Once upon a time in Albania (July 27th 2009)

Pershendetie nga Shqiperia!

I hope you all are well! I do miss you all and am keeping you all in my prayers. I’d like to give a shout out to my friend Colin, because I believe his Birthday is July 31st, so Happy Birthday Colin! This week has been good, we have started to keep a tracting record to make our tracting more effective. Actually, speaking of Colin, he recently asked me in a letter what “tracting” was so I will give a brief explanation. Having grown up around missionaries, I’ve taken for granted that “tracting” is not a real word LOL. If ever you hear a knock at your door, and you see two young guys wearing white shirts, ties, and name tags, those are Mormon missionaries and they are looking for people to teach using “tracting”, so its pretty simple. I do not know why we call going from door to door sharing our message “tracting” but that is what it is. To anyone who might not be members of the Church who read my blog, I would like to say that when Mormon missionaries like myself come to your door, they probably are just as uncomfortable to be there as you are to find them there, so at least be nice to them! Getting rejected is never fun, but it is much better if people are respectful and courteous. Anyway, back to our tracting record. We are keeping track of doors that open and if people say they are not interested or not, and then we return on a different day, and at a different time. We are finding it to be relatively effective, and it is much better than what we were doing before. It also makes me feel that my time is being used more productively, I do not ever like feeling I’ve wasted time during the day!

Mr. Shafer, my AP US history teacher, was usually practical to the point of cynicism (like Dad) when considering historical figures, but I do recall him saying that at no time in the history of the world were more great men gathered together in one place than at the founding of our Nation. That I believe! Anyway, when I get home I look forward to studying more about the Founding Fathers and the many documents they wrote. As of right now it doesn’t have much import to me.

LOL this kind of goes along the same lines, but here in our mission we have several missionaries who are somewhat irrational in their belief in conspiracy theories, I believe I’ve mentioned them before. For example, they don’t think we landed on the moon (I’m sure you don’t like that one dad),LOL. I even heard one Elder say that 28 of the States have secretly seceded from the Union LOL . Whenever I hear crazy things like this and I’ve heard a lot here, strangely, I guess its because I am from NC. Out west there just must be something about the desolate, lifeless landscape of Idaho or Utah that gets to peoples brains. I usually like to approach them with the perspective of Occams razor, meaning that the simplest explanation tends to be the proper solution. Anyway, I digress, this is not really what yall want to hear!

Oh, side note, always feel free to send the Conference Edition of the Ensign, I love reading it. Our mission has still not received its copies and it isalready closer to next conference than it is to the last one.

Ah another random note. We have a member here in Albania, in Tirana, named Vellai Vogli (or in English, Brother Little) that came and spoke at our little branch yesterday. It was awesome, he has a powerful testimony. It was too bad we only had 2 members there. All the rest were off at weddings. It made me sad. Anyway, we is a carpenter/stone worker. In fact, he can carve ANYTHING out of marble or wood if he at least has a picture of what you want carved. Obviously it costs money to order things from him, but Mum, he can Custom make a nativity for you out of wood and possibly marble. I’d have to ask him how small he could go using marble, I don’t know. Anyway, if you have pictures of people from the nativity that you would like to seen turned into carvings, send them to me before my mission is over and I’ll be sure to order you your own special nativity! I’ll probably order something for myself as well, since it would be awesome to have something like a statue of the Savior handcrafted by a member here. Anyway, I’ve seen some of his work (since its all over the mission) and he is outstanding.

So I heard that Mum and Dad got to go to an NC Symphony concert with the Wongs that was Russian music. I am jealous! I love a lot of what the Russian composers have produced. I think a lot of people don’t realize it because they think of communism and tyranny when they think Russia, but Russia has an extremely rich history of literature and music.

So this week we taught two of “our purpose” lessons (I hope I explained what that was last week). Both times it was extremely powerful, the spirit was obviously present as we testified about why were are here. Unfortunately, even though the spirit was present both lessons, neither of them produced exactly the results we desired (the desired result being that the person commits to meet with us more often, but for a shorter amount of time, and we help them to find for themselves a testimony of the gospel, because we are not here to convince people we are right, but to show them that if they will ask God with a sincere heart, He will give them an answer) The first time we taught it was with Toni, and it did go well, people DIE all the cursed time. People need to stop dying so dang much so we can meet with him. So often we get ready to meet with him and yet another person has to be given a funeral. From a business perspective, Toni sure made the right choice putting his funeral service right across the street from the hospital. LOL he even keeps the hearse parked in the hospital parking lot with an advertisement in it. I still have a lot of hope for Toni, because when we had the lesson with him he seemed like he did want to know for himself and that he did want to continue to learn. The second time we taught it it was to a man named Geg Essentially he told us very indirectly that he didn’t want to try to find out if it was true because he realized it would mean he would have to repent and change his ways. However, I know that the Spirit testified to him of the truthfulness of our message, because I felt the spirit strongly, and an apostle once said that if we feel the spirit as we testify, that means they feel it also but they have their agency to choose wither or not to heed it. Oh, I’d just like to add that as we explained to Geg about authority, he made a comment about how small and ghetto our meeting room is and how great and specious Kisha e Madhe (The Great Church, down the road) is. Elder Hamilton proceeded to remind him of the humble circumstances of Christ birth and then testified to him that if our Savior was in Shkoder today (which was Sunday) that he would have come to our little room for Church. It was a bold statement but it certainly wasn’t overbearing in the context it was said. I thought it was a very powerful thing to say.

Yesterday we tracted into a women (tracted into means that we knocked on the door, and they opened and at least talked to us) who let us in to teach her. She was 81 years old, though still in decent health. She is also still willing and able to read. A lot of old people here claim they can’t read because their eyes are weak. I’d believe it on occasion, but we get it so much I think its just a cop out to get us to leave. However, she talked about how she’d probably die soon, so it didn’t matter if we taught her. Well, Elder Hamilton and I taught her a brief Plan of Salvation (The third time I’ve taught the Second lesson my entire mission), and when we got to teaching the Spirit world (the place between death and resurrection where our spirits will dwell as we await the second coming of our Lord and Savior) we explained that there are missionaries there, like us, and we asked her to promise us that she would definitely talk to them and listen to them when she got there, and she gladly agreed. It was somewhat funny but I was glad we did it. We might not be exactly sure what the Spirit world is like or how missionary work goes on there, but at least now she will have it in her mind that someone talked to her about a special message during this life that they wanted her to remember in the next life. But we will be teaching her again, which is excellent She seemed very interested in what we had to say about God's Plan of Happiness for us.

So as my mission passes, I am starting to realize that I am having really awesome experiences. During my first and second transfer I wasn’t sure I’d have that many neat or powerful stories from my mission, but looking back I have had quite a few already. I am really enjoying my mission, even though I miss my family, my future wife, and my friends. The Lord blesses me every day. I see his hand stretched out to me in mercy repeatedly. This is His work, I know it without doubt. I am so blessed to be here, to have this opportunity to give a tithe on the life I have so far lived. Jesus is the Christ, he is our Lord and Savior and this is His true and living Church.

Thank you all for your love and support. Thank you to my friends that do write me, and for their patience with me in writing them back. Thank you all for your prayers! I can feel them being answered in my life daily. I love you all!

May God be with you.

Elder Scadden