Chronicles from Albania (May 25 2009)

Hello everyone!

Well, that’s a real bummer that my email didn't go through. Oh well! I looked in my sent folder and sure enough it was blank! I have no idea what I wrote about last week, hopefully it wasn't too important. I can’t usually remember what has happened more than a week or so back, the rest of the events are a jumble of images and words that have no coherent place in time.

I can get most usual vegetables here, so no worry there. In the area of cheeses they have all sorts of weird things, I can get mozzarella like cheese, but nothing else is like the usual stuff we get in America, absolutely no Cheddar. We can find meat, that’s not really a problem. Just nothing steak like. There is plenty of rice and potatoes. All condiments can be found also, some, however, like ketchup, are nothing compared to the quality found in America, but you can’t really tell because I've forgotten what the good stuff tastes like. LOL ! I imagine that while I am here when I say I had something good that was like something we can get in the States, I’m probably quite wrong.

Sewage got fixed, we did not get sick from it. I do have a cold now, but I doubt it had anything to do with our sewage problem. I have received a package! I talked about that last email, I remember now. It was my birthday package, it was great to get it! I was thrilled to get it and loved the contents, they were wonderful birthday presents!

My first Sunday here we had 23 members at church. 2 Sundays ago we had 2. Yesterday, we had 6 members and 2 investigators. Many of our members are choosing to loose faith, however I have great hopes for some and it looks as though they might pull through. Anyway, with that said, we have only 2 sections of church or “hours”. The first hour is Sacrament meeting, which usually lasts for about 45 minutes. The second hour is Sunday school, which usually lasts from 30 min-45min. Usually half the members leave, or try to, when we go from first hour to second hour. I say try because they we usually protest and try to help them understand why staying is important. We do not have any of the auxiliaries, like relief society, priesthood, primary, etc. Only 5? members hold the Aaronic priesthood, only 1 of them is currently active. We did have a Sunday school teacher, but after he was called he stopped coming to church, even though we went over to his place often and helped him prepare to teach. We meet in a little room off of a back alleyway that holds about 30 people. Elder Suell is the branch president. Fortunately members do speak from time to time, and Zef (the active priesthood holder) blesses and passes the Sacrament occasionally when he arrives on time. That is a summary of our Church part of Sunday, I realize it is probably a little negative, but do not think me hopeless, I really think there are several members who are starting to realize the covenants they made at baptism. While we are losing half or more of the branch to apostasy, those members who are pulling through are growing in testimony. One day they will be the solid members that new members look up to as an example. One day Shkoder will flourish and be a strong branch. We just have to get through the early trials! So the rest of my Sunday: before church we have the usual individual and comp study. After church (which is from 10 to 12ish) we go out and proselyte on the street with a table until lunchtime at 1:30. We eat and study, I try to avoid sleeping even though on the current schedule we only get 7.5 hrs of sleep a night because we wake up earlier and have a longer lunch. Lunch goes until 4:30. If we don’t have any appointments we go tracting until about 7:30. Then we go back to the center of the city and do a table or something.

Yesterday we had the opportunity to see a baptism in Tirana, it was a man who Elder Flack had found in a previous area and taught. It was very cool and refreshing to see lots of Albanians that had testimonies of the gospel and were part of the gospel culture.

Ken wrote me a letter before coming here that gave some advice that he thought was not just the usual stuff. The part that has always struck me the most has been the part about how I should do everything I can to befriend the people, even the people I contact on the street. From the moment I begin talking to someone I am beginning to create a relationship, and I should try, even at that time, to approach them with the attitude of trying to establish a friendship with them. I have been pondering this, and I seem to have a very hard time doing this, even with the members. Of course it doesn't help that I do not speak well (LOL, most of the members are getting to the point to where they don’t try to speak to me, and if I try to speak to them they listen for about 10 seconds and then begin ignoring me, starting a conversation with someone else!), but there is more to it than that, my language is improving from week to week, but my affinity for the people and for individuals is not really changing. How does one begin to gain that mentality of trying to befriend people? All these people have stories, they all have lived lives and thus have many interesting stories. I know asking people about themselves is important, trying to find their concerns and the things that they think about as well, and I also need to share things about myself. I know all these things, I do try them, but I never think, when meeting with people, that I am trying to befriend them, I always forget. I want to desire these peoples salvation! I want to be actively concerned for their welfare, but I don’t really feel like I am. We teach them, we testify to them, we try to serve them and through this I am growing closer to members, but not to investigators. I think I allow it to get to me that we usually never see people again after the first or second lessons. I realize prayer will help me to overcome this, and I pray daily for Charity.

OK, cool experience for the week: We were having a table out on the street (it’s a table with pamphlets, a Book of Mormon, and a poster organized together in various formats that we see fit). Suddenly a Nun approached us on her bike. Nuns do not like us, they quite loath us actually, I've been told by several that I am wrong, without even a nice hello! If they stop to talk to us, they usually stop to tell us that we are liars and followers of satan. Anyway, this Nun approached, but rather than spouting fire at us, she greeted us (she was one that has always nicely greeted us as they pass, one of 2 or 3 of the younger Nuns) and then started to ask us legitimate questions. Elders Suell and Flack started teaching. In about 30 seconds there was a crowd of maybe 20 people around, listening to us because this Nun had stopped. They testified with power and authority, the spirit was clearly present. After some time, when the Nun had stopped asking questions and the crowd was, she tried to leave. Before she could though I offered her to take a restoration pamphlet, which she took. That was my contribution. It was outstanding though. In the end we didn't get a single contact or distribute a single pamphlet other than the one to the Nun, but the gospel had been proclaimed, people had listened, maybe someone was touched. Very awesome experience.

Anyway, I hope you all are well. I am in decent spirits and excited about this weekend (Elder Christofferson is coming!) I do love it here in Albania, the Lord gives me so much strength. I am a weak and hardly useful servant, but he continues to help me to grow and better myself. Perhaps one day I’ll see that I affected at least one person in a positive way. If that is the case, then I will have been successful. I will continue to try to work hard, and find ways to work harder. The Lord has given me this amazing blessing and opportunity to try and help others feel the amazing way I did at my ‘conversion’, and experience the infinite power of the atonement in their lives. This work is the Lord's, and he will see that it goes forward. I only hope I can do my part. I miss you all, I love you all very much! I thank you all for your prayers and your support, I feel it and am ever grateful. I keep you all in my prayers. May God be with you all!

With Love
Elder Scadden

Blank Email

For some reason Gregory's main email this week was blank. Here are excerpts from an email he asked me to forward to another missionary he met in the MTC who went to Hungary.

I'm in a branch that is the second farthest from the center of Albania. We have a few members, most of whom are basically inactive, but I have a lot of hope for the branch here and we are working hard! My Albanian is slowly but surely getting better. Conference was outstanding, and yes, Elder Eyring's talk was awesome. We are doing a 40 day fast, essentially a long consecration week. One of the things I gave up was talking about the Army because it was becoming very distracting. I think you can imagine how difficult that is for me, Ha!!

God be with you.

Elder Scadden

First Contact

Gezohu!

The handkerchiefs that Jenni gave me are extremely important, I use them tons more than I expected, mainly because I got sick at the MTC and because the Albanian definition of a napkin is this thin piece of paper that just kind of disintegrates and leaves all the grease on your fingers.

I thought I would tell those of you that are counting the months of my mission that you can count the month mark on the 5th rather than the 21st, that is how it is done when measuring the months. It's not against the beginning of your mission, but against the end, because technically our mission is only 23.5 months, not 24.

I would love some simple recipes! Elder Flack is a great cook, but I know I got pretty blessed getting him as a first companion for a number of reasons. I am sure I am going to have companions who are too lazy to make anything worthwhile. I'd like to learn better how to make some things, so please do send some simple recipes.

Story time!! After emails last P-day we headed over to a place that tons of people here say is beautiful. A place called Shirak. It is only about 4 km from the outside of Shkoder, so we hopped a furgon over there. When we arrived we were really quite disappointed, we couldn't figure out what was so beautiful about this place, it was just a little village, as trashy as the rest. We started walking up this road along the coast (it was on the big lake in northern Albania next to Shkoder) just talking, seeing what was up the road. After awhile we got pretty bored. Off to our left was a large ridge of mountains, we looked at it, and decided to climb! It took about an hour an a half to climb straight up the side. It got really steep towards the top, but when we finally reached the summit we realized how very worth it our sweating had been, you could see for miles and miles around. Albania is a country full of trash, but when you are far away it looks stunningly beautiful because you can not tell it's covered in trash. We then walked along the ridge, looking for a better way down. As we did this we found a cave, a real, random cave in the side of the mountain. Probably against better judgement, we entered. The walls were covered with thousands of these mosquito eater looking bugs we see around Shkoder a lot. We pushed forward, about 50 yards in we could see the end of the cave, and at about the right time too because we disturbed a bat that clearly wanted us to leave. We caught a few pictures and split.

Afterwards, Elder Flack told us we should just ride one of the rock slides down the mountain. I thought he was mad, or at least that he was the only one who could do it because he is a climber. Turns out it is the most fun thing I’d done on my mission, and it really is not as dangerous as it sounds. We got down about half the mountain in roughly 1 minute. It was a good day.

I am very much hoping the Assistants to the Mission President will be bringing me a package this Friday. I do not know if packages take much longer to get here than mail.

Our branch is young and struggling, as you all know. It is very interesting to go over to a members house who has missed sacrament meeting. You can tell that they missed receiving the sacrament, their whole demeanor is just slightly more downcast, less hopeful, you can’t feel their spirit coming off them as easily as you can when they have been able to partake. I do not know if it is this way with people who have been members for a long time. I've never noticed it before.
I now am really realizing the utter importance of taking the sacrament. It does so much more for us (if we take it worthily obviously) than I think we realize, it really is an ordnance of renewal for us to give us strength in the coming week. I hope that has the branch grows we are able to emphasize to people that they must come and partake of the sacrament. A number of members were baptized thinking that afterwards there did not have any real commitment to the Church, when in reality it was just the beginning!

The other Elders have a Baptismal date for later this month. Not only is that excellent, but the very cool thing is that it is going to be the first baptism of a black women in Albania!! I didn't even know there were black people here before her. She is of Libian descent, but is 100% Albanian, having been born here and lived here all her life. She has a powerful spirit, and is an extremely nice women, I think she will bring a lot of strength to the branch. Unfortunately she is very busy, having 2 jobs, but she doesn't work on Sundays, which is great, since that is the most important day. The only unfortunate thing about how busy she is is that its harder to meet with her and teach her everything she needs to hear, but she will be ready by the end of the month. How exciting!

So our house has been flooding with sewage water the past couple of days, it is really disgusting. The landlords finally have someone coming this morning. We are hoping to go home to a fixed house.

For my birthday I am buying some weights, there is a good set that is not super expensive up here in Shkoder. I am indeed planning on staying in shape while I am here in Albania! I don’t want to come home looking gross (though I’ll be coming home in the winter, regardless of how hard you try missionaries always put on some slight padding then because the body is trying to protect itself) and I don’t want to have to work super hard to get ready for the Army again. The desire is all it takes, Elder Flack and I do a good job of exercising.

I love you all very much!

God be with you
Elder Scadden

Hail!

Another week has passed?? Impossible! The time just flies by here. Anyway, I am very excited about talking to everyone on Sunday! BTW Happy Birthday to Ken!

Ok, what happened this week?

...Oh Mum asked me if we eat at members houses much. I have eaten at a members house twice since I have been here, it was good food, but it makes us all groan, because they are all dirt poor and are all asking for money, therefore they should not feed the missionaries! So we try to avoid it as much as possible. The Albanian culture has a funny sort of pride. A number of papune members (work less members) are just too prideful to go out and get any sort of job to pay for the necessities, like street cleaning, but they don't have too much pride to hassle missionaries for money. Sadness, its OK though, there are a number of members that are growing and progressing, and some that are quite solid. Zion is being built here!

This week I had the "opportunity" to try Dhal. It is more like hell in a glass. Picture this: Fouled cottage cheese that has been mashed up as fine as it can be, then added to milk (warm milk usually) and topped off by an insane amount of salt. What the heck. Horrible right? Yes, you guessed it, it is one of the worst things I've tried in this world. We tracked into a couple, and since we didn't drink whiskey or coffee, they gave us Dhal. Elder Flack got a hoot out of watching me drink it, but I was a trooper, I drank the whole glass. In fact, elder Flack said I didn't even flinch until I got to the dregs of the cup. At that point it took all the discipline I possessed to not vomit. After we left we considered purging to get it out of our system. We got ice cream instead. That helped.

Actually that couple we tracked into was an older couple, and they had lost a few years ago a 21 year old daughter. They obviously were still hurting, it was a time to share the Plan of Salvation with them, but they wouldn't listen. Whenever we would start to teach it, they would say, quite politely, shume falemnaris (thank you much) and change the subject. If only they understood what we were trying to teach them, the blessings and comfort it would bring to their lives! It was very sad.

Oh I have bad news, our two baptisms have fallen through. The 2 girls have not come out and said that they didn't want to be baptised, but they have been avoiding receiving lessons from us since we gave them a baptismal calender. We now have reached the point where we cannot effectively teach the commandments of the gospel in time, so we are at the least pushing the date back. They told us that they had not read, and the older one seems like what we expected, too lazy to accept the real commitment to be baptized. However, I believe the younger one still will be, and Gent, their brother who is a member, is an excellent support. I hope he stays strong. We think the 2 girls didn't realize what baptism was, Gent got baptized way too fast and is doing quite well considering how quickly he wad taught prior to entering the waters. Elder Flack and I have made it a priority to see that they understand the covenant they are making. They both thought baptism was an end, not a beginning. That's what turned Arjeta off. It is sad to see that people are unwilling to do what is necessary to achieve salvation, but if her siblings become strong members, she will definitely join, it will just take more time.

I apologize that this letter is somewhat negative about the area, I really do love Shkodre and most of the members. They are some really excellent members, they just have a lot they need to be taught, as expected, one day there will be a foundation of members that will support new converts! Mum, you remember telling me about what happened in Fredericksburg with the 2 missionaries that got many converts just because they taught about the welfare system? That is kind of what has happened here, though not the fault of any particular elder.

OK, got to leave on a good note. One family, Terazina and her two daughters Marenla and Adolina, are struggling. Terazina is our most faithful church goer, and you can tell how she is growing slowly but surely, she also has a strong testimony of the basic, most important principles. However, her daughters and her (and her sisters family, who are also members) are all getting quite persecuted by their church and it's members and you can see the effects of that persecution mainly on Marinela, who is the oldest of all the children (14). However, yesterday we shared Helamen 12:5, D&C 121: 7-8? (my son, peace be..) and D&C 122:7-8 about enduring hardship and relying on Christ. It was an excellent lesson, and I believe it really helped Marinela, who's definitely been struggling with her testimony. The spirit was there. I hope they never lose the faith!

OK, I hope you all are well. I miss you all, but they Lord gives me great strength. I cannot wait to talk to you all on Sunday!

With love
Elder Scadden