The goal is to make this email a little bit less boring than the last one so let me know how I do. Swipe up, comment below, drop a like, and leave me some feedback. Love you guys haha thanks for putting up with me.
Not really sure where to start for this week. We were all over the place. First off, we only actually spent 3 days in our area this week due to zone conference and some new travel rules. To sum it up, we now need to generally drive only in daylight, and we aren't allowed to drive as far on P-Day anymore. What this meant is that even though zone conference was on Wednesday, we ended up staying in Fier Monday night after P-Day (because it has now been deemed too far to drive to Fier and back to Gjrio on a P-Day), doing a super exchange with Fier again haha which was sick, driving up to Lushnje, staying there Tuesday night, going to zone conference all together, doing a super exchange with Lushnje Wednesday evening, staying the night again, and finally returning all the way to Gjirokaster Thursday afternoon. It was pretty fun but I definitely missed my good ol Gjiro. As far as I've experienced, there is no area like it and it has honestly become what I consider to be home. It's definitely gonna be hard to leave this place haha so hopefully it won't happen for a little bit.
On that thought, last week I said there might be a chance that I leave Gjiro next week. I have now decided that the odds of that are pretty much 0 because I don't even think we are having transfers for another couple weeks after that. We should be completely good for a bit which is super nice because now I can just work to set Gjirokaster up for some major success after I leave. My plan is just to pound through old contacts and do as much finding as possible while simultaneously continuing the meet with the friends we do have. It's gonna be hard but I'm going to make it happen because Gjiro deserves some really good pune going down.
The highlight of the week was definitely zone conference. It was exactly what I needed exactly when I needed it. I've definitely been having a much less productive/negative mindset as of late and zone conference was a good wakeup call. We have had some really really good days since then so clearly I'm doing better than I was. A lot of topics were covered in zone conference, but what stuck out to me the most was the concept of love and service. Specifically, I felt so strongly that the solution to all of my worries and struggles as a missionary would be solved by love and service, no matter what the issue was or if it was correlated at all. It's so interesting too because I don't even think the topic itself was covered very much at all, but I have felt so impressed to truly change the way I have been living out here. I've felt close to all of the missionaries out here and I can genuinely say I love all of them deeply, but I realized that specifically in regards to my companion, I haven't been doing a great job of showing that love. Since then I have been trying to find every way possible to get up in the morning and just serve. I've discovered as well that it is kinda hard to find things when we personally don't own a whole lot of stuff and don't do a whole lot of things in our house... Haha BUT I have still managed to find little small ways to serve. I've been doing all the dishes constantly, cleaning, making great breakfasts (I am a straight up gourmet chef sometimes I'm telling you), letting my companion buy and eat tons of ice cream even though it's not in season and makes no sense, making his bed, letting him shower first, etc. They are all such small things and don't seem like they would make that much of a difference (and maybe they don't from a certain point of view) but I FEEL so different. I feel so much more content and fulfilled. I can feel that my companion and I are closer even just in these few days and what's most amazing of all, is that I feel like we are getting more work done and having more success as missionaries. That last one has no direct link to my random acts of service in the morning but somehow they have still affected it. I'm not sure how and I'm not really sure why, but I can now firmly declare that every single aspect of life is positively affected if you simply decide to start looking for ways to selflessly serve.
So, if you read all of that and you actually followed what I said, my challenge for you is this: Choose one person in your life that you interact with regularly. It could be a family member, a friend, or a random teacher in school. This week, go out of your way to try and serve them more than ever before. Sit down for 2 minutes and just write out a bunch of little acts of service you can do, and then do them. NEXT WEEK report back to me how you feel and how you think it has affected you. I expect at least 5 reports to come in and I am positive there are at least 5 of you who read these hahaha so do it. If you have read this it is now a personal request from me to you. It. Is. Awesome.
Quick unrelated note before I close: Pday was very fun. We have the Korça Elders with us right now because Elder Basham had to come back to gjiro to get his documents since the cops took them after the wreck. Just meant that us bois got to explore the castle in the freezing rain.
Okay sick I don't think I succeeded in making this email more interesting than the last one. Maybe you regret reading this now because you'll feel guilty not accepting my personal challenge for you. If that's the case the best I can do is say that I'm sorry I'm not actually sorry for trying to encourage you to grow (because we all need to) and that I've got some great pictures for this week which you can view below. Jave te mbare! Ju dua shume miqte e mi!
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