Chronicles from Albania (June 15th 2009)

Hello from Albania!!

I am EXTREMELY exhausted right now, we woke up at 4:40 so we could go to a far away city, but when we got there we found that there was nothing to do. However, I can now say that I have been to a city named PUKE, the real irony of the name is that to get there you have to go through tons of windy, high, and dangerous roads to get there, once we arrived we all felt a little uneasy. The city, in Albanian, is actually pronounce POOKAH. Anyways… So we are back in Shkoder at noon and we are tired! I will definitely be taking a nap later.

I can’t believe that in the last 2 weeks Sister Hodge, Sister Vlazny and Sister Taylor passed away! That is so very sad! Fortunately though we do have an understanding of the plan of Salvation. What a truly amazing blessing to know we will be with the people we love again one day!

Oh please keep this in mind. Transfers will be on the 7th? Of July, or something like that. That means P-day will be on a Tuesday, not a Monday! So if the 1st or second Monday in July you don’t get emails, they will be coming the next day.

So right now is election season in Albania. Last week there were 2 political rallies here. We saw Eddi Rama speak to a decent sized crowd of people. He is currently the mayor of Tirana and running for prime minister for the Socialists. 2 days latter Salli Barisha (the current prime minister and incumbent for the Democratic party) came here, and spoke to a crowd maybe 3 or 4 times the size, upwards of 50 thousand people in the streets. We stood a ways off, but close enough to here. I got to see him drive up with his police escort. Elders Flack and Suell were quite excited to see him. I felt no excitement what so ever, and upon thinking about it I believe it is because I realized that he was one of the most insignificant of all political leaders in the world. LOL. The 2 party slogans are these. The socialists: A new party for Change! And the democrats: Albania is Changing! Yes, I also was shocked by their originality and singularity apart from each other. LOL! I am sorry for my sarcasm, I just find it amusing. Anyway, the elections are on the 24th. I do hope that you will not get a phone call from me saying that I've been evacuated to an aircraft carrier because of civil unrest. It shouldn't be a problem, while missionaries were evacuated for almost every election Albania has had, they were not evacuated for the last one, so I don’t think they anticipate any problems this time around. I hope I am not worrying anyone. I decided that I like Salli Barisha the best. Since we are missionaries I do not know anything about either candidate, but Barisha had a great many more American flags flying at his rally, so that sold me.

I haven’t really talked about the work yet. We still do not have any obviously progressing investigators. We seem to be having trouble getting people to progress beyond the first lesson, they tend to drop us after 2 meetings when they are given a Book of Mormon. However, there is no effort wasted there, many seeds are being planted by our efforts. We do have 2 individuals who we are very hopeful about their progression. One women is a very nice lady with 2 daughters and both her and her husband work. She is quite receptive to our message, but is not keeping her reading commitments. However, we are going to move on to the second lesson because she still wants to meet with us and because we believe the plan of Salvation will really get her thinking about the truthfulness of our message because she has a younger sister who died at age 18 a few years ago. The plan of Salvation could bring her a great deal of hope and consolation for her. We also are teaching a man who lived 6 years in America with his family and saved a good deal of money and upon returning to Albania has turned it into some good investments in apartments and a cleverly placed funeral shop directly adjacent to the Hospital, the closest of such stores for over a block. He is a good man, and is interested in our message. On top of that, he reads! He read the restoration pamphlet and is very much looking forward to reading the Book of Mormon. We are hoping that when we return tonight he will have read the things from the Book of Mormon that we left for him. We have hope!

Apparently tracting is a technique loathed by many missionaries, and is generally the last option because of the little success that it yields. However, we have a great deal of initial success tracting here in Shkoder. The people here are extremely warm, and I can only remember one day from last transfer where we tracted and didn't get in some place that day. I say initial success though because often people are nice, but not interested in our message. It is a blessing to live in a city with such warm and welcoming people. Of course there are exceptions, the other day we tracted an apartment building full of angry rude people, it is funny that the mood of the apartment building appeared to be the same for every person but one. Maybe they have had run ins with Jehovah's witnesses, who tend to be extremely aggressive proselytizers and are hated here and often people get us confused with them. We also have problems with kids, I do not know what the heck it is about Albanian children, but when they seen us many of them throw rocks at us if there are no adults around. I don’t know what goes through a child's head that tells them, oh look, Americans, lets throw rocks at them! Do they not know that the tax dollars of my parents pay to keep their broken country afloat!? It is alright though, we usually do a good job of keeping our cool and turning the other cheek. Sometimes Albanian adults don’t do anything to help us out, other times they chew the kids out. Recently some kids hiding behind a wall ambushed us with a volley of rocks, much to their dismay however an gjagji (old guy) was walking near by and he ran over an started smacking them with his newspaper. We have returned to that neighborhood numerous times since and have had not anymore problems. This all sounds a bit negative about Albania, but I love this country, and I am coming to love its people. In fact, I recently decided that we need to just try to talk to the kids more (since usually they have to see us more than once before they start attacking) and be friendly with them. So far the results have been a lot better, though there are still some that just need to be smacked. Patience and Kindness win out in the end I believe!

We only had 2 members in Church again on Sunday, one of whom is an inactive member who wants their just turned 8 child to be baptized. We aren't sure what to do because we would be baptizing her into inactivity, and we don’t feel very good about that. I believe we are going to set some standards that they will have to meet before her baptism, such has consistent church attendance for a period of time and reading from the BoM child's picture book, as well as some special lessons geared towards the little girl. This may be an avenue that might lead to this families activity… but it is the same family that actively tried to get the whole branch not to go see an apostle of the Lord. I do not understand the thought process of their aggressive hypocrisy.

While I rarely have great news to report, we are happy. We are working hard, the Lord is blessing us on every hand. Every hour prayers are answered. If anything I am here to plant seeds. I have been put here for a purpose, and I am confident the Lord is directing me to the fulfillment of that purpose. I love this work, though it is hard and exhausting. I love you all, and I am ever grateful for your support!

Until next week, May God be with you!

Love
Elder Scadden