I am so happy to be writing an email again you guys. This last week was one of the most stressful of my life, but we have made it through and there is a lot of light at this end of the tunnel. Sorry to have missed emailing last week, but as I'll explain in just a second, I was unable to write one last week (nor did I really want to because a lot of crap was going down haha). So today, I will be catching you up on the events of the last two weeks because lots of changes have happened!
First off, last week was my last week with my trainer Elder Basham. Knowing that it was our last week, we planned a ton of stuff out. We ended up organizing a super dank service project in the archeological site "Antigonea". It's an ancient greek and then afterwards roman city that is still being uncovered about 30 minutes away from Gjirokaster. Anyways, after a pretty wild goose chase trying to find whoever was in charge of the volunteers for the work in the park, we were able to secure a 7 hour service project uncovering an ancient city. It was super dope. We even got our good friend Arli to come with us which was awesome because we bonded a lot with him. We got to work with this big group of Italian students and their professor as we found ancient pottery and tiles and such. Super cool stuff. A few pictures are included. Most of the time we were just moving leftover dirt while the experts worked, but I did uncover some really cool pieces of pottery myself. Definitely an experience only to be had in this part of the world as a missionary. Kinda a flex for sure. It was pretty fun to interact with all of the Italians as well because they got to practice their English on us. Good times.
Fast forward to two days later - we receive transfer calls. Elder Basham was told he was being transferred to Korca to train again and I was told that I will be training here in Gjirokaster! Super exciting and I was totally expecting it to happen but it hit me like a brick wall regardless. Definitely brought some stress upon me, but it very quickly became the least of my problems.
After a good chill P-day playing soccer in a kalceto and bruising my foot because I was playing barefoot, we were on our way back to Gjirokaster. Because I had hurt my foot, I was just icing it sitting in the passenger seat. The last 2 weeks or so have been really wet out here in Albania. We've been getting a lot of rainfall and it was no different last Monday. Because of this, the roads were fairly wet and therefore slippery. We were about 35 minutes away from Gjirokaster on a mountain highway when we started hydroplaning, lost control, and spun off the road into a cement bank and barrier. I've had some pretty unexpected and terrifying moments in my life, but few compare to how it felt to get in such a bad accident. Miraculously, we both walked away perfectly fine other than the fact that I had hit my head hard enough on the door column to leave a gash (which was soon discovered to be no problem at all). I highly recommend avoiding getting in a car accident, but I especially recommend it outside of the country. The legality of the issue was so complex. We had to wait for the police to get there to do all these weird measurements and drawings for their report, and then we were able to get a tow truck to take the car away to Gjiro. Once we were done with that after about an hour or so on the side of the cold road, we ended up just riding with the tow truck guy all the way back. To drop the wrecked car off in some garage. After getting back to the house, we decided we had better go the the hospital to make sure my head injury hadn't caused any real damage since we were still running off of a lot of adrenaline and possibly in a little shock. Well, we made one fatal mistake there. We should not have told the medical professionals that we were in a car accident because the policy there is that they immediately called the police again. They then proceeded to not even check my injury, take my blood, then put me in a wheelchair and hauled me to a CAT scan. I had no idea what was happening and I was very hesitant to get on the machine, especially after realizing I was most likely completely fine, but I did so anyway and got some cool pictures of my brain. The doctors determined I was alright and so they let us go, but then the cops kidnapped us and took us to their office in Gjirokaster. The reason for this is that in Albania, you don't have the right to release liability or anything like that. Because I had been injured in the car accident, Elder Basham became completely liable for harming me and so we had to fill out tons of paperwork in case of a potential lawsuit. It took around another 3 hours and we didn't get home until after midnight. Not to mention that they also took a bunch of Basham's must-have items including his driver's license and lejim i qendrimi. To say the least, it made transfers the next day much more difficult for us and for everyone else involved. We had to take a bus up to Tirana with all of Elder Basham's luggage and we arrived a good 2 hours late to transfers. All worked out well though because we've got the best president and AP's known to man.
Since Tuesday things have been much better but still a little hard. I was on splits on Wednesday and Thursday with Elder Fairbourne in Vlore which was good for me for sure. I was able to distract myself from all that had happened by serving there and spending time with him and with the Vlore sisters. However, things were still a little complex and fun because somehow the power to the Elders apartment in Vlore had been cut and so we went without electricity for a couple days. We had to get creative in order to have warm showers to say the least. Elder Fairbourne is awesome though and we did have a blast.
Thursday we meet our trainees in Tirana and I am training Elder Cannon! The guy is such a homie. He's got 3X the vocal volume of all the other missionaries combined and so it makes things pretty fun. It's been bothering a lot of people, but personally I'm having fun with it. He's been pumping me up a lot and his enthusiasm for the mission is super fun. Some of my favorite phrases from him include: "aaaaaayyy kinda dirty/kinda stinky", "gotta build that equity yknow" "not gonna lie man *followed by the most random phrase*", etc. He's super fun haha and I'm stoked to spend the next 3 months with the guy.
I'd also like to say real quick, that the gift of tongues is becoming more real for me than ever before. I was very worried about having to train in an area that needs so much good time and attention with my limited language abilities, but since getting back down to Gjiro with Cannon I've been continually blown away by how the language seems to just come to me right when I need it. Words and phrases I've barely learned or used seem to just come and flow out of my mouth as I'm speaking to the people of Albania and it is so humbling. I know there is absolutely no way I would be able to communicate as well as I have been without divine help ad assistance. The more time I spend out here, the more difficult I realize this language is which makes it even more incredible that I'm able to pretty much run the church here in Gjirokaster. I am so incredibly grateful to know that I have Christ on my side assisting me as I'm out in such a foreign place.
There is so much more I could say to you guys, but I'll leave it at this for now! Know that I am now completely fine and recovered from any really negative affects of the accident and I'm stoked to be able to continue the work with no distractions there. I love you all so much! Live every day to the fullest because you never know when someone or something will leave your life. :)
Jave te mbare!
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