Once Upon a Time in Albania (August 31st 2009)

Hello from Albania!

Wow! It is September! Fall is about to begin! That means its just going to become cold and wet here, since all the rain comes in the winter time. I’m not too excited about that. My only consolation is that I will be able to be here for another beautiful summer but for really only 1 winter (since winter begins December 21st, and I’ll be home like a week later!) That is lucky! Even though I really like the summers here I am baffled by how much I sweat. Shkoder is about 10 degrees cooler than Tirana and I sure can tell. Its not less bearable, I just am in a constant state of sweating. It is somewhat amusing. I think Tirana is the only place and time in my life where I’ve been able to sleep consistently on top of the covers and get a good nights sleep. For some reason I usually like to be under something, but no more!

So it is only a month and then I train. Talk about daunting! That’s alright, it will be really exciting to train a new missionary. Besides all the things I’ll learn from him, I’ll be forced to develop my Albanian wether I like it or not. Maybe I will actually speak this language by the time I go home? Thank goodness I’ve still got quite a bit of time.

Ah, yesterday we had 2 baptisms! For those who are into counting baptisms, these 2 do not count as mine. I was here only for their last two weeks. They already had been taught everything and had a date. I suppose I will be the missionary of their retention, which is cool. They are the kids of a 6 month member and he was able to baptize them both! That was very exciting. Soni, his son, is 16 (and now the oldest kid in “young men's”) and his daughter, Angela, is 11. I meant to send some pictures home with these emails, but I forgot my camera. Oh well! Soon I am just going to stick all my pictures on a DVD and send those home. That way you all can see all the pictures I have been taking.

So mum asked some specific questions about what 2nd branch has. We have 3 hours of church, which is amazing. There is a young men and young women's group but there are only 2-3 mostly active young men. We have tons of young women but that also includes girls as old as 21 because they don’t like the relief society. The relief society is run by two opposing sects of crotchety old women (they could use some women like Mum!) and they just bicker about what should be done and then nothing happens. There are some younger women but I am not really sure what they do (usually about half the branch has gone home by 3rd hour). We have a Melchizedek priesthood class but there are at best only 10-12 active Melchizedek priesthood holders. However that is better than any other branch in Albania. There is also a primary, which has maybe 10-12 kids but 7 of those are American children.

On the note of children, I’d like to mention that it is stupidly hard for Albanians to get married. According to “Albanian” traditions they have to have 2 huge weddings and also have a house of their own before they are allowed to be married. There are several young couples who have been waiting several years to get married. It makes me mad, whats so hard about living at one set of parents house. Gunaf! (meaning shameful) so at this time I believe there is only one child in the whole of Albania who has been born into the convent. That needs to change.

Anyway, we also have institute and it is awesome. The outreach center brings so many young people to the gospel. Last institute class we had 49 people, it was amazing. These people are the future of Albania! Now if they would just get married faster…

Visiting teaching, I believe, does not happen (since only 1 of the 2 sects think its important, so the other half refuses to do it, so the half pro-visiting teaching doesn’t do it either because they don’t have the support of the other half).

A shadow of home teaching occurs, but its more like the missionaries going out with the branch president (who is awesome ) and the ward mission leader (who is another awesome guy, speaks perfect American English, just got his call to the London North mission, leaves in November) and we go around doing less active work. In the way of less actives there are tons. There are tons all over Albania. There are 400ish active members in the whole of the country but there are 1500 total members. However, compared to the statistics of the world at large, that’s an average percentage to have apparently. Once winter starts that number should climb somewhere in the 500s because there are a chunk of members who view summer as a time to take a break from the gospel, since they take a break from everything else (how does a country survive where its people are use to going on 2 or 3 month vacations, when they don’t even make the money to pay for all their expenses?).

Our branch presidency members are all very strong, and Sparti Kashari, he is the president, does way more than this call of duty. He is an excellent man. I think that’s all the questions mum asked about the branch and its structure.

Anyway, Elder Ably and I went to the young Sunday school class because the adult class filled its room and at the end they asked what would be needed for a stake to be here. Sparti told them that they would need 5 or so branches that had at least 30 active Melchizedek priesthood leaders, +a stake presidency, 12 high priests, and a patriarch. Albania will get there, but there is unfortunately quiet a ways to go. We do not have anything close to that yet.

I like to tell Albanians about NC and how it began with only 2 families and now has a temple. I tell them Albania will be that way one day too, if they hold fast and live faithfully.

This week Elder Cosseh (phonetically, I can’t spell French, usually a single word has 5 or 6 useless letters thrown in there, so I am easily confused by it.) of the 70 came and visited us. We had a mission conference that was excellent. He gave us a new format for teaching that lets people know right from the start that we intend to meet with them a number of times and gives a quick overview of what we plan on teaching. I was super excited because it was essentially our idea of an “our purpose” lesson put into a much better, less in your face way. He also attended 2nd and 4th branch and delivered and excellent talk to the members. How blessed we are to have inspired men that lead this Church! Wow, only 1 month till next general conference, that is TOTALLY whack, it just seems like we had this past conference. Is this how the rest of life is? When I get home, will my life never again slow down, but just go speeding towards its inevitable end at an exponential rate? If that’s the case that’s not big deal, the end of this life is merely a beginning!

We have an investigator named Ermal, I do not know if I have told you all about him. He comes to English and institute and we teach him after those too. He is just soaking the gospel up and he keeps all of his reading commitments we give him. He has been to church once, now we just need to convince him to come consistently! If we can. I feel certain that he will be baptized.

One Saturday we heard a presentation from a man who worked with NASA for 40 years. He was talking about the glorious universe that Christ has created, and continues to create. He showed us pictures from the Hubble telescope that are amazing! He explained that Stars are made from nebulae and when a star dies it explodes and creates a new nebula, which gives birth to more stars. It is a continues process!! Science used to think that stars that had planets would be an extremely rare occurrence. I don’t remember the ratio he gave us but it was extremely small. However, NASA now believes that EVERY star that has been created has planets surrounding it like our sun based on things they have found through the Hubble space telescope. Which means there are probably billions of planets that are similar to ours. Just a couple years ago, NASA launched a ship that would go out a ways to where it could better read the changes in light emanations from stars. Essentially this ship can tell when a planet passes in front of a star. On top of that it can calculate where in the star's orbit the planet is and can therefore determine what stars have planets that are orbiting in a distance away from their star (based on temperature) which would allow them to develop a livable atmosphere like our planet. Is that not just insane? Lastly, he told us about a zone in the sky where scientists could never find any light coming from. They pointed Hubble at it and they saw many lights. But the thing that surprised them is that they weren’t stars, they were Galaxies, 10,000 of them, in a zone of space that is as big as the hole made with your thumb and pointer figure held to the sky (hope that makes since). There is not end to the glorious creations of our God! We were not the first, nor will we be the last as His works continue to go forward in power and great glory. How marvelous and intriguing a thing it truly is! And despite all these many trillions of uncountable creations, He is still mindful of each and every one of us. In the vastness of space, God still listens to our prayers and daily sends his Angels to watch over us. What love!

Well, I love you all, I hope you all are well, I miss you all. Thank you all for your love and support, for all your wonderful messages. I know that Jesus is the Christ, this is His true church on the earth and today we are lead by a living prophet. It is only through Christ that we can receive the greatest reward that can be offered us: Eternal life. Let us all sacrifice our sins for something so much greater, for a happiness that never ends. Until next week, may God be with you!

With Love
Elder Scadden