Hail all from the shores of Albania!
I hope you all are doing well! So I do not read my emails when I do email, instead I print them off and read them later. Though, while I was copying and pasting the emails to Word, I caught something about Sarah and Louis getting married?? I hope there are more details and I hope I am not jumping the gun by saying Congratulations!!! To them both. I am now feeling somewhat left out that the marriage will probably occur while I am here. Char me boh? I hope to hear more from Sarah and anyone else.
OK order of business number 2: Mum asked me to start asking for things for Christmas: Shoe inserts that give great arch support, and I mean GREAT inserts. I have some OK ones as we speak but with all the walking we do they aren’t the most fantastic. Fear not, I do not go in everyday suffering from huge amounts of pain, I’m just looking for a greater level of comfort and better flat footed prevention. Also Advil, it can be purchased here in Albania, but for the equivalent of a $5 bottle in American you must pay $350+ dollars here in Albania for it. Heinous, I know, or a potential commercial endeavor with which to make bank, unfortunately the Whitehandbook says not to engage in commercial enterprises or I probably would have already sold my remaining 10 pills for $15 each. Lastly, I do not know if I told you this so it might already be coming, but more daily vitamins, I am almost out! Alright, so enough selfish asking.
This week has been GREAT! Thanks to the many hours of English Advertising we did, we now have two outstanding investigators. They are two friends, both 15 years old, and both very exceptional boys. They learn English in school and take a private course but on top of that they come to our English course just for extra practice. On Saturday they came by even though there was no English. Elder Seevers and I were standing outside the church waiting for a retention that we were pretty sure wasn’t going to come (mainly because we had failed to set up the appointment and he doesn’t have a cellphone and he wasn’t with his sister, so we were just hoping he would pass buy, which isn’t actually that far fetched of an idea if you know Roni) and they came around. I told them that we would have institute in an hour and they were welcome to come. They said they would and we continued talking. It turns out one of the boys had been tracted into before 2 years ago and had the BoM still but for some reason his family never met with the missionaries again. We asked them if they wanted to come inside and watch a movie about Joseph Smith and we would talk a little more about the BoM, they quickly agreed. They were so excited about the film and its message! They agreed to meet with us consistently and to come to church the next day. The spirit was very strong during the lesson. Later that night I introduced them to Sister Shupe (the senior sister who runs the institute program) and learned as Donald (the boy tracted into) told his story that after the missionaries had found them, he had wanted to come to our church for 2 years because there was just something about it but he could never work up the courage to come. Until he saw the missionaries advertising a free English class for all ages and he said it was just what he needed to break the ice so that he could start learning about the gospel. How awesome is that! In church yesterday, Gray, the other one, came dressed in a shirt and tie and Donald took notes during all the classes. Who are these kids? People prepared by the Lord as I see it. I hope that the many bad examples from members of the church that are in their same age will not draw them away from their fire and desire to learn and progress in the Gospel. The beginning of their teaching is truly a miracle from the Lord, how blessed are we to be a part of His higher plan! So please pray for these 2 kids, Donald and Gray, that they will continue to progress and that, if they choose to accept Christ and be baptized, that their families will be open to the decision.
So I have decided that I enjoy tracting far more than I enjoy street contacting. More people get mad at you tracting, people tend to be ruder, but it also forces us to work harder and also if someone is welcoming to the message it is an immediate lesson instead of waiting a day or two to call a phone number you got on the street. But when we are on the street it is easy to let inhibitions prevent you from being most effective. Oh that person doesn’t look like they want to be stopped, oh that person clearly doesn’t want to listen. But while tracting you knock on every door and speak to every person that answers. Does anyone understand what I am saying? Essentially, I am a bad street contacter and thus tracting makes me feel like a more effective finder, LOL! But the best way to find new investigators is through our members. I hope that soon we will be getting some good referrals.
Elder Seevers is an awesome companion. One of the many reasons I loved Elder Flack so much was because he was never afraid to tell me how I could improve and what I could do better. He was always blunt and straight forward. I am finding that Elder Seevers is very similar and I am extremely grateful that he also has that quality. Early this week I was in a bad mood while tracting because we were getting hit with the most irritatingly dumb excuses for not listening to the most important message in the world and he just straight told me “Elder Scadden, you need to have more Charity for these people!” It was a good reminder. So even though I am teaching him and helping him (he himself is also very good at taking constructive criticism), he is teaching me and helping me to be a better, more effective missionary and member of the church. It is a pleasure to serve with him.
This past Thursday was Zone Conference. We had the pleasure of watching part of Elder Hollands BoM talk that had been dubbed over with some music and some pictures. It was extremely powerful. What a testimony! I hope to get permission from president to watch the whole talk during lunch this week. While Elder Holland is much more eloquent, powerful, and convicted, I do wish to add my testimony to his that I know that the Book of Mormon is true. It contains the words of ancient prophets of God. It is not a fake. It is not a farce. There is no way that a book that brings men so much closer to God could be frauded into creation. I have read it and many times repeated the promise given by Moroni in the end to pray and ask God to know the truth and every time the spirit whispers with undeniable affirmation that it is True! And I could never deny it.
I love you all, I miss you all. Thank you very much for your prayers and your support. I am seeing miracles on my mission, I am growing and I am seeing people around me grow. It is a blessing to be here in the Service of the Lord. Until next week, may God be with you all.
Love,
Elder Skadi
Elder Scadden
Where's Gregory?
Gregory is now home.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Once upon a time in Albania (October 19, 2009)
Hello all from Albania!
I hope everyone is doing well! First I would just like to wish my niece Kinsey a Happy Birthday!
So what do I talk about this week? This week has gone by fast, it is Zone Conference, which means that this transfer is already almost done. We’ve started to hear Christmas music on the road. It is hard to believe that it is almost here! Fortunately we have Thanksgiving first. We will all go to the mission presidents house and Sister Neil will cook us a meal, how lucky we are! We are also going to watch a movie. Last year they watched Remember the Titans. I would like to watch that this year. So would over half the mission. But some people are proposing lame ideas like Harry Potter. Not that that is bad, I’ve heard this one is really good actually, but its Thanksgiving!! That means Football! Well, I guess we will have to see how things play out. It won’t be long before I get to talk to yall over Skype!
So I will tell you all a little bit more about my companion. Elder Seevers comes from a little town called Pioch, in Nevada. 800 people live in his town. There is a full, strong ward there. In a nearby town of 700 people they have 2 wards. These little towns were all founded by the Pioneers. But Elder Seevers himself is a convert to the church, he has only been a member for 4 years. He played football in High School as quarterback and actually went to Boise State to play ball there. If I remember correctly Boise has a pretty good team! But he injured his shoulder really badly. And then, after a surgery and therapy, he injured it again. He finally decided to leave Boise because he felt like he was wasting their time. In reality the Lord just had other plans for him, like a mission to Albania. He has done 3 years of school, majoring in History. He wants to be a high school teacher and baseball coach (he played that too). Now he is here, stunning people with his 6ft 6in of height. He is just as I was when I came into the country, weak with the language, but not terrible. Already in 13 days or so that he has been here I have seen dramatic improvement in his language capabilities. He is also really good at calling me out on things I need to do better, in a non-holier-than-thou sort of way. Last night I was getting really irritated with the excuses and rudeness of people at doors and he very blatantly reminded me that we need to have charity for all these people. It was a good reminder. In any case, he is a great companion and I am learning many things from him. I hope he feels he is learning many things from me.
This week we went tracting for my first time in a number of weeks (I think this is why I was getting so irritated with people, I had forgotten the sort of emotions and rejections that come along with knocking on people's doors). I think the most amusing thing that happened was when we knocked on a door in a dark stairwell and the people came to the door, turned the outside light on, looked through the eye hole for about 2 seconds, and turned the light back off, leaving us in darkness, and walking away. Some people! We laughed about it though, at the utter ridiculousness of it. The J-dubs (Jehovah's witnesses) have waged Jihad on Tirana for years. Tracting really is not the most effective method here. They are uses to seeing J-dubs at their doors once ever few months or so and they confuse us with them. It makes me sad that such an obstacle has been placed in the way of a good finding method. It surprises me how strong a force the J-dubs are here. I had always thought they were a random ridiculous sect of religion that just existed, but in this part of the world they are very prominent. Elder Layton (one of the zone leaders) and I might actually be attending one of their services to represent the Church this week (we have been invited). The best thing that happened was when we knocked on one of the last doors we planned on knocking on that night and a man opened the door and invited us in. We first clarified that we were missionaries and that we had a message to share with him and he said “I know! Please come in!” His name is Ismiel and he is a really great guy! He doesn’t trust the self proclaimed religious leaders of the world because he feels like they don’t have the authority to speak for God. He disapproves of the mechanical prayers preached by various faiths and believes that we must pray from our hearts. He is not well learned with the stories of the Bible (having grown up in communism) and does not frequent any places of worship. But when we told him the story of Joseph Smith and told him that we have a prophet on the earth today with Authority from God he was very interested. I feel like he has been prepared to receive the message. We will see. He has agreed to meet with us 2 or 3 times a week for the next 3 or 4 weeks. He is aware that we are here to help him find the truth for himself and he knows that if he indeed finds that testimony, we will be inviting him to be baptized. Let us hope he progresses.
We also have another new investigator named Elida. She is catholic, but seems to be very interested in the church. We had an excellent first lesson with her and 2 member girls, but of course, as usually happens when using the untrained in lessons, later topics of discussion that at first appear strange, like baptisms for the dead, were brought up. It doesn’t seem to have weirded her out and she stayed for all of institute. If she indeed starts to progress we may hand her over to the sisters as it would just be simpler for them to teach her (we would always have to find back up when teaching her). Regardless of who ends up teaching her, I am excited for her. She had many good questions. As with Ismiel, I hope to see her walk towards the waters of baptism!
Anyway, enough of that random subject. Oh, I wanted to leave a message for Jenni, who has not yet received a letter from me this week: I indeed sent one, but I do not believe it was sent until Thursday of that week because while I was with Elder Vail in his area, while we were waiting for our trainees, we could not find a post office to save our lives, so I had to wait til I got back to my area on Thursday. Sorry its coming late, I hope it comes soon!
Alright everyone, it is time for me to go. Until next week! It will be here before we know it. Time is just flying! The crazy thing about it is people keep telling me, "You think time is flying now? Just wait til your year mark, then it starts to Rocket by." I cannot even imagine that! Time already is rocketing by! I guess it will increase to warp speed then. Well, I know that this is the Lords work and even though time is flying, I know that I am being successful. It is such a blessing to be here. Thank you all for you prayers! I love and miss you all, may God be with you!
Love
Elder Skadi
(The following are excerpts from an email Gregory asked be forwarded to his last companion who has completed his mission. Gregory indicated it would be ok to post this.)
Hey man, life is excellent! The fringo, elder Seevers, is a great guy and is trying hard. Already in the first little while that he has been here I have seen great improvement in his language capabilities. The branch is doing well, Sparti will be released soon as branch president because he is now part of the district presidency. Bro Baird is now district president. I got the photo I wanted from you, so don’t worry about that.
Ermal's baptism was awesome! The spirit was very strong there and Ermal was so happy to be baptized. The confirmation was this Sunday and it went well. He just showed up a few minutes late. Elder Shupe did the confirming. I didn’t know this, but apparently Ermal has been on the active search for the true church for the last 10 years of his life. He grew up Muslim, but decided pretty early it was wrong. Sparti is considering making him assistant to the branch clerk, or just all out branch clerk, because he is a finance graduate.
As for the gossip around the mission, I’m trying my best to stay out of it by not saying anything about anyone and not participating in listening to other people. President really wants to kill this whole gossip thing. I’m sorry to hear that you hear it is still a problem. I hope that by the time my trainee gets done with me he’ll only know mostly good things about missionaries.
The Shima family is well. Soni still doesn’t have the Aaronic priesthood but he should get it soon, Sparti has been working with him. Ermal is set to get it in just a couple of weeks and Sparti agrees with our assessment that that would be good. Ani is working hard at the Crapery. The sisters are teaching another young man that works there with Ani and now the whole crapery staff is planning on coming to English course on Wednesday. What a crazy thing it would be if the whole crapery converted?? Roni is helping us teach Ray, but I’ll be honest, I doubt we will baptize him. He lacks the desire. Elderado is good, Kitio came to district conference and Edi Losha is well… A Frenchman.
Thanks for your prayers Abli, I hope that home starts to get a little more exciting soon! Edi leaves in like 3 weeks, it'd be great if you got to see him every now and again. You have a good one, may God be with you!
Sincerely
Elder Skadi
P.S. I knew the dark knight would blow you away!
I hope everyone is doing well! First I would just like to wish my niece Kinsey a Happy Birthday!
So what do I talk about this week? This week has gone by fast, it is Zone Conference, which means that this transfer is already almost done. We’ve started to hear Christmas music on the road. It is hard to believe that it is almost here! Fortunately we have Thanksgiving first. We will all go to the mission presidents house and Sister Neil will cook us a meal, how lucky we are! We are also going to watch a movie. Last year they watched Remember the Titans. I would like to watch that this year. So would over half the mission. But some people are proposing lame ideas like Harry Potter. Not that that is bad, I’ve heard this one is really good actually, but its Thanksgiving!! That means Football! Well, I guess we will have to see how things play out. It won’t be long before I get to talk to yall over Skype!
So I will tell you all a little bit more about my companion. Elder Seevers comes from a little town called Pioch, in Nevada. 800 people live in his town. There is a full, strong ward there. In a nearby town of 700 people they have 2 wards. These little towns were all founded by the Pioneers. But Elder Seevers himself is a convert to the church, he has only been a member for 4 years. He played football in High School as quarterback and actually went to Boise State to play ball there. If I remember correctly Boise has a pretty good team! But he injured his shoulder really badly. And then, after a surgery and therapy, he injured it again. He finally decided to leave Boise because he felt like he was wasting their time. In reality the Lord just had other plans for him, like a mission to Albania. He has done 3 years of school, majoring in History. He wants to be a high school teacher and baseball coach (he played that too). Now he is here, stunning people with his 6ft 6in of height. He is just as I was when I came into the country, weak with the language, but not terrible. Already in 13 days or so that he has been here I have seen dramatic improvement in his language capabilities. He is also really good at calling me out on things I need to do better, in a non-holier-than-thou sort of way. Last night I was getting really irritated with the excuses and rudeness of people at doors and he very blatantly reminded me that we need to have charity for all these people. It was a good reminder. In any case, he is a great companion and I am learning many things from him. I hope he feels he is learning many things from me.
This week we went tracting for my first time in a number of weeks (I think this is why I was getting so irritated with people, I had forgotten the sort of emotions and rejections that come along with knocking on people's doors). I think the most amusing thing that happened was when we knocked on a door in a dark stairwell and the people came to the door, turned the outside light on, looked through the eye hole for about 2 seconds, and turned the light back off, leaving us in darkness, and walking away. Some people! We laughed about it though, at the utter ridiculousness of it. The J-dubs (Jehovah's witnesses) have waged Jihad on Tirana for years. Tracting really is not the most effective method here. They are uses to seeing J-dubs at their doors once ever few months or so and they confuse us with them. It makes me sad that such an obstacle has been placed in the way of a good finding method. It surprises me how strong a force the J-dubs are here. I had always thought they were a random ridiculous sect of religion that just existed, but in this part of the world they are very prominent. Elder Layton (one of the zone leaders) and I might actually be attending one of their services to represent the Church this week (we have been invited). The best thing that happened was when we knocked on one of the last doors we planned on knocking on that night and a man opened the door and invited us in. We first clarified that we were missionaries and that we had a message to share with him and he said “I know! Please come in!” His name is Ismiel and he is a really great guy! He doesn’t trust the self proclaimed religious leaders of the world because he feels like they don’t have the authority to speak for God. He disapproves of the mechanical prayers preached by various faiths and believes that we must pray from our hearts. He is not well learned with the stories of the Bible (having grown up in communism) and does not frequent any places of worship. But when we told him the story of Joseph Smith and told him that we have a prophet on the earth today with Authority from God he was very interested. I feel like he has been prepared to receive the message. We will see. He has agreed to meet with us 2 or 3 times a week for the next 3 or 4 weeks. He is aware that we are here to help him find the truth for himself and he knows that if he indeed finds that testimony, we will be inviting him to be baptized. Let us hope he progresses.
We also have another new investigator named Elida. She is catholic, but seems to be very interested in the church. We had an excellent first lesson with her and 2 member girls, but of course, as usually happens when using the untrained in lessons, later topics of discussion that at first appear strange, like baptisms for the dead, were brought up. It doesn’t seem to have weirded her out and she stayed for all of institute. If she indeed starts to progress we may hand her over to the sisters as it would just be simpler for them to teach her (we would always have to find back up when teaching her). Regardless of who ends up teaching her, I am excited for her. She had many good questions. As with Ismiel, I hope to see her walk towards the waters of baptism!
Anyway, enough of that random subject. Oh, I wanted to leave a message for Jenni, who has not yet received a letter from me this week: I indeed sent one, but I do not believe it was sent until Thursday of that week because while I was with Elder Vail in his area, while we were waiting for our trainees, we could not find a post office to save our lives, so I had to wait til I got back to my area on Thursday. Sorry its coming late, I hope it comes soon!
Alright everyone, it is time for me to go. Until next week! It will be here before we know it. Time is just flying! The crazy thing about it is people keep telling me, "You think time is flying now? Just wait til your year mark, then it starts to Rocket by." I cannot even imagine that! Time already is rocketing by! I guess it will increase to warp speed then. Well, I know that this is the Lords work and even though time is flying, I know that I am being successful. It is such a blessing to be here. Thank you all for you prayers! I love and miss you all, may God be with you!
Love
Elder Skadi
(The following are excerpts from an email Gregory asked be forwarded to his last companion who has completed his mission. Gregory indicated it would be ok to post this.)
Hey man, life is excellent! The fringo, elder Seevers, is a great guy and is trying hard. Already in the first little while that he has been here I have seen great improvement in his language capabilities. The branch is doing well, Sparti will be released soon as branch president because he is now part of the district presidency. Bro Baird is now district president. I got the photo I wanted from you, so don’t worry about that.
Ermal's baptism was awesome! The spirit was very strong there and Ermal was so happy to be baptized. The confirmation was this Sunday and it went well. He just showed up a few minutes late. Elder Shupe did the confirming. I didn’t know this, but apparently Ermal has been on the active search for the true church for the last 10 years of his life. He grew up Muslim, but decided pretty early it was wrong. Sparti is considering making him assistant to the branch clerk, or just all out branch clerk, because he is a finance graduate.
As for the gossip around the mission, I’m trying my best to stay out of it by not saying anything about anyone and not participating in listening to other people. President really wants to kill this whole gossip thing. I’m sorry to hear that you hear it is still a problem. I hope that by the time my trainee gets done with me he’ll only know mostly good things about missionaries.
The Shima family is well. Soni still doesn’t have the Aaronic priesthood but he should get it soon, Sparti has been working with him. Ermal is set to get it in just a couple of weeks and Sparti agrees with our assessment that that would be good. Ani is working hard at the Crapery. The sisters are teaching another young man that works there with Ani and now the whole crapery staff is planning on coming to English course on Wednesday. What a crazy thing it would be if the whole crapery converted?? Roni is helping us teach Ray, but I’ll be honest, I doubt we will baptize him. He lacks the desire. Elderado is good, Kitio came to district conference and Edi Losha is well… A Frenchman.
Thanks for your prayers Abli, I hope that home starts to get a little more exciting soon! Edi leaves in like 3 weeks, it'd be great if you got to see him every now and again. You have a good one, may God be with you!
Sincerely
Elder Skadi
P.S. I knew the dark knight would blow you away!
Monday, October 12, 2009
Once upon a time in Albania (October 12, 2009)
Hello All From Albania!
Wow! What a great week! 2 baptisms this week! Roani and his sister on Monday and Ermal yesterday. What an exciting week! However, this week I am going to direct my email as a mission report to my bishop and stake president. I hope you all still enjoy it, Before I begin I just want to let everyone know that our church building got ransacked. It looks like someone came into the building while it was open, hid, and than sacked it, because there is no evidence of forced entry but tons of evidence of forced exit. Crazy! Fortunately nothing of great value was stolen. Whoever this thief was, they were looking for raw money but didn’t find anything and were clearly not wise enough to realize that our church amplifier and projector were worth hundreds of dollars. Thank goodness! My new companion: Elder Seevers from Nevada. He is awesome! I’ll talk more about him next week.
Dear President Maxwell and Bishop Council,
I apologize that I have not written sooner. Today I will give you a brief report of my mission up to this point. I hope you enjoy it.
Current Status: Successful! Albania is a small, poor country that is still suffering from many side effects of communism. The church is small here but the work is moving forward. There are about 1500 baptized members but only about 400 are consistently active. The District recently took several steps backwards in its progression when a Foreign Service Officer from the US had to be made district president because the current president went inactive. There are 11 branches, 5 of which are in the capital city of Tirana. The Church has built two buildings so far, one in Durres and one in Elbasan. We have many faithful members who are fulfilling their callings and slowly we are adding active Melchizedek priesthood holders towards the qualifications of stakehood.
Personal Development: I am growing beyond that which I could have imagined! Every day I see the hand of the Lord revealed in this work. I have seen the holy spirit work in the lives of the people I have interacted with. I am slowly learning the language of the spirit and my knowledge of the scriptures continues to grow as the Lord enlightens my mind with greater insights throughout my studies. I am surprised at how we can always have more faith, we can always be more diligent and more Christlike. It is a life long development. My testimony of the Savior and his Atonement has deepened since I have been here, as has my testimony of the restoration. I continue to learn patience, charity, and love, as I have had to pray for a great deal out here. I did not realize how self-centered I was until my primary responsibility became the spiritual well being of those around me.
Language: I am OK at the language. I have seen amazing progress over these 6 months and it has been all due to the Lord and his mercies. It is hard to believe that I once could barely construct a sentence when I can now express my self in complex ideas and phrases. I still have a long way to go, I am far from mastering the Albanian language. I have begun training another missionary and I already can tell that this will take my language capabilities to my limits. Indeed the gift of tongues has been a powerful ally here in the country. At times I am extremely surprised at the things that leave my mouth, not realizing before that I had the knowledge to say them.
Successes: My first 3 transfers in the country did not have a great deal of what might be called outward success. In fact, the branch I was in, Skoder, had 30 people in Church my first Sunday. 5 weeks later we had 2. Fortunately at least 1 member always showed up. My time in Skoder can be summed up easily in two words: Enduring Apostasy. That is not to say that I feel my time there was wasted. I felt the spirit work strongly through me numerous times, many people were called to repentance, though such calls were rejected. I challenged people to change their lives, I developed Christlike attributes and I came to love some of the most dishonest and selfish people I have ever met, as Children of a Heavenly King. I have spent 1 transfer in Tirana e Re, in the strongest branch in all of Albania, 2nd branch. Here I have seen people use their agency for good rather than evil. The hand of the Lord has been outstretched to them in love and they have gladly accepted it rather than turning from it for the pleasures of the world. The Lord has blessed me in allowing me to take a direct and central role in the conversions of 2 individuals to the gospel, Ermal Llaha and Roani Kallopi. I have also felt the holy ghost work through me as I have taught people about our Lord and Savior.
Conclusion: I have felt that thus far my mission has been incredibly successful. In the MTC they told us many times that our mission was a success if the only person that changed or was converted to the gospel was us, then we had successful missions. I have been blessed to see much more than that. I know that this is the work of God. Nothing can stop it. I am but a tool in his hands and it is a blessing beyond that which I deserve. However, the Lord in His mercy has allowed me to be in His service. I know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Almighty God, and the Jehovah that rules this existence. I know that His Atonement is full and complete, I have felt its powerful effects in my life and through it I have been redeemed. Joseph Smith is the prophet of the Restoration and Thomas S. Monson is the prophet of our day. This Church is Gods kingdom on the earth, I know this without doubt. May God be with you.
Love,
Elder Scadden
Wow! What a great week! 2 baptisms this week! Roani and his sister on Monday and Ermal yesterday. What an exciting week! However, this week I am going to direct my email as a mission report to my bishop and stake president. I hope you all still enjoy it, Before I begin I just want to let everyone know that our church building got ransacked. It looks like someone came into the building while it was open, hid, and than sacked it, because there is no evidence of forced entry but tons of evidence of forced exit. Crazy! Fortunately nothing of great value was stolen. Whoever this thief was, they were looking for raw money but didn’t find anything and were clearly not wise enough to realize that our church amplifier and projector were worth hundreds of dollars. Thank goodness! My new companion: Elder Seevers from Nevada. He is awesome! I’ll talk more about him next week.
Dear President Maxwell and Bishop Council,
I apologize that I have not written sooner. Today I will give you a brief report of my mission up to this point. I hope you enjoy it.
Current Status: Successful! Albania is a small, poor country that is still suffering from many side effects of communism. The church is small here but the work is moving forward. There are about 1500 baptized members but only about 400 are consistently active. The District recently took several steps backwards in its progression when a Foreign Service Officer from the US had to be made district president because the current president went inactive. There are 11 branches, 5 of which are in the capital city of Tirana. The Church has built two buildings so far, one in Durres and one in Elbasan. We have many faithful members who are fulfilling their callings and slowly we are adding active Melchizedek priesthood holders towards the qualifications of stakehood.
Personal Development: I am growing beyond that which I could have imagined! Every day I see the hand of the Lord revealed in this work. I have seen the holy spirit work in the lives of the people I have interacted with. I am slowly learning the language of the spirit and my knowledge of the scriptures continues to grow as the Lord enlightens my mind with greater insights throughout my studies. I am surprised at how we can always have more faith, we can always be more diligent and more Christlike. It is a life long development. My testimony of the Savior and his Atonement has deepened since I have been here, as has my testimony of the restoration. I continue to learn patience, charity, and love, as I have had to pray for a great deal out here. I did not realize how self-centered I was until my primary responsibility became the spiritual well being of those around me.
Language: I am OK at the language. I have seen amazing progress over these 6 months and it has been all due to the Lord and his mercies. It is hard to believe that I once could barely construct a sentence when I can now express my self in complex ideas and phrases. I still have a long way to go, I am far from mastering the Albanian language. I have begun training another missionary and I already can tell that this will take my language capabilities to my limits. Indeed the gift of tongues has been a powerful ally here in the country. At times I am extremely surprised at the things that leave my mouth, not realizing before that I had the knowledge to say them.
Successes: My first 3 transfers in the country did not have a great deal of what might be called outward success. In fact, the branch I was in, Skoder, had 30 people in Church my first Sunday. 5 weeks later we had 2. Fortunately at least 1 member always showed up. My time in Skoder can be summed up easily in two words: Enduring Apostasy. That is not to say that I feel my time there was wasted. I felt the spirit work strongly through me numerous times, many people were called to repentance, though such calls were rejected. I challenged people to change their lives, I developed Christlike attributes and I came to love some of the most dishonest and selfish people I have ever met, as Children of a Heavenly King. I have spent 1 transfer in Tirana e Re, in the strongest branch in all of Albania, 2nd branch. Here I have seen people use their agency for good rather than evil. The hand of the Lord has been outstretched to them in love and they have gladly accepted it rather than turning from it for the pleasures of the world. The Lord has blessed me in allowing me to take a direct and central role in the conversions of 2 individuals to the gospel, Ermal Llaha and Roani Kallopi. I have also felt the holy ghost work through me as I have taught people about our Lord and Savior.
Conclusion: I have felt that thus far my mission has been incredibly successful. In the MTC they told us many times that our mission was a success if the only person that changed or was converted to the gospel was us, then we had successful missions. I have been blessed to see much more than that. I know that this is the work of God. Nothing can stop it. I am but a tool in his hands and it is a blessing beyond that which I deserve. However, the Lord in His mercy has allowed me to be in His service. I know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Almighty God, and the Jehovah that rules this existence. I know that His Atonement is full and complete, I have felt its powerful effects in my life and through it I have been redeemed. Joseph Smith is the prophet of the Restoration and Thomas S. Monson is the prophet of our day. This Church is Gods kingdom on the earth, I know this without doubt. May God be with you.
Love,
Elder Scadden
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Once upon a time in Albania (Oct. 6 2009)
Hello all from Albania!
Wow another transfer is over! That is crazy! I have been on my mission for 9 months now. That is enough time to have a baby! Kristin is an excellent example. I hope mother and baby are still doing well. Hey, about this! I forgot to put this in my last email! So Elder Abley had 2 nephews born in the same week as Malachi and the crazy thing is that one of them is named Malachi as well! Crazy! So, exciting news, ROANI has been baptised with his sister Elba! How exciting is that!? I suppose if one were to count baptisms this would be my personal first that I had a large impact on. I walked in on Soni and Anxhelas but I was there from the beginning with Roani's teaching. It is awesome to see the atonement of Christ work in peoples lives. I am so blessed to be an instrument in the hands of the Lord to help bring His children His words. Next Sunday Ermal will be baptised. That is super exciting! He is so ready! And the Church will bring him so many blessings in his life. Teaching him was so simple, he has such a desire to learn. I believe it is that desire that made it so easy for him to receive an answer of the truth. He doesn’t show much emotion. He is pretty stone faced in fact but sometimes when we talk about the gospel or he sees/hears something at church you just see him light up with eagerness and excitement. I am very happy for him! It is so wonderful to see people accept the gospel of Christ into their lives. OK, let me go on before I repeat myself some more.
Wow! Training! I do not have my trainee yet. For today, tomorrow, and Thursday morning I will be with Elder Vail who is another missionary who will be opening a new area in Tirana and will be training. I could get any one of 12 Elders (since 1 is sick in the MTC and has already been assigned to a companion and one other of the 14 missionaries is a sister). I don’t really know anything about any of them. I have only seen their pictures. I do know that none of them are prior service US military. Sadface. That’s OK, I still have enough time on my mission, I may yet serve with one such person! The task of training is somewhat daunting. I feel inadequate and unprepared but I know the Lord will help me. Last week was one of those weeks were I just felt like my language got worse. I’ve had about 3 such weeks in the country. I think the Lord was just humbling me up some, just so I’d be that much more prayerful and reliant on his arm before the new missionary comes. All in all, my most apparent emotion is excitement! Its going to be awesome! It will be outstanding for my language and also for my work ethic. You will hear about him next week.
So they are putting 2 more Elders in 2nd branch. I believe that the work certainly exists to keep these elders here, the only problem is that this is no clear way to divide the branch between us due to the location of the 2 missionary houses. Tirana e re is essentially shaped like a big rectangle, a narrow, but very long rectangle. Our house is at the far left hand side of the rectangle (the left and right sides being the shorter ends and the top and bottom sides being the long ends) and in the middle of that side. The other T-re house is at the far bottom left hand corner, right at the extreme edge. So, we have a huge area extending out to the right of us, but not much above us, below us, or to the left. There is no way to divide it long ways, and if we divide it short ways that means one companionship will be traveling quite a distance everyday. We will hold a council of war to decide the best way to handle the situation, but I believe we will just be calling it free for all and have tracting zones to make sure we don’t tract over each other.
Was general conference not AWESOME? We only got to see 2 sessions, the morning sessions of both days, but I loved the talks. Elder Bednar's extremely excellent (one of those that I’ll probably write down to read for when I get home), and I particularly liked Elder Uchtdorf's and Elder Scott's talks the first session. The second morning session had good talks too, I enjoyed Bishop Burton's talk about ity attributes. Developing the attributes of Christ is so very important! If we focus on our own personal improvement in those areas, I think we will find keeping the commandments and magnifying our callings and responsibilities as members will come easily. I also learned from Elder Uchtdorf and Elder Bednar's talks that I need to tell my companions that I love them. The only companion that I tell that to often is Elder Flack but that is probably because I really do love him very much. I think, like Elder Bednar said, I tend to be embarrassed to say it and also because I don’t like to just say those words if I actually don’t mean it. However, I hope to try and do better at coming to love individuals. I know that as I continue to pray for Charity and I work on my attitude and also look for opportunities to serve others, I will gain that love for them that I want to gain. I hope you all learned a lot, it is such a blessing to learn at the feet of such inspired men.
OK, I am out of time. I love you all! I miss you all fiercely! This is the Lords work. Everyday I see His hand extended to me in love and mercy. I could not do this work without His help. Thank you all for your prayers. May God be with you!
Love,
Elder Scadden
Wow another transfer is over! That is crazy! I have been on my mission for 9 months now. That is enough time to have a baby! Kristin is an excellent example. I hope mother and baby are still doing well. Hey, about this! I forgot to put this in my last email! So Elder Abley had 2 nephews born in the same week as Malachi and the crazy thing is that one of them is named Malachi as well! Crazy! So, exciting news, ROANI has been baptised with his sister Elba! How exciting is that!? I suppose if one were to count baptisms this would be my personal first that I had a large impact on. I walked in on Soni and Anxhelas but I was there from the beginning with Roani's teaching. It is awesome to see the atonement of Christ work in peoples lives. I am so blessed to be an instrument in the hands of the Lord to help bring His children His words. Next Sunday Ermal will be baptised. That is super exciting! He is so ready! And the Church will bring him so many blessings in his life. Teaching him was so simple, he has such a desire to learn. I believe it is that desire that made it so easy for him to receive an answer of the truth. He doesn’t show much emotion. He is pretty stone faced in fact but sometimes when we talk about the gospel or he sees/hears something at church you just see him light up with eagerness and excitement. I am very happy for him! It is so wonderful to see people accept the gospel of Christ into their lives. OK, let me go on before I repeat myself some more.
Wow! Training! I do not have my trainee yet. For today, tomorrow, and Thursday morning I will be with Elder Vail who is another missionary who will be opening a new area in Tirana and will be training. I could get any one of 12 Elders (since 1 is sick in the MTC and has already been assigned to a companion and one other of the 14 missionaries is a sister). I don’t really know anything about any of them. I have only seen their pictures. I do know that none of them are prior service US military. Sadface. That’s OK, I still have enough time on my mission, I may yet serve with one such person! The task of training is somewhat daunting. I feel inadequate and unprepared but I know the Lord will help me. Last week was one of those weeks were I just felt like my language got worse. I’ve had about 3 such weeks in the country. I think the Lord was just humbling me up some, just so I’d be that much more prayerful and reliant on his arm before the new missionary comes. All in all, my most apparent emotion is excitement! Its going to be awesome! It will be outstanding for my language and also for my work ethic. You will hear about him next week.
So they are putting 2 more Elders in 2nd branch. I believe that the work certainly exists to keep these elders here, the only problem is that this is no clear way to divide the branch between us due to the location of the 2 missionary houses. Tirana e re is essentially shaped like a big rectangle, a narrow, but very long rectangle. Our house is at the far left hand side of the rectangle (the left and right sides being the shorter ends and the top and bottom sides being the long ends) and in the middle of that side. The other T-re house is at the far bottom left hand corner, right at the extreme edge. So, we have a huge area extending out to the right of us, but not much above us, below us, or to the left. There is no way to divide it long ways, and if we divide it short ways that means one companionship will be traveling quite a distance everyday. We will hold a council of war to decide the best way to handle the situation, but I believe we will just be calling it free for all and have tracting zones to make sure we don’t tract over each other.
Was general conference not AWESOME? We only got to see 2 sessions, the morning sessions of both days, but I loved the talks. Elder Bednar's extremely excellent (one of those that I’ll probably write down to read for when I get home), and I particularly liked Elder Uchtdorf's and Elder Scott's talks the first session. The second morning session had good talks too, I enjoyed Bishop Burton's talk about ity attributes. Developing the attributes of Christ is so very important! If we focus on our own personal improvement in those areas, I think we will find keeping the commandments and magnifying our callings and responsibilities as members will come easily. I also learned from Elder Uchtdorf and Elder Bednar's talks that I need to tell my companions that I love them. The only companion that I tell that to often is Elder Flack but that is probably because I really do love him very much. I think, like Elder Bednar said, I tend to be embarrassed to say it and also because I don’t like to just say those words if I actually don’t mean it. However, I hope to try and do better at coming to love individuals. I know that as I continue to pray for Charity and I work on my attitude and also look for opportunities to serve others, I will gain that love for them that I want to gain. I hope you all learned a lot, it is such a blessing to learn at the feet of such inspired men.
OK, I am out of time. I love you all! I miss you all fiercely! This is the Lords work. Everyday I see His hand extended to me in love and mercy. I could not do this work without His help. Thank you all for your prayers. May God be with you!
Love,
Elder Scadden
Monday, September 28, 2009
Once upon a time in Albania (September 28 2009)
Hello everyone!
Se pari. I'd like to congratulate my sister Kristin and her Husband John on the birth of their new son and my new nephew, Malachi Fareday South!!! How exciting! It is good to hear that he and his Mom are healthy.
Ok, I am tired!! I have this mild cold, so I tried to sleep it off during lunch yesterday. Ended up sleeping far too long (our lunches are 3 hrs during the summer, so there is plenty of time to sleep too long) and therefore I did not sleep last night at all. Kind of backfired, but what can you do? I'll just spend this week trying to get back on track. We'll get an extra hour of sleep this weekend anyway and then the schedule changes so that we are not getting our night's sleep cut short. That will be nice! I actually don't really like our long lunches. So that's how I am, I hope all of you are healthy and well, I miss you all!
Great week this week! We will have a baptism on Saturday! A young boy we have been teaching will be baptized with his sister on Sunday. He is an extremely quick boy, a concert pianist in fact that has performed in Germany. It is somewhat of a miracle that they are getting baptized. Their parents were against his older sister getting baptized because she had already been baptized in the Orthodox church. They said it was ok for Roni to be baptized but we weren't going to do that without his sister. Then yesterday there was a baptism from 1st branch at our building and Roni and Elbas parents passed by and talked to our senior couple, the Shupes and Elder Abley. Theydecided it was a good thing for their kids to be baptized. It seemed like it was going to take so much longer but it was, just a little meeting in the road and their hearing that a whole family was being baptized that day made them realize it was a good thing. We are very excited!
On top of that, Ermal is progressing great. He is still headed strong towards his baptismal date of the 11th October. We will be meeting with him a lot in preparation. Whoever my trainee is, he will be walking into a baptism is first week in the country! That’s a good thing to start with. Yesterday was the first time Ermal stayed for all 3 hours of church. The Lord works in mysterious ways because since he stayed he was able to be introduced to tons of the older members (he knows a number of the YSA kids because of institute and the like). As we introduced him, one member asked what he studied in university and he told them he had just graduated in finance and accounting. This member told him he knew another member who owned a big super market and he was looking for someone to be the store accountant or something of the like and the member said he would introduce Ermal to this other member (it is pretty cool, but members here that own businesses always seek out to employ other members before they go into the rest of the world for employees). Ermal was very excited about the prospects of getting a good job like that. I hope that he gets it, it will be wonderful for him and it will greatly aid in his integration into the church! We had a somewhat funny experience with Ermal. While he was at the YSA conference in Vlore he heard a speech about staying away from places and situations that cause temptation, like a person going to a bar who has a problem with drinking. Now, bless his heart, he took this to somewhat of an extreme. He said to us ‘if I have to stay away from temptations and things, does that mean that I shouldn’t have a girlfriend? (this guy is 22 years old, he needs to be married)’ we kind of laughed to ourselves, and explained that we actually really wanted him to have a girlfriend, especially one that was a member and that he could apply the same idea to that relationship. The two of them could stay away from situations and places that would tempt them. We also explained that if he dates a member girl, he will probably be dating someone who desires to be married in the Temple and has high standards, though we told him it was not against the commandments to date a non-member girl. We were pretty impressed, because he was totally read to accept whatever we said. Its good to know he probably won’t be having any law of chastity issues! He is a great!
Lol it’s the end of P-day and someone was kind enough to bring me mail. Better late than never! I am across the city from the mission home, you’d figure I’d be getting my mail more consistently than I did in Shkoder, but not so! When people come here to our side of town rarely do they think “oh, I should take them their mail!” That’s ok, I have a plan for getting my mail consistently again at the beginning of next transfer. We will see how that goes. I am so extremely grateful for all the Emails and letters I get! Thank you all for giving me such support, I never fathomed that mail would be so wonderful to receive. I’m also lucky I’ve got such an amazing future wife who writes me so very much!
General conference next week! I am very excited! We only get to watch 2 off the sessions, but that is much better than none at all! I would like to request to Mum and Dad to send me an issue of the conference Ensign as soon as they can, as they did last time, because we will not get our magazines here until close to Christmas day.
Wow, speaking of Christmas, I am going to blow your minds away with rumors. So we all know that I am anticipating coming home a week early. Well, a week early is only 3 days after Christmas. President is considering allowing members of my group to go home yet another week earlier than that. Now, I am not going to come right out and say that I want to go home yet another week early (though being home for Christmas of 2010 would be out of this world awesome), but it may end up that President will send my whole group home together at that time since all but 2 of us are asking to go before Christmas. Can you believe that we are already thinking about this? I just need to be home a week early to get ready for school, which president has already given me the green light on. But I thought I would just mention to you all that President might just send us home even earlier, but don’t get your hopes up! Besides, whats one week anyway?
Wow, I heard a story this week that I found unbelievable but it comes from the Area Presidency themselves. It was on the topic of being a successful missionary which sometimes missionaries worry too much whether or not they are successful when they are doing just fine (yes, I’ve been in that boat before). Here we get plenty of lessons, new investigators etc. Often I feel the spirit of the Lord working through me and I strive to be obedient which are essentially the keys to being a successful missionary regardless of numbers. We were told of a missionary who just recently finished his mission in Germany. His entire mission he only had 7 meetings. 7 times in 2 years where he sat down and taught one of the lessons to non-members. That is insane. I already have been blessed to teach hundreds of lessons to nonmembers. But he still, according to his feelings and the feelings of his mission president, was a successful missionary because he strives to be obedient and many a times he felt the spirit working though him, even if the door still shut in front of him after it moved upon the person opening by the spirit. I don’t think I will feel quite the same level of disappointment on empty days anymore. I have nothing to complain about. So far I feel very strongly that my mission has been successful and I feel like the Lord is blessing me with quite a bit of outward success, or fruits of my labor, and I hope to continue to work with all my strength that I might see the arm of the Lord continue to be revealed. What a blessing it is to be here, in the service of my God!
Yes, so yesterday we had an outstanding meeting with the Shima family (Shpetim and his kids, his kids are the ones that got baptized earlier this transfer). I feel very strongly that their mom and their cousin/niece are progressing quickly to the point of receiving the lessons. I hope that in my time here I can see the family be completely in the church with the baptism of their mom and their cousin and that there will be a road toward the conversion of Shpetims brothers! How exciting it is to see the gospel change and bless people's lives here!!
Anyway, I hope you all are well. I miss you all, I pray for you all often. Thank you for all your prayers and support. I love you all! Until next week, may God be with you!
Love,
Elder Scadden
Se pari. I'd like to congratulate my sister Kristin and her Husband John on the birth of their new son and my new nephew, Malachi Fareday South!!! How exciting! It is good to hear that he and his Mom are healthy.
Ok, I am tired!! I have this mild cold, so I tried to sleep it off during lunch yesterday. Ended up sleeping far too long (our lunches are 3 hrs during the summer, so there is plenty of time to sleep too long) and therefore I did not sleep last night at all. Kind of backfired, but what can you do? I'll just spend this week trying to get back on track. We'll get an extra hour of sleep this weekend anyway and then the schedule changes so that we are not getting our night's sleep cut short. That will be nice! I actually don't really like our long lunches. So that's how I am, I hope all of you are healthy and well, I miss you all!
Great week this week! We will have a baptism on Saturday! A young boy we have been teaching will be baptized with his sister on Sunday. He is an extremely quick boy, a concert pianist in fact that has performed in Germany. It is somewhat of a miracle that they are getting baptized. Their parents were against his older sister getting baptized because she had already been baptized in the Orthodox church. They said it was ok for Roni to be baptized but we weren't going to do that without his sister. Then yesterday there was a baptism from 1st branch at our building and Roni and Elbas parents passed by and talked to our senior couple, the Shupes and Elder Abley. Theydecided it was a good thing for their kids to be baptized. It seemed like it was going to take so much longer but it was, just a little meeting in the road and their hearing that a whole family was being baptized that day made them realize it was a good thing. We are very excited!
On top of that, Ermal is progressing great. He is still headed strong towards his baptismal date of the 11th October. We will be meeting with him a lot in preparation. Whoever my trainee is, he will be walking into a baptism is first week in the country! That’s a good thing to start with. Yesterday was the first time Ermal stayed for all 3 hours of church. The Lord works in mysterious ways because since he stayed he was able to be introduced to tons of the older members (he knows a number of the YSA kids because of institute and the like). As we introduced him, one member asked what he studied in university and he told them he had just graduated in finance and accounting. This member told him he knew another member who owned a big super market and he was looking for someone to be the store accountant or something of the like and the member said he would introduce Ermal to this other member (it is pretty cool, but members here that own businesses always seek out to employ other members before they go into the rest of the world for employees). Ermal was very excited about the prospects of getting a good job like that. I hope that he gets it, it will be wonderful for him and it will greatly aid in his integration into the church! We had a somewhat funny experience with Ermal. While he was at the YSA conference in Vlore he heard a speech about staying away from places and situations that cause temptation, like a person going to a bar who has a problem with drinking. Now, bless his heart, he took this to somewhat of an extreme. He said to us ‘if I have to stay away from temptations and things, does that mean that I shouldn’t have a girlfriend? (this guy is 22 years old, he needs to be married)’ we kind of laughed to ourselves, and explained that we actually really wanted him to have a girlfriend, especially one that was a member and that he could apply the same idea to that relationship. The two of them could stay away from situations and places that would tempt them. We also explained that if he dates a member girl, he will probably be dating someone who desires to be married in the Temple and has high standards, though we told him it was not against the commandments to date a non-member girl. We were pretty impressed, because he was totally read to accept whatever we said. Its good to know he probably won’t be having any law of chastity issues! He is a great!
Lol it’s the end of P-day and someone was kind enough to bring me mail. Better late than never! I am across the city from the mission home, you’d figure I’d be getting my mail more consistently than I did in Shkoder, but not so! When people come here to our side of town rarely do they think “oh, I should take them their mail!” That’s ok, I have a plan for getting my mail consistently again at the beginning of next transfer. We will see how that goes. I am so extremely grateful for all the Emails and letters I get! Thank you all for giving me such support, I never fathomed that mail would be so wonderful to receive. I’m also lucky I’ve got such an amazing future wife who writes me so very much!
General conference next week! I am very excited! We only get to watch 2 off the sessions, but that is much better than none at all! I would like to request to Mum and Dad to send me an issue of the conference Ensign as soon as they can, as they did last time, because we will not get our magazines here until close to Christmas day.
Wow, speaking of Christmas, I am going to blow your minds away with rumors. So we all know that I am anticipating coming home a week early. Well, a week early is only 3 days after Christmas. President is considering allowing members of my group to go home yet another week earlier than that. Now, I am not going to come right out and say that I want to go home yet another week early (though being home for Christmas of 2010 would be out of this world awesome), but it may end up that President will send my whole group home together at that time since all but 2 of us are asking to go before Christmas. Can you believe that we are already thinking about this? I just need to be home a week early to get ready for school, which president has already given me the green light on. But I thought I would just mention to you all that President might just send us home even earlier, but don’t get your hopes up! Besides, whats one week anyway?
Wow, I heard a story this week that I found unbelievable but it comes from the Area Presidency themselves. It was on the topic of being a successful missionary which sometimes missionaries worry too much whether or not they are successful when they are doing just fine (yes, I’ve been in that boat before). Here we get plenty of lessons, new investigators etc. Often I feel the spirit of the Lord working through me and I strive to be obedient which are essentially the keys to being a successful missionary regardless of numbers. We were told of a missionary who just recently finished his mission in Germany. His entire mission he only had 7 meetings. 7 times in 2 years where he sat down and taught one of the lessons to non-members. That is insane. I already have been blessed to teach hundreds of lessons to nonmembers. But he still, according to his feelings and the feelings of his mission president, was a successful missionary because he strives to be obedient and many a times he felt the spirit working though him, even if the door still shut in front of him after it moved upon the person opening by the spirit. I don’t think I will feel quite the same level of disappointment on empty days anymore. I have nothing to complain about. So far I feel very strongly that my mission has been successful and I feel like the Lord is blessing me with quite a bit of outward success, or fruits of my labor, and I hope to continue to work with all my strength that I might see the arm of the Lord continue to be revealed. What a blessing it is to be here, in the service of my God!
Yes, so yesterday we had an outstanding meeting with the Shima family (Shpetim and his kids, his kids are the ones that got baptized earlier this transfer). I feel very strongly that their mom and their cousin/niece are progressing quickly to the point of receiving the lessons. I hope that in my time here I can see the family be completely in the church with the baptism of their mom and their cousin and that there will be a road toward the conversion of Shpetims brothers! How exciting it is to see the gospel change and bless people's lives here!!
Anyway, I hope you all are well. I miss you all, I pray for you all often. Thank you for all your prayers and support. I love you all! Until next week, may God be with you!
Love,
Elder Scadden
Monday, September 21, 2009
Once upon a time in Albania (September 21st, 2009)
Hello all from Albania!
I miss you all! This past week has been an interesting week, with some good things and some bad things. But first I wish to shout out to my sisters Sarah and Lauren and wish them a HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I think I should also be getting a new nephew soon, I hope that Kristin's delivery goes well! And WOW Mum was released! I didn’t think it would ever happen, she made such an outstanding Relief Society president.
Ok, so let me get the less good things out of the way. This week Elder Abley and I got food poisoning! It was really exciting. We went over to a members house for lunch. She is actually a professional cook at one of the nicest hotels in Tirana. However, she made us a dish of kos (yogurt), milk, and eggs with meat in it. I don’t think it was cooked properly or something. That is the only thing that Elder Abley and I feel like we can point to as the cause of the poisoning. Anyway, we went home not feeling too hot and slept for the remainder of lunch. Upon waking up at the end of lunch, we both were talking about how we were feeling absolutely horrible. I then went into the bathroom and threw up hard core. We then went and got a Coke. Coke is not good for your stomach. I do not know why we were thinking that it would work. I think it is because the MTC says that when you eat meat that you think might be a little spoiled or something to immediately go and down a bunch of Coke, because it kills a bunch of junk. Anyway, so I threw all that up not too long after but that time it was in the sink because I was on the toilet with crazy business on the other end. At this point I successfully got all that badness out. We got some other elders to come over and give us blessings. I felt assured that on the marrow I would be healed, but I knew I would have to endure the night. I warned elder Abley that usually when I have fevers I hallucinate like crazy just to give him a heads up. Well, such was the case Thursday night. I don’t think I slept at all until 5am. The whole time I was tripping out of my mind. Sometimes I would remember who and where I actually was and would try to convince myself of the reality I actually lived in. It’s a good thing that usually when I have these hallucinations my body hurts so badly and I am so exhausted that I cannot move off my bed. But at 5 I finally fell asleep and woke up an hour later without a fever and slept a good sleep for most of the next day. I am better now! It was crazy! Elder Abley is better too. And so as a testimony of the power of the priesthood. When I received the blessing I felt very strongly that it would it would be the next day that I was back to operational capacity. Sure enough, that belief was answered quite miraculously, since Elder Abley said the last time he got food poisoning he was confined to the house in Durres for 2.5 weeks.
Ok, bad news out of the way! Good things that happened this week. So, we were able to meet with Ermal and teach him about baptism. It was an outstanding lesson, especially because we had Grisi there to help us out. Ermal totally got it and his only concern with being baptized was how important of a decision it was and how he had to be sure. So we committed him to go and pray about it, whether or not it was the right thing to do. Well, we met with him 2 days later. I asked him how his prayer had gone. We were ecstatic with his response. He told us that as he prayed he felt this amazing, exciting feeling. He felt certain that this was what he had to do and that he wanted to live the rest of his life according to God's commandments. It was awesome that Lord answered his prayer so clearly and quickly. I believe that the Lord had been preparing Ermal for some time. He is planned to be baptized on Oct. 11, but we might have to push that back a week due to district conference and because he wants to make sure he is well aware of all the commandments so he knows he can live them. I am so excited for him! The gospel will bring such wonderful blessings into his life!
We also had an excellent meal at a member's house yesterday after church. They are Americans. Brother Baird is a foreign service officer. Since I am interested in service in the state department as a possibility for post mission, I asked brother and sister Baird lots of questions about his work. It sounds pretty awesome! But I also found out from him that I can do pretty much the same job as he does as a military foreign affairs officer, which is a kind of MI specialization, which is a direction that I already want to head in. There are many choices to make with my career! Fortunately I don’t have to worry too much about those right now. But the meal was excellent. Even good Albanian home cooked meals are nothing like American home cooked meals. It was nice of them to have us over.
Insight from personal study: A question that has been on my mind a lot is if the nation of Zion would be founded before the coming of Christ, and I do not mean our stakes of Zion, but the actual massive city and the lands round about. The reason I have wondered is because inevitably everything is going to hit the fan. Nation will fight against nation and wherever people are it will be dangerous because of the wars and destruction that would be going on. But if the country of Zion existed, then that would mean that one stable nation existed that no army or military force could mess with. I have always envisioned and entire army full of righteous priesthood holders, nothing would be able to defeat it! Well, I found my answer in D&C 44, 45, or 46 (can’t remember which LOL). But I read that while the world is going to the dogs, Zion will be the banner of safety and that NO man will dare go up against that city for war because of their fear of its strength and any man that refuses to take up arms against his neighbor, in order to defend himself, will have to flee to Zion for refugee. So the nation of Zion will be raised up before Christ's coming and it will be a powerful nation that no army will dare to attack. How intriguing! I have no theories about when all these events will happen, wither it is in my life time, the life time of my kids, or further, but I do believe it would be quite awesome to be an officer in the organized Royal Army of Zion.
Its very cool that Elder Jensen came to your Stake Conference, I heard a talk from him in the MTC and it was absolutely outstanding. He is a very good teacher.
Well, I hope you all are well, I miss you all, I love you all. Thank you for your prayers and for all the support that you give me!! May God be with you.
Love
Elder Scadden
I miss you all! This past week has been an interesting week, with some good things and some bad things. But first I wish to shout out to my sisters Sarah and Lauren and wish them a HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I think I should also be getting a new nephew soon, I hope that Kristin's delivery goes well! And WOW Mum was released! I didn’t think it would ever happen, she made such an outstanding Relief Society president.
Ok, so let me get the less good things out of the way. This week Elder Abley and I got food poisoning! It was really exciting. We went over to a members house for lunch. She is actually a professional cook at one of the nicest hotels in Tirana. However, she made us a dish of kos (yogurt), milk, and eggs with meat in it. I don’t think it was cooked properly or something. That is the only thing that Elder Abley and I feel like we can point to as the cause of the poisoning. Anyway, we went home not feeling too hot and slept for the remainder of lunch. Upon waking up at the end of lunch, we both were talking about how we were feeling absolutely horrible. I then went into the bathroom and threw up hard core. We then went and got a Coke. Coke is not good for your stomach. I do not know why we were thinking that it would work. I think it is because the MTC says that when you eat meat that you think might be a little spoiled or something to immediately go and down a bunch of Coke, because it kills a bunch of junk. Anyway, so I threw all that up not too long after but that time it was in the sink because I was on the toilet with crazy business on the other end. At this point I successfully got all that badness out. We got some other elders to come over and give us blessings. I felt assured that on the marrow I would be healed, but I knew I would have to endure the night. I warned elder Abley that usually when I have fevers I hallucinate like crazy just to give him a heads up. Well, such was the case Thursday night. I don’t think I slept at all until 5am. The whole time I was tripping out of my mind. Sometimes I would remember who and where I actually was and would try to convince myself of the reality I actually lived in. It’s a good thing that usually when I have these hallucinations my body hurts so badly and I am so exhausted that I cannot move off my bed. But at 5 I finally fell asleep and woke up an hour later without a fever and slept a good sleep for most of the next day. I am better now! It was crazy! Elder Abley is better too. And so as a testimony of the power of the priesthood. When I received the blessing I felt very strongly that it would it would be the next day that I was back to operational capacity. Sure enough, that belief was answered quite miraculously, since Elder Abley said the last time he got food poisoning he was confined to the house in Durres for 2.5 weeks.
Ok, bad news out of the way! Good things that happened this week. So, we were able to meet with Ermal and teach him about baptism. It was an outstanding lesson, especially because we had Grisi there to help us out. Ermal totally got it and his only concern with being baptized was how important of a decision it was and how he had to be sure. So we committed him to go and pray about it, whether or not it was the right thing to do. Well, we met with him 2 days later. I asked him how his prayer had gone. We were ecstatic with his response. He told us that as he prayed he felt this amazing, exciting feeling. He felt certain that this was what he had to do and that he wanted to live the rest of his life according to God's commandments. It was awesome that Lord answered his prayer so clearly and quickly. I believe that the Lord had been preparing Ermal for some time. He is planned to be baptized on Oct. 11, but we might have to push that back a week due to district conference and because he wants to make sure he is well aware of all the commandments so he knows he can live them. I am so excited for him! The gospel will bring such wonderful blessings into his life!
We also had an excellent meal at a member's house yesterday after church. They are Americans. Brother Baird is a foreign service officer. Since I am interested in service in the state department as a possibility for post mission, I asked brother and sister Baird lots of questions about his work. It sounds pretty awesome! But I also found out from him that I can do pretty much the same job as he does as a military foreign affairs officer, which is a kind of MI specialization, which is a direction that I already want to head in. There are many choices to make with my career! Fortunately I don’t have to worry too much about those right now. But the meal was excellent. Even good Albanian home cooked meals are nothing like American home cooked meals. It was nice of them to have us over.
Insight from personal study: A question that has been on my mind a lot is if the nation of Zion would be founded before the coming of Christ, and I do not mean our stakes of Zion, but the actual massive city and the lands round about. The reason I have wondered is because inevitably everything is going to hit the fan. Nation will fight against nation and wherever people are it will be dangerous because of the wars and destruction that would be going on. But if the country of Zion existed, then that would mean that one stable nation existed that no army or military force could mess with. I have always envisioned and entire army full of righteous priesthood holders, nothing would be able to defeat it! Well, I found my answer in D&C 44, 45, or 46 (can’t remember which LOL). But I read that while the world is going to the dogs, Zion will be the banner of safety and that NO man will dare go up against that city for war because of their fear of its strength and any man that refuses to take up arms against his neighbor, in order to defend himself, will have to flee to Zion for refugee. So the nation of Zion will be raised up before Christ's coming and it will be a powerful nation that no army will dare to attack. How intriguing! I have no theories about when all these events will happen, wither it is in my life time, the life time of my kids, or further, but I do believe it would be quite awesome to be an officer in the organized Royal Army of Zion.
Its very cool that Elder Jensen came to your Stake Conference, I heard a talk from him in the MTC and it was absolutely outstanding. He is a very good teacher.
Well, I hope you all are well, I miss you all, I love you all. Thank you for your prayers and for all the support that you give me!! May God be with you.
Love
Elder Scadden
Monday, September 14, 2009
Once upon a time in Albania (September 14th 2009)
Hello all from Albania!
I am exhausted! I hope that this email will still be good. This week was a very fast week. We had District Leader Training on Tuesday (even though I am not a DL, I still go to the training because my companion is). We talked a lot about accountability, which is an important part of missionary work, however we discussed it an extremely long time. I think accountability definitely needs to be improved a little, but what I am realizing about the struggles the mission is having has a lot more to do with us as missionaries and not because of procedure. We, as missionaries, need to be fundamentally trying to improve and gain greater companionship from the spirit. It is a shame, but, as with the last group that went home, the mission is kind of gritting its teeth and just toughing it out until this group goes home. Most of them have decided to quit so close to the end rather than finishing strong. Dad once sent me a quote that said something like this: A weak ending ruins the entire journey. That is very strong language, but it really is unfortunate to see the side effects of their quitting. All I can learn, I suppose, is to NOT be like that. How I hope that that does not happen to me. I do apologize, my morale is somewhat down today. Do not worry though, the Lord will help me and grant unto me strength. I just need to change my attitude and not think about the negative things that are going on…. LOL meaning that I probably shouldn’t even email home about them. It will be wonderful to get new blood soon, I think it will be so revitalizing. But, despite all this, I am excited to be here! Albania is a wonderful place, a crazy place. There are many people who are ready for the gospel and I need to remember why I am here. It is for a reason that far exceeds my own wants or desires. Ok, enough complaining!
Good news: Shpetim Shima, he is the man who's 2 kids were baptized a couple weeks ago. His wife is not a member, but we really feel like she is warming up to the gospel. She had received all the lessons at one point, but was very skeptical of organized religion because of some run ins that she had with J-dubs. Now, after the baptism of her children, her interest is being rekindled. I believe it helps that Vellai Shima is a very strong and faithful member who continues to progress. Last night it came out that they have family prayer (which is outstanding, I am sure there are many families throughout the church that need to do that!) every night and that the Mom reminds them if they have forgotten to have it (she obviously joins them also). It is really wonderful. So last night we went over to their house and watched something called Deshmi 2, which is a youtube video (if you don’t think you fully know how Albanian sounds, check it out!). The video is about 7 minutes long and is simply some of Albania's greatest members bearing testimony of the simple truths of the gospel. It is a powerful film! Afterwards we discussed the importance of gaining a testimony through Moroni’s promise and then went on to talk about how important it is to share our testimonies with others because it strengths them and us. It was a powerful lesson and I feel very strongly that she is one step closer to being open to the lessons again. She also committed to start coming to church at least twice a month. How exciting!
This past week we also went camping with the priesthood quorum. President gave us allowance because we were bringing one very new member and two less actives, all of which are around the same age. In total there were 11 of us. We got to the beach kind of late, so we had to set tents up in the dark, which was a challenge due to the wind and not being able to see. However, I did see a beautiful sunset. The sunsets here are amazing! I think there is just enough pollutants in the air to magnify the beauty of the sun. Anyway, we made a fire and had a very nice devotional that ended up being directed at the young men and I think several things may have been said that they needed to hear. It is wonderful to be in a branch that has older members of the church with strong testimonies and positive life experiences. The next day we attempted to fish (well, they fished while Elder Ably and I took down the mess of tents and other junk that had been tossed everywhere by the wind, but at least we were contributing!), but nothing was caught. We figured out that a huge net was actually strung across the entire bay where we were fishing, making it impossible for fish to come in. Oh well! We then tried to teach them how to play ultimate Frisbee and even though they didn’t quite get it, they had a good time! In the end the activity was a success.
Ah, and more good news! Our investigator Ermal went to Vlora with all the young single adults for a big conference and he came back with some excellent friends! It just so happens that the two closes friends he made are 2 of the best, most faithful YSA kids in all of Albania. We hope that that will be yet another step that sees him towards baptism. Unfortunately we were not able to meet with him this week because he was very busy, but our regular meeting schedule will begin again with him this week. We hope that we will be able to get a baptismal date with him.
What else to talk about? Oh I remember! This week Elder Hixson (from my MTC group) and I went out on exchanges (because Elder Tracy and Elder Abley were doing death visits). Well, we did a cool thing! But allow me to preface. The day before, Elder Abley and I had been out street contacting. As we were walking to our location of contacting, we passed by a group of hippies (ok, they weren’t hippies, but they were a bunch of young kids wearing the same tee shirts, singing with a guitar, that’s pretty hippy in my book). We did not got far before we stopped and began trying to talk to people. Well one of the group of hippies started handing out pamphlets to people sitting on the benches and then came up to us. Turns out he is from Portugal and was here on a mission trip with the 7th day Adventist church. He told us about a cultural event they were having the following night and invited us. Well, I wanted to go and represent the true church of Christ! So that is what Elder Hixson and I did and it was a really excellent service! They had a theology professor speak and he was talking about how Muslims and Christians believed in the same God. He had some good things to say and some good points, but he missed the memo that Albanians have the One God idea down to a science. It is the biggest excuse to not let you in, to not listen to you, and to harden their hearts that they employ! That’s ok though, the mission trip group sang beautifully and we were extremely warmly welcomed, which was a nice change of treatment from another religious sect. As we left, Elder Hixson and I overtook one of the girls from the group walking with an Albanian friend she had made. As we passed, she said something to us, so we stopped and talked to her and praised her for how beautiful they had sung, along with other things, After talking to her for a minute or two, we had to dismiss ourselves because we had to hightail it across Tirana. As we turned to walk away, she turned to her friend and said in relative surprise “wow, they were really nice!” she will now have a more positive attitude and outlook on Mormons. All in all, I feel like the night was successful, I think we really left a positive impression on a number of people by attending .
Anyway, that is all for this week! Thank you all for your prayers and your support. I miss you all, I love you all very much. You are in my prayers! This is the Lords work, I know it without a doubt. Until next week, may God be with you!
Love
Elder Scadden
I am exhausted! I hope that this email will still be good. This week was a very fast week. We had District Leader Training on Tuesday (even though I am not a DL, I still go to the training because my companion is). We talked a lot about accountability, which is an important part of missionary work, however we discussed it an extremely long time. I think accountability definitely needs to be improved a little, but what I am realizing about the struggles the mission is having has a lot more to do with us as missionaries and not because of procedure. We, as missionaries, need to be fundamentally trying to improve and gain greater companionship from the spirit. It is a shame, but, as with the last group that went home, the mission is kind of gritting its teeth and just toughing it out until this group goes home. Most of them have decided to quit so close to the end rather than finishing strong. Dad once sent me a quote that said something like this: A weak ending ruins the entire journey. That is very strong language, but it really is unfortunate to see the side effects of their quitting. All I can learn, I suppose, is to NOT be like that. How I hope that that does not happen to me. I do apologize, my morale is somewhat down today. Do not worry though, the Lord will help me and grant unto me strength. I just need to change my attitude and not think about the negative things that are going on…. LOL meaning that I probably shouldn’t even email home about them. It will be wonderful to get new blood soon, I think it will be so revitalizing. But, despite all this, I am excited to be here! Albania is a wonderful place, a crazy place. There are many people who are ready for the gospel and I need to remember why I am here. It is for a reason that far exceeds my own wants or desires. Ok, enough complaining!
Good news: Shpetim Shima, he is the man who's 2 kids were baptized a couple weeks ago. His wife is not a member, but we really feel like she is warming up to the gospel. She had received all the lessons at one point, but was very skeptical of organized religion because of some run ins that she had with J-dubs. Now, after the baptism of her children, her interest is being rekindled. I believe it helps that Vellai Shima is a very strong and faithful member who continues to progress. Last night it came out that they have family prayer (which is outstanding, I am sure there are many families throughout the church that need to do that!) every night and that the Mom reminds them if they have forgotten to have it (she obviously joins them also). It is really wonderful. So last night we went over to their house and watched something called Deshmi 2, which is a youtube video (if you don’t think you fully know how Albanian sounds, check it out!). The video is about 7 minutes long and is simply some of Albania's greatest members bearing testimony of the simple truths of the gospel. It is a powerful film! Afterwards we discussed the importance of gaining a testimony through Moroni’s promise and then went on to talk about how important it is to share our testimonies with others because it strengths them and us. It was a powerful lesson and I feel very strongly that she is one step closer to being open to the lessons again. She also committed to start coming to church at least twice a month. How exciting!
This past week we also went camping with the priesthood quorum. President gave us allowance because we were bringing one very new member and two less actives, all of which are around the same age. In total there were 11 of us. We got to the beach kind of late, so we had to set tents up in the dark, which was a challenge due to the wind and not being able to see. However, I did see a beautiful sunset. The sunsets here are amazing! I think there is just enough pollutants in the air to magnify the beauty of the sun. Anyway, we made a fire and had a very nice devotional that ended up being directed at the young men and I think several things may have been said that they needed to hear. It is wonderful to be in a branch that has older members of the church with strong testimonies and positive life experiences. The next day we attempted to fish (well, they fished while Elder Ably and I took down the mess of tents and other junk that had been tossed everywhere by the wind, but at least we were contributing!), but nothing was caught. We figured out that a huge net was actually strung across the entire bay where we were fishing, making it impossible for fish to come in. Oh well! We then tried to teach them how to play ultimate Frisbee and even though they didn’t quite get it, they had a good time! In the end the activity was a success.
Ah, and more good news! Our investigator Ermal went to Vlora with all the young single adults for a big conference and he came back with some excellent friends! It just so happens that the two closes friends he made are 2 of the best, most faithful YSA kids in all of Albania. We hope that that will be yet another step that sees him towards baptism. Unfortunately we were not able to meet with him this week because he was very busy, but our regular meeting schedule will begin again with him this week. We hope that we will be able to get a baptismal date with him.
What else to talk about? Oh I remember! This week Elder Hixson (from my MTC group) and I went out on exchanges (because Elder Tracy and Elder Abley were doing death visits). Well, we did a cool thing! But allow me to preface. The day before, Elder Abley and I had been out street contacting. As we were walking to our location of contacting, we passed by a group of hippies (ok, they weren’t hippies, but they were a bunch of young kids wearing the same tee shirts, singing with a guitar, that’s pretty hippy in my book). We did not got far before we stopped and began trying to talk to people. Well one of the group of hippies started handing out pamphlets to people sitting on the benches and then came up to us. Turns out he is from Portugal and was here on a mission trip with the 7th day Adventist church. He told us about a cultural event they were having the following night and invited us. Well, I wanted to go and represent the true church of Christ! So that is what Elder Hixson and I did and it was a really excellent service! They had a theology professor speak and he was talking about how Muslims and Christians believed in the same God. He had some good things to say and some good points, but he missed the memo that Albanians have the One God idea down to a science. It is the biggest excuse to not let you in, to not listen to you, and to harden their hearts that they employ! That’s ok though, the mission trip group sang beautifully and we were extremely warmly welcomed, which was a nice change of treatment from another religious sect. As we left, Elder Hixson and I overtook one of the girls from the group walking with an Albanian friend she had made. As we passed, she said something to us, so we stopped and talked to her and praised her for how beautiful they had sung, along with other things, After talking to her for a minute or two, we had to dismiss ourselves because we had to hightail it across Tirana. As we turned to walk away, she turned to her friend and said in relative surprise “wow, they were really nice!” she will now have a more positive attitude and outlook on Mormons. All in all, I feel like the night was successful, I think we really left a positive impression on a number of people by attending .
Anyway, that is all for this week! Thank you all for your prayers and your support. I miss you all, I love you all very much. You are in my prayers! This is the Lords work, I know it without a doubt. Until next week, may God be with you!
Love
Elder Scadden
Monday, September 7, 2009
Once upon a time in Albania (September 7th, 2009)
Hello all from Albania!
Hi all! First I want to Shout out to my sister Heather and my niece Audrey and wish them a Happy Birthday that will be happening this week! I also wish to say Happy Anniversary to my folks! I do not know which one this is… Also, I would like everyone to consider and remember that this week 8 years ago many American lives were lost at the hands of terrorists. Remember that this is why our soldiers are abroad. Remember for who and what they are fighting and do not let the lies of politicians cause you to withdraw your support.
Most exciting thing that happened this week: I experienced my first sizable earthquake. It was about 11:30 PM. I still hadn’t fallen asleep (don’t worry, I am sleeping well, this was just a random night were I wasn’t falling asleep easily) and my bed started to freak out and everything in the room could be heard shaking as well as the whole building. Not really knowing how to respond to earthquakes, I just laid there and prayed that my 11 story apartment building would not come toppling down on us. It subsided relatively quickly. Nothing was destroyed, which was nice. It was such a strange feeling! Guess there is a first time for anything.
So it sounds like the house that I remember is changing like crazy! Dads got his man cave upstairs. The down stairs has been turned into mums room and grandma is now living were I use to live! It will look so different when I get home! That’s OK, when I left I wasn’t really sure if Jenni and I would get that apartment, but now it does indeed sound like mum and dad are planning on letting me then us stay there after my return. That is a nice thing to know! I suppose a lot could still change in a year and some months, but I’ll remain confident.
This Sunday I conferred the Holy Ghost for the first time in my life and gave my first blessing in Albanian. Soni and Angela were baptized last week and it was time for them to complete their baptism with the gift of the Holy Ghost. I had just assumed that both of them would choose elder Abley because they knew him for 9ish months and me for only 3 weeks. The thought had not even crossed my mind until 11 year old Angela looked up to me with her big bright eyes and choose me to do the conferring. I had about 5 seconds to think so I did my best to turn it all over to the lord. I think I sweat several pints of water in that two minutes but at the end I felt that, despite some grammatical errors that I had made, I had indeed given the blessing through the Holy Spirits guidance. However stressful it was in the moment, afterwards it was really quite awesome and a definite honor to confer that gift upon her. On that note, Dad I might soon have to participate in the conferring the priesthood upon some individuals and I realized that I do not have my line of Authority to give to them. I was hoping that you could send that to me, so that I would have that to give to them. Thanks!
This week has been a good week. It started off pretty bad, I just was down and I didn’t know why. I realized in the middle of last week that I had just been thinking too much about my wants and desires and not so much about the Lords will. I recommitted to following what He wants me to do. I guess every now and again we need to be reminded to keep our attitudes in the right place or that we need to be trying harder to focus on the Lords will. This is why we have GC twice a year or why we are commanded to pray often and study the scriptures over and over again. How easy it is for us to forget! Anyway, I am maintaining a much more positive and happy attitude now regardless of the fact that today I have been missing family and future wife like crazy today. I miss you all pretty much all the time but it is not a home sickness feeling. Only every now and again does it get intense to where it actually interferes with how I feel over all. Does that make sense? I suppose that happens from time to time! But I already feel much better than earlier in the day. The Lord is ever blessing me!
A really horrible Metalica remake just came on the radio. Why do people have to ruin good songs? A women who doesn’t even have a good voice cannot take a wonderful Metalica song and liberally change it how she desires. You get a lot of this sort of music in Albania. Good songs taken, murdered horribly from their original goodness, and then represented as some sort of undead creature and they expect people to like it.
So in missionary work we work with a lot of numbers and names. I suddenly had the thought this week “was I ever a number or a name in a missionaries planner?” I can think of a period of time in my life when I very well might have been. Its kind of a weird thought. I know that I was more than just a number or a name, if I was one of those things in a planner, but the thought is still strange, now seeing how everything is done.
Oh I got my package from Mum and Dad! Thanks for the CDs and the Starbursts. It came just in time, all of the goodies I got from Jenni are starting to run out, with exception to the peanut butter, which I am trying to make last. I am looking forward to listening to the CDs. Its so hard to believe that it is already time for next conference! Crazy!
Dad asked me recently for a language update and I really didn’t give a good one. I don’t give myself a good rating on my language, so let me give one from someone else's perspective. Several people have told me recently I am doing great and they think my greatest asset is how confidently I speak and how I am never afraid to try to say what I have to say. They say that because I speak with a loud, clear, confident voice that even if I am saying something really grammatically incorrect, Albanians understand it because they aren’t second guessing what they think you are trying to say because you are second guessing it. So I guess that is a very good thing to be. I am still really bad at this language but the Lord is constantly helping me to improve and teaching me daily.
Well, I hope you all are doing well. Thank you all for your emails, letters, prayers, and all the support that you give me. I miss you all, I love you all very much. I remember you all in my prayers. I know this is the Lords work. He is watching over it and He is sending his angels to help us. I hope I can do what He wishes for me to do. Until next week, which is already almost here. Weeks here begin and end like the passing of only a day. Strange how time does not really exist here.
May God be with you all!
Love,
Elder Scadden
Hi all! First I want to Shout out to my sister Heather and my niece Audrey and wish them a Happy Birthday that will be happening this week! I also wish to say Happy Anniversary to my folks! I do not know which one this is… Also, I would like everyone to consider and remember that this week 8 years ago many American lives were lost at the hands of terrorists. Remember that this is why our soldiers are abroad. Remember for who and what they are fighting and do not let the lies of politicians cause you to withdraw your support.
Most exciting thing that happened this week: I experienced my first sizable earthquake. It was about 11:30 PM. I still hadn’t fallen asleep (don’t worry, I am sleeping well, this was just a random night were I wasn’t falling asleep easily) and my bed started to freak out and everything in the room could be heard shaking as well as the whole building. Not really knowing how to respond to earthquakes, I just laid there and prayed that my 11 story apartment building would not come toppling down on us. It subsided relatively quickly. Nothing was destroyed, which was nice. It was such a strange feeling! Guess there is a first time for anything.
So it sounds like the house that I remember is changing like crazy! Dads got his man cave upstairs. The down stairs has been turned into mums room and grandma is now living were I use to live! It will look so different when I get home! That’s OK, when I left I wasn’t really sure if Jenni and I would get that apartment, but now it does indeed sound like mum and dad are planning on letting me then us stay there after my return. That is a nice thing to know! I suppose a lot could still change in a year and some months, but I’ll remain confident.
This Sunday I conferred the Holy Ghost for the first time in my life and gave my first blessing in Albanian. Soni and Angela were baptized last week and it was time for them to complete their baptism with the gift of the Holy Ghost. I had just assumed that both of them would choose elder Abley because they knew him for 9ish months and me for only 3 weeks. The thought had not even crossed my mind until 11 year old Angela looked up to me with her big bright eyes and choose me to do the conferring. I had about 5 seconds to think so I did my best to turn it all over to the lord. I think I sweat several pints of water in that two minutes but at the end I felt that, despite some grammatical errors that I had made, I had indeed given the blessing through the Holy Spirits guidance. However stressful it was in the moment, afterwards it was really quite awesome and a definite honor to confer that gift upon her. On that note, Dad I might soon have to participate in the conferring the priesthood upon some individuals and I realized that I do not have my line of Authority to give to them. I was hoping that you could send that to me, so that I would have that to give to them. Thanks!
This week has been a good week. It started off pretty bad, I just was down and I didn’t know why. I realized in the middle of last week that I had just been thinking too much about my wants and desires and not so much about the Lords will. I recommitted to following what He wants me to do. I guess every now and again we need to be reminded to keep our attitudes in the right place or that we need to be trying harder to focus on the Lords will. This is why we have GC twice a year or why we are commanded to pray often and study the scriptures over and over again. How easy it is for us to forget! Anyway, I am maintaining a much more positive and happy attitude now regardless of the fact that today I have been missing family and future wife like crazy today. I miss you all pretty much all the time but it is not a home sickness feeling. Only every now and again does it get intense to where it actually interferes with how I feel over all. Does that make sense? I suppose that happens from time to time! But I already feel much better than earlier in the day. The Lord is ever blessing me!
A really horrible Metalica remake just came on the radio. Why do people have to ruin good songs? A women who doesn’t even have a good voice cannot take a wonderful Metalica song and liberally change it how she desires. You get a lot of this sort of music in Albania. Good songs taken, murdered horribly from their original goodness, and then represented as some sort of undead creature and they expect people to like it.
So in missionary work we work with a lot of numbers and names. I suddenly had the thought this week “was I ever a number or a name in a missionaries planner?” I can think of a period of time in my life when I very well might have been. Its kind of a weird thought. I know that I was more than just a number or a name, if I was one of those things in a planner, but the thought is still strange, now seeing how everything is done.
Oh I got my package from Mum and Dad! Thanks for the CDs and the Starbursts. It came just in time, all of the goodies I got from Jenni are starting to run out, with exception to the peanut butter, which I am trying to make last. I am looking forward to listening to the CDs. Its so hard to believe that it is already time for next conference! Crazy!
Dad asked me recently for a language update and I really didn’t give a good one. I don’t give myself a good rating on my language, so let me give one from someone else's perspective. Several people have told me recently I am doing great and they think my greatest asset is how confidently I speak and how I am never afraid to try to say what I have to say. They say that because I speak with a loud, clear, confident voice that even if I am saying something really grammatically incorrect, Albanians understand it because they aren’t second guessing what they think you are trying to say because you are second guessing it. So I guess that is a very good thing to be. I am still really bad at this language but the Lord is constantly helping me to improve and teaching me daily.
Well, I hope you all are doing well. Thank you all for your emails, letters, prayers, and all the support that you give me. I miss you all, I love you all very much. I remember you all in my prayers. I know this is the Lords work. He is watching over it and He is sending his angels to help us. I hope I can do what He wishes for me to do. Until next week, which is already almost here. Weeks here begin and end like the passing of only a day. Strange how time does not really exist here.
May God be with you all!
Love,
Elder Scadden
Monday, August 31, 2009
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
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
Monday, August 24, 2009
Once upon a time in Albania (August 28th)
Hello from Albania!
I am exhausted! Fortunately the Lord helps me out with such things at all times. This week has been probably the longest week yet on my mission, which is funny because my toe week seemed pretty long. But that is probably because the freshest memories over come older memories. Besides, in about 3 days I won’t remember much about last week as a period of time, because everything is as one day here
Boy’s camp was a great deal of fun! Our obstacle course was a huge success and Elder Esplin and I had a great time together. I forgot what it was like to be with other people who came from the Army! I would not have minded serving with Elder Esplin. I will not get that chance. He goes home in January, and next transfer I have a 96.6% chance of training and I’ll probably stay with my trainee for 3 months. But no body knows for sure I suppose! Anyway, the best of the obstacles was a barbed wire course where the kids had to get down and dirty to get through. We also had a grenade course (that was funny, no one could throw them right, you throw a grenade like a shot-put), a wall and swinging rope, some critical thinking things like a spider web (hard to explain), and some other stuff. We threw some PT in there which was hilarious to watch. Between every few obstacles we had a spiritual thought which turned out really good. It was a success! Some kids were punks and decided they were too cool to participate. I do not like people that lack respect and discipline. At camp I got to work with Elder Flack again. As I mentioned last week, I miss him a great deal. I had a great time with him up in Shkoder.
So let me tell you about my new companion, Elder Ably. He definitely cares about people. That is already apparent. He pays a good deal of attention to the members and the investigators and how they are doing. He SYLs (that’s speak your language, talking to your comp in the mission language) quite well from the hours of 4 to 9. It is easy to hold a good conversation with him. He has a lot of good attributes and I think in the end I’ll have enjoyed serving with him. He comes from Lanchestor England I believe. He has 11 siblings. There are 6 brothers and 6 sisters. He is the 4th child. He lives in the Birmingam England mission.
Language update. Well, it is hard for me to tell how I am doing but my companions tell me I am improving and I believe it is true. I am getting better at Albanians though people here in Tirana are hard to understand because I am used to the thick, hick accent of the north, LOL. Lots of things are starting to come out of my mouth without me having to really think about what they are in Albanian. My reading comprehension is really quite good. I am only limited occasionally by lack of vocabulary. It is hard to believe I will be training next transfer, but that will HUGELY improve my language. It will be painful for awhile, but in the end it will result in tons of personal growth.
So we do have one promising investigator. His name is Ermal and he is awesome! We told him he could get an answer from God to know if something is true and he said that’s great, but shouldn’t I study it out first before I ask? Wouldn’t it be easier for me to get an answer from God if I had done everything I could to find out the truth of things with what I’ve been given? It was music to our ears because he understands that he needs to receive an answer from God but he also understands that the scriptures have the answers to tons of his questions. We are confident he will be baptized. We hope that is the case.
Anyway, I love you all! I miss you all. Thank you all for your love and support, and for your prayers. May God be with you!
Love
Elder Scadden
I am exhausted! Fortunately the Lord helps me out with such things at all times. This week has been probably the longest week yet on my mission, which is funny because my toe week seemed pretty long. But that is probably because the freshest memories over come older memories. Besides, in about 3 days I won’t remember much about last week as a period of time, because everything is as one day here
Boy’s camp was a great deal of fun! Our obstacle course was a huge success and Elder Esplin and I had a great time together. I forgot what it was like to be with other people who came from the Army! I would not have minded serving with Elder Esplin. I will not get that chance. He goes home in January, and next transfer I have a 96.6% chance of training and I’ll probably stay with my trainee for 3 months. But no body knows for sure I suppose! Anyway, the best of the obstacles was a barbed wire course where the kids had to get down and dirty to get through. We also had a grenade course (that was funny, no one could throw them right, you throw a grenade like a shot-put), a wall and swinging rope, some critical thinking things like a spider web (hard to explain), and some other stuff. We threw some PT in there which was hilarious to watch. Between every few obstacles we had a spiritual thought which turned out really good. It was a success! Some kids were punks and decided they were too cool to participate. I do not like people that lack respect and discipline. At camp I got to work with Elder Flack again. As I mentioned last week, I miss him a great deal. I had a great time with him up in Shkoder.
So let me tell you about my new companion, Elder Ably. He definitely cares about people. That is already apparent. He pays a good deal of attention to the members and the investigators and how they are doing. He SYLs (that’s speak your language, talking to your comp in the mission language) quite well from the hours of 4 to 9. It is easy to hold a good conversation with him. He has a lot of good attributes and I think in the end I’ll have enjoyed serving with him. He comes from Lanchestor England I believe. He has 11 siblings. There are 6 brothers and 6 sisters. He is the 4th child. He lives in the Birmingam England mission.
Language update. Well, it is hard for me to tell how I am doing but my companions tell me I am improving and I believe it is true. I am getting better at Albanians though people here in Tirana are hard to understand because I am used to the thick, hick accent of the north, LOL. Lots of things are starting to come out of my mouth without me having to really think about what they are in Albanian. My reading comprehension is really quite good. I am only limited occasionally by lack of vocabulary. It is hard to believe I will be training next transfer, but that will HUGELY improve my language. It will be painful for awhile, but in the end it will result in tons of personal growth.
So we do have one promising investigator. His name is Ermal and he is awesome! We told him he could get an answer from God to know if something is true and he said that’s great, but shouldn’t I study it out first before I ask? Wouldn’t it be easier for me to get an answer from God if I had done everything I could to find out the truth of things with what I’ve been given? It was music to our ears because he understands that he needs to receive an answer from God but he also understands that the scriptures have the answers to tons of his questions. We are confident he will be baptized. We hope that is the case.
Anyway, I love you all! I miss you all. Thank you all for your love and support, and for your prayers. May God be with you!
Love
Elder Scadden
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
