The missionaries have checked on our members, and the members are doing ok. It doesn't seem that the weather forecast is going to help us out much. We will continue to monitor the situation with our missionaries, to ensure that all are safe.

Warm Regards,

President Neil

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for continuing to update us and we think about and pray for you!

    ReplyDelete