The End *accompanied by very little sleep and long plane rides*

This is indeed the end. The final email. I hope any of you have enjoyed reading some of these and seeing pictures from the amazing work out here in these countries. It's truly been an honor to write you all even though I was bad at it. Pretty crazy though huh? As I'm typing this up I'm sitting on an airplane going from Tirana Albania to Vienna Austria, where I will then board a plane to Chicago and then finally arrive in Salt Lake at 10:30 pm Utah time. In order to try and adjust to the timezone of the US I have not slept at all so far even though its about 5 AM here in albania. I'm pretty tired but these other guys make it fun so I'm not complaining. I also downed 2 L of juice while we were chilling in our apartment at the beginning of the night so thats starting to hit me. It'll be a good journey. Anyways, yeah it's crazy that I'm on my way home. It's been an incredible two years and I hope you've enjoyed hearing about it a bit. I've learned a ton and made innumerable memories, so of course it's hard to leave behind, but I'm also pretty excited for the future. 

This last week was solid though. We made some good online content to post on the kosovo page and met with a couple friends even! I got to say my goodbyes to the people in Gjakova and then again to all of the missionaries and other homies in Tirana. I'm not a huge fan of goodbyes (well, at least the sad ones) so I tend to try and keep things more positive, but it can be hard when you don't know when you'll ever be able to see someone again. We did have a baller beach pday though with tons of the homies which was a great send off. There are some great, great people here that I've gotten to serve with. I also got an amazing send off from the McAffees in Prishtina. Sister McAffee made me cafe rio type spread on Friday as a departing dinner and it was absolutely amazing. She is such a good cook fr fr. 

The mission has been hard, but all the while rewarding. I wouldn't take back any of it. 

* it has now been nearly 24 hours since I started writing this email hahaha I'm now waiting in Chicago for my flight to SLC. Big things. My older brother Stephen came from Ohio to see me here since we have a massive layover and we went to chilis and the home alone house. All good things. It's good to be back in America, but Shqipëria and Kosova have become very, very special places to me. There's lots I could say here about the whole experience, but I think I'll leave it just with this: I know that Jesus Christ knows us individually, and the closer we are to Him, the more of His strength and guidance He can offer us in this life. I've seen this dozens of times first hand in the lives of others and in my own life. He lives. He loves us. This mission was an incredible opportunity for me to understand that more. God bless and I hope to see you soon!

Elder Jacob Millsap 

Photos

Skiing in the Albanian Alps

Brethren. Sistren. I love you all. Another wonderful week has come and gone that has just reminded me how beautiful life is. We did great work, met with great people, saw some great things, ate great food, did some great yoga, and pretty much just everything great. I'm loving it. 

Speaking of beautiful things, on our way back from exchanges in Ohrid early this week we got to drive through a city called Dibër as well as a national park in Macedonia. So beautiful. We heard that the albanians from Dibër have weird accents so we decided to stop and talk to some people at the city center, and we ended up meeting some cool old guy who gave us an hour and a half tour of the city. Albanians are so cool. Also their accent is indeed strange it is confirmed. 

I also got to hang out with the Dujaka kids this week a bunch which is always fun. Their albanian is crazy and it's awesome to talk to them. They're such spazzes as well and they are so funny haha we had a good time. Unfortunately, it was Elder Hodges turn to teach primary this week so I didn't get to, but hopefully I can do that again next week. Kids are awesome. 

We had what potentially could compete for best pday today. We planned to go to this place called Valbona today with the Prishtina elders and do some epic hiking. They call these mountains the albanian alps, and I can whole-heartedly say that they deserve that name. It was insane. To make it even better, out of the blue last night we were called by the Tirana ZLs asking if we were going to be going to Valbona which was weird because they are hours away from it. Turns out, they were doing an exchange with the Shkodër elders over pday and from Shkodër you can drive east to this place called Theth. Essentially, Theth is on the west side of the albanian alps and Valbona is on the east side. Fun fact: there is a hiking trail that connects Valbona to Theth that conveniently meets with another trail that goes to the high point of the mountain range. Yeah interesting stuff for sure. Anyways, we randomly met 4 other elders that serve in an area that's 4 hours away from us in the middle of the mountains. It was the most epic pday crossover of church history I bet. We spent a bunch of time continuing up the trail to the peak which is mega steep and turns out at this time of year there is still a BUTT ton of snow on south-facing slopes so we didn't make it very far even though we spent an hour and a half hauling up. We forgot to bring our crampons and ice axes. NO PROBLEM THOUGH because we did remember to bring shoes and so after we got sick of trudging through snow and slipping on this steep slope we just skied all the way down. I think we literally made it all the way back down off the snow in less than 5 minutes and was probably some of the most fun I've had in a looong time hahahahaha. There are some pictures and videos that kinda show the process so you guys can almost experience it yourselves. 

The Albanian Alps are the most beautiful place I have ever seen and I await the day that anything else will trump them. That day may never come. Pictures do not even show a fraction of how breathtaking it was at every moment. 

Anyways, have a good week! Tunnnggg

Photos

Bishop I want to be primary president

You heard that right kids. Get ready to have brother Millsap run all of primary it'll be sick. I'm not even kidding. Bishop, if you are reading this I would 100% accept a calling in the primary for the 3 months I am in Honeyville before dipping again for school. 

Another great week of the greatest experience of my life has passed. It was an interesting week in which nothing went as planned which is baller. What was not as baller was the fact that the main complication throughout the week was that we had to help a member get to the hospital and help her figure out a whole bunch of stuff. Essentially it extended out for a couple days, got my companion kinda stressed and we ended up in Prishtina on a super exchange so that Elder Hodges could figure out more hospital stuff hahaha. I had a good time though. Keep sister kosovo lady in your prayers though she has been having complications with her pregnancy. :(( Maybe a tumor too? It is not clear to us at this point because we've heard both. 

Anyways, I got to hang with Elder Petersen on this said exchange and that was very fresh because he's a legend. We did a lot of finding because he's a trainee also studies and we even had a conversation with a contentious presbytarian man. Honestly pretty good conversation all things considered. We also filmed another podcast episode on this exchange which was dope. Big things big things. 

Also, to legitimately address the title, there are a bunch of kids that come to church in the Gjakova branch (more kids than adults actually) which is an anomaly in this mission to say the least. It's mega fun to hang with albanian kids and I had the opportunity to teach in primary yesterday which was next level. Best callings in the church might be in primary. 

We are now currently on another exchange with the zone leaders in Macedonia and it lined up great to also give us pday with them in Ohrid. We are enjoying that a significant amount because the macedonian missionaries are quite literally the best of any of us and they're way fun to be around. 

Shihemi

Photos

Instagram Girl's Dream - Kosovo is cool

Friends and family! I am here once again entering into your pile of unread emails, potentially doomed to never be opened by many of you. I am honored for the privilege. 

Things are good here in the mission field though! I mentioned in my last email that I was gonna get transferred and that is true. I am now serving in Gjakova, Kosovo. It's such a beautiful place. Kosovo is northeast of Albania and still full of many albanians. Some of you may be aware of Kosovo's history as a recently formed country, but long story short Kosovo used to be part of Serbia (and still is according to some countries), but in the 90s long built pressure for ethnic albanians to leave the Kosovo area of Serbia erupted into conflict and genocide. It's a very very sad history but eventually the war was won against Serbia and Kosovo claimed their independence and later established themselves as a country in 2008. As you can imagine, just the vibe in Kosovo is very different from Albania with their different histories as well as the fact that they speak a different dialect of albanian here which is way harder to understand. Very fun to learn and practice though I must say. It's like british compared to american english but just way cooler and with different grammar and women that have deeper voices than I ever will. Pretty fun though. I'm coming up on finishing my 3rd week here and it's been a good time for sure vibing with my brotha Elder Hodges. 

Pretty strange that I'm so near the end of the mission though! I've got about 3 weeks left. I'm gonna try and email each week to try and make up for my months of silence. We are grinding the work in Gjakova as it is and trying to enjoy ourselves all the same. Gjakova is a small and peaceful city and missionary work hasn't had much going on there for a while, but we do happen to do a lot of member support. My companion is the branch president here and I'm his sidekick/clerk which has been fun! It's the exact opposite of how my time in Lushnje was which is interesting to experience. We eat really good bread and sausage and walk around trying to understand people and their awesome accents. We are also the tech guys for the country of Kosovo so we do a lot of work for the Facebook page in making content and responding to messages that come in from ads and such. We have been doing weekly episodes for a podcast talk show of sorts which is cool and has been good practice for the albanian for real for real which is nice after so much time of not using it that much. We've got some big plans for the rest of this month in just pumping content out on the Kosovo page so it should be pretty good!

Something of note was that I had my last zone conference, which led immediately into this epic 2 day elders conference of sports and beach and hobo dinners. I'm not joking you can fact check with the photos. We literally spent one of the days at the beach the whole time doing service, playing sports, and essentially camping without the overnight stay. Super epic. We also have had stacked pdays in Kosovo because there is some amaaazing shiz up here. It's very mountainous and green and just awesome. I'm just trying to enjoy every moment in these beautiful places before I dip and can't come back for a couple years. I have every pday planned out until the end so hopefully it all goes according to plan because it'll be pretty epic.

Anyways, I won't get all deep and mushy on you guys in this email but it will probably come soon. All I will say is that this mission is amazing. The people I've met and the experiences made will never be forgotten (at least most ahah I can't make promises my old senile self can't keep). Time has flown by and I've learned so much about myself, about the church, and most of all about Jesus Christ. Coming out here is by far the best decision I've ever made and I wish any and all of you could have these same experiences I've been having. 

Have an awesome week and tune in next time to see if I get trunky. 😀 

Tirana Week 19

Gjakova Week 1

Gjakova Week 2

Gjakova Week 3

Down to One

LIFE IS GOOD! So yeah I think it's been 2 months or so since I last wrote one of these. Yall are gonna have so many photo albums to look through at the bottom of this hahaha. So much stuff has gone down that it's not even worth it to try and catch you guys up so I think I'll just mention some highlights. If you care to know more there are definitely some stories to be told in the weekly photo albums below hahaha. One of the weeks was so uneventful that I literally had 0 photos and therefore that album doesn't exist. I don't even think I could tell you what happened that week if I wanted to hahaha it was probably just random busywork in the office or something like that. Anyways, I am still in Tirana with my brotha Esquivel. He's a mega dawg and so we've been having a good time. I'll try and share a few of the highlights from the last couple months but there's no way I'm gonna get all of it. Life is just so sporadic as an assistant for real. All your routines and habits go to crap when you're picking new missionaries up at midnight and then dropping the departing ones off 3 hours later that same night lol but we still do our best to keep some good habits and have good studies and workouts and all that jazz. It's overall been a really good time though even though it's been so crazy. I've had a lot of quality experiences and made a lot of memories, so let's hop into a couple if you're interested.

First off you should all know that being in mission leadership just means tons of conferences. Seeing as our mission has 5 countries in it, having conferences for each zone means a ton of travel and also exchanges with the other missionaries which can be really fresh. Of the 8 weeks since I've last written, 3 were spent in Greece and Cyprus for zone and elders conferences with exchanges sprinkled in between each. In those 3 weeks, we hit every single area in those 2 countries hahaha. Our first week down there we stayed the weekend in Greece for church, so we flew up to Thessaloniki to have an exchange and pday with the elders there. When we were in Cyprus there was a travel strike in Athens which cancelled our flights and caused us to stay yet another weekend which gave us time to do exchanges with each elder companionship on the island. That was mega fresh because Elder Koch was in Cyprus at the time and he competes for the top spot as the most entertaining person I've ever met. I did however get a bad sore throat which was super sad because then I couldn't eat at my favorite restaurant... Chick-In Tenders... That place is honestly heaven and I was very sad when I was trying to swallow those tenders and all that came was pain. It's all in the past now though and I've let it go. :'( After those two weeks we were back in the north countries for a bit until this last week when we flew down to Crete on Tuesday to have an exchange with the elders that just recently opened that as an area for missionary work - mega cool. That exchange pooled into the beginning of the south countries elders conference in Athens where we had 2 days of laser tag, football, group finding and touching testimonies. Super epic week to be honest. Other than those south conferences we had 3 zone conferences in the north and also a mission leadership council - mega busy for sure but we managed to snag a fresh exchange with the macedonian zone leaders over general conference. Maybe that gives you an idea of what our life looks like or maybe it doesn't, regardless yup that's a lot of what we've done.

Another couple things happened that were really cool this weekend: First, on Saturday for the first time ever I got to meet Martin's family. They are so amazing. His mom is also one of the best cooks ever and she made us a 5-course meal. We were in heaven and it was so so cool. If nothing else came from my mission, I'm at least grateful I got to meet Martin because he is such a legend. Of course other cool and good stuff has happened on the mission and I can see that, but Martin kinda overshadows all of that sometimes hahahaha. Another mega random thing that really took me off guard happened yesterday at church. I was just chilling in the chapel welcoming members and friends into church in Tirana with Martin and Everaldo and in walks Ashlyn Erickson. I don't think anything less expected could've happened in that moment honestly I was so unbelievably confused hahaha. Ashlyn is a good friend back from the early day of high school at Williamsburg. We had been at some dope rock climbing camps together and I had to take a second to actually make sure she was who I thought she was because I have not seen Ashlyn in like 5 years. Super super strange seeing a williamsburger in my ward on my mission. The thing is that oftentimes I'm not even in my assigned ward on Sunday because we travel and she didn't even know where exactly in Albania I was serving so it just happened to work out that way and freaked me out hahah. God is kinda sus.

Anyways, I know that's not a whole lot of stories but I don't want to bore you guys with more long paragraphs. I will address the title of the email though and say that this next week starts my last transfer as a missionary which is totally insane. I've already had to say goodbye to the south missionaries as I won't be seeing them again before I go. Pretty freaking sad actually because I love those guys. I will be transferred to a new area next Tuesday or Wednesday I believe but I can't tell yall where at this current point in time because none of the other missionaries know transfers yet. I'll try to get an email in within the next couple weeks so that you find out - or you can just check my Facebook next week because I'll probably update where I live. Just a thought. One more area. One more companion. One more transfer. Time is so weird hahaha but it'll be good to get back with all of you wherever you may be and reconnect a little - I hope I didn't forget you lol I almost didn't know who Ashlyn was. Missions destroy your memory. 

Anyways, enjoy the mass photo albums.

Elder Millsap

Tirana Week 11

Tirana Week 12

Tirana Week 14 (Greece Cyprus Week 3)

Tirana Week 15 (Greece Cyprus Week 4)

Tirana Week 16

Tirana Week 17

Tirana Week 18 (Greece Cyprus Week 5)

Vibing With Martin & Now I've Visited All 5 Countries?!?!

Don't pay this email being subjected as if it's clickbait. Everything happens for a reason, we just don't always know why. I also just want to state before I start writing this too thoroughly that I've been feeling very illiterate in every language as of late, so hopefully this email can become a spectacle of entertainment on that front. Long live bad grammar and brain dead missionary Jacob. Amen.

It's been a vibe though. I think it's been two weeks since I last wrote? I have more of a habit of not writing emails now than writing them so I really couldn't tell you. 4 emails in 10 weeks ain't too shabby I'd say. Anyways, I'm glad to be back. I gotta keep you all informed on how things are so you don't lose interest in my existence and I won't be forced to come home from the mission lonely. 

Since getting back from Athens the pattern has been as such: Have a cool pday with the homies in Tirana, go to the office and try and grind through whatever tasks we've been given, have meetings with the Burdons over the missionaries and transfers, have our weekly work day and invite Martin the dopest human on the Earth to come and join us in our finding and teaching efforts, leave Saturday to drive President and Sister to a distant part of the northern countries for branch conference somewhere and have a dope exchange with the elders there. Repeat.

The only thing that was really an interruption to this pattern in the last 2 weeks is that a small transfer of sorts has been decided. My dear and beloved companion Elder Washburn is leaving me :(( That's an L for sure. The man is going to Athens to start working on opening that area officially for Albanian speakers! Very fresh indeed so I'm excited for him. You are probably wondering as well who my new companion is, and the answer is that I'm not getting a new companion at all. Elder Esquivel will be joining me once again hahahaha. Third times the charm baby! Should be mega fun

This weekend for branch conference we traveled up to Skopje in Macedonia, which means I've officially made it to all 5 mission countries. Mega cool that. We've been hanging out with the Macedonian elders since and they are so fresh. We've been having a blast. We spent all of pday today in Skopje and we'll finish our official exchange tomorrow before returning to Tirana to send Elder Washburn on his way. We got to go on a cold boat ride up a windy mountain reservoir and explore a cave and then we got to climb the massive cross above the city. It was so dang cold. Anyways, enjoy those pictures!

Ciao!

Photos

There and Back Again

Hey everyone! Sorry it's been a loooong while. Since coming to Tirana my emailing habits have gone downhill hard. Problem is, I usually don't have much to write about every week because I'd basically just say "oh yeah we had some meetings and we did some office work but we did have time to go finding on a couple days" haha. But, it's your lucky day because lots of shiz has actually been going down the last couple of weeks.

Elder Washburn and I got back to Albania this morning after being gone for 2 weeks. We missed it a lot to be honest haha. Albania is definitely the best of the 5 mission countries without a doubt. Anyways, we were in Cyprus and then Greece for zone conferences, but then Washburn and I stayed an extra week and some in Greece to do some investigation and work. Essentially, if I didn't share about this in my last email, we were sent to test out the Athens area for work for Albanian speaking missionaries. There are a ton of Albanian immigrants there so we just went out into the street and spoke Albanian to all of them haha it was super fun! The best part was that we just got to be regular missionaries finding in an area for the whole week and we actually had some decent success. We found a few potential friends that we handed off to the elders down there (they speak Greek too) and made one new friend named Gezim! He believes in 12 gods though hahaha but it was still a good lesson. He is curious to learn thought so that was fresh. We also experienced a super big miracle. We made a facebook page for the athens area in albanian just for this experiment we did and so we had our handy dandy tech guys boost some facebook ads for us on there for bible study and for the Book of Mormon. We had people texting us all week because of them, but the most promising of all was this awesome lady named Medona. She asked for a book of mormon so we arranged to meet her and give her one. Turns out, she's actually a member from albania! She was baptized in Vlore a long time ago but 4 years ago she moved to Athens and lost contact with the church. She had tried to find it there, but gave up after a while, until she saw our ad in Albanian for the Book of Mormon! We ended up setting up a meeting and going there with the Athens sisters. She speaks greek pretty well too so we had an awesome lesson and gave her a Book of Mormon in both languages. The sisters are gonna keep teaching her and her husband (who isn't a member!). Super cool to see God's hand in all this and how once we enter into the covenant relationship with Him, he will never abandon us. He will always give us an opportunity to come back into the fold and into his true church. 

Anyways, it's been a good experience. The travel is dope and because we've been all over in the south countries for 2 pdays we got to see some cool things! I'll just let you guys kinda surf through all of the photos. Love you guys! God loves you more though!

Tirana Week 5

Tirana Week 6

Tirana Week 7

Tirana Week 8