Once upon a time in Albania (December 7th, 2009)

Hello all from Albania!

I hope you all are well, I am doing well. I would like to shout out to my friend Jed and wish him a Happy Birthday! I also would like to condemn his heretical actions in not ever writing me as he said he would. And also today, 68 years ago, Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Empire of Japan. My grandmother and grandfather were there at the army base as Japanese fighters and bombers strafed the barracks. It was the event that pulled the US into the worst of the modern wars. While a terrible chapter in the history of the world, the people of America demonstrated incredible bravery and discipline against the enemies of the time. I will always admire that generation and the battles they fought.

So, what has happened this week? Well, yesterday I was asked to translated during testimony meeting for a little American boy who is in our branch and that was no problem. But as I descended from the stand a visiting American man asked me to translate for him. I had worried about this happening even though Elder Turley had specifically offered to translate for him (Elder Turley is 6 months my superior and is extremely good at the language). So he shared a powerful experience that happened in his life and used a lot of words that I had no idea how to translate into Albania. It was tough! Fortunately I don’t really feel shameful when I make such mistakes in front of our members but it definitely was a humbling experience. I have so much more that I still must learn! I need to make sure that I do not become complacent with the level of performance I am at (I can effectively teach all the lessons and basically any gospel principle but when it comes to many other facets of life, I lack the vocabulary.)

Oh could someone tell Colin that I did get his package? I got a dear elder from him in which he lamented that he had misaddressed my package. I had received it some weeks before and have written him back so he may already know. It brought up a good point that I would like to share with everyone. My address is extremely simple: Elder Gregory Scadden, POB 2984, Tirana, Albania. I know that the Mission office gives this long winded thing but let me tell you what it all means in Albanian: The first part is the name of the church here in Albania which is The Liahona Foundation (according to the government, our tags and churches all bear the proper name. The reason for this is that there are only 3 religions in Albania, according to the government, Catholicism, Othodoxism, and Islam, all other sects and denominations are called CULTS not religions. We are working on that). The rest of that address says this: The first large building you see on the road, right across the street from the 22nd post office. Super ghetto. The only information that is needed is the one I gave above, it will get here with only that! Of course, if you desire, you all may continue to use the full address.

So I heard a good story this week, about our newly baptized members Grej and Kejn. Their mom is investigating the church but she has a problem with the word of wisdom. We have taught it to her and it was also with the help of Sister Shupe (one of our senior couple missionaries, to give us more credibility). But she still refuses to accept that the promises that God has given us for obedience to that law totally outweigh any thing red wine can do for the blood. We are working on that. But she came and talked to sister Shupe one day, since they have become friends, and she told her that she decided to test her sons commitment to the gospel. She offered them red wine and then tried to order them to drink it, but both of them refused, they would not, they knew they had made a covenant with God and had to be faithful. Now its kind of jacked up that a mom would tempt her kids in such a way but it is great news for us because it just confirms out boys commitment to the gospel. We were so proud of them! We aren’t allowed to tell them though because Sister Shupe wasn’t supposed to tell us. It is difficult to explain how much joy it brought me to hear of their faithfulness. I sometimes worry that our new converts are not being as faithful as they might appear to be at church. I no longer have worries for Grej and Kejn.

So for about 5 months now I have been searching for the title of a book that I read in High School, however, I could not remember the author or the name of the book and therefore felt it was useless to write home about it. While at Grejs house yesterday, after our lesson with their mom, we were discussing books that we had read and she mentioned An American Tragedy, which immediately rang a bell. She then said it was by Theodore Dreiser and that rang a bell too. I asked her if it was about a kid that drowns his pregnant girlfriend in the 1920. Yes! It was a very unexpected way to find the title and author of the book. I would never imagine that an Albania would have read it. She also talked about another book, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini and I recalled that that book was very popular in my Arabic program my last semester before I left. I wanted to know if any of you have read it, because I have heard many people acclaim it as excellent, and I am considering adding it to my “to read” list. Has anyone read it? Is it worth the read?

Hmm,what else was there to talk about and discuss? We haven’t gotten new investigators for 3 weeks now. I am sadface about that. It is clear why, Elder Seevers and I have not being doing a great deal of finding because we have not had a lot of time. About 7 weeks ago we were getting tons and for 3 weeks running we had quite a few and some good referrals and then we became very busy with all that and now they are all either disappearing, not interested, not progressing, or are baptized, have a huge desire to be baptized, or are still on the road to being baptized. That pretty much covers every possible option huh? The work continues to go well and I think we are working hard, it just does not look good that we haven’t been doing a lot of finding. This week, though, I believe we will have a little more time to do finding and I hope that will yield fruits. I feel very blessed to be in a mission where we are expected to find new investigators weekly. There are a number of missionaries that would be thrilled to get a new investigator once a transfer in other parts of the world. Crazy!

Well, the time has come. I am super excited about "seeing" my family and Jenni on Christmas! I will have details about that next P-day. We receive them on Thursday at Zone Conference. Dad you will need to send me an explanation about Skype and the account etc. I love you all! I miss you all, may God be with you until we speak again!

Love
Elder Skadi