The Climax of My Life - Feeding Strangers

So flipping mire. A wild and busy week. Lots of interesting things. I wanna call my family today too so this might be a shorter email. Maybe. I'm not good at writing only a small amount. Let me know how I do.

Okay I have two things I want to share. First off, this week Elder Esquivel and I had the opportunity to drive a member family from the airport back to their home in Korça. It's about a 3-4 hour drive which was fun. The benefit of this though was that we got to pick up the big Ford transit from the mission office and use it to take them. That thing is flipping awesome. We got to keep it for the entire weekend until we took it back up to Tirana today and it was a good time. For those of you who don't know, a lot of my time learning how to drive was spent in a 15 passenger van that my family owns. I'm pretty comfortable driving a big vehicle already, but this Ford Transit is a diesel which means its got flipping POWER. I was ripping around the streets of Albania in that thing like I've never done in any vehicle before. So much fun. Anyways, that's half of the title. Kinda trained my whole life for that short 3 day epic experience. I need to get myself a Ford transit one day. 

Okay now a story. Last night was very weird for us. We were chilling in our teaching center trying to join the mission zoom so we could have our weekly come follow me with the missionaries, when we hear footsteps and loud voices coming up the stairs. We go to investigate, and we find these 3 random people. To our great surprise as well, they ended up speaking English and explained that they were actually missionaries of a nondenominational Christian organization that does mission trips throughout Europe. We got talking to them and they were super dope! One of them was from the Netherlands, one from Norway, and one from Switzerland. Very very cool interactions for sure. Anyways, after a bit we eventually asked what they were doing at our teaching center, and they explained that them and the other missionaries in the city are doing something called "Faith days" where they go out for a few days without taking any thought for what they will eat or where they will sleep and just trust God. Kind of a cool concept, but this was the reason they were at the center. Some guy told them there were Americans that could help them so they came hahaha. Unfortunately we could not help them with the sleeping arrangements, but we did have some great discussions with them. They were very curious about our mission experiences so we exchanged a lot of stories and good conversation about how all of our missions were going. They also asked us a lot of questions about the church and what was different about that, so we basically ended up teaching them the entire restoration of the gospel which was super dank. Anyways, after a while we became buddies and felt bad that we couldn't really help them so we decided to make them some food since we've got a kitchen at our teaching center. So, we ended up running back to our house. Grabbing rice, beef, and broccoli, running back to the center, and cooking them up a nice dinner so that they didn't starve. It tasted very good and I'm proud of my guy Eski for doing such a good job. Yeah it was definitely one of the weirdest moments of my mission so far because it was just so random and unexpected, but we are grateful for the experience and God honestly probably did lead them to us for, at the very least, food and good conversation. Definitely something to remember hahaha.

Well that is going to wrap up my email. Still not super short sorry about that but I hope you enjoy it!

Cauuuuu

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This Church Changes Lives.

Happy Monday everyone. :)) I hope you are enjoying your first day of a brand new week with brand new opportunities and ripe potential. We are so blessed to be able to live yet another week of our lives wherever we are. The opportunities and possibilities presented to us for growth and development are endless. I can truly promise each of you that if you acknowledge that truth and take advantage of the knowledge, everyone in your life will benefit from it, including yourself. The statement of YOLO (you only live once) is starting to resonate more and more with me. Not in the reckless crazy lifestyle people live persay, but in the fact that we really only do live once and this life deserves to be used and enjoyed to it's full extent. So, in closing of this random life essay I didn't know I was gonna write, be intentional about living because you're not gonna get the chance to do today over again. Enjoy every moment and embrace the now because "men (and women) are that they might have joy." - 2 Nephi 2:25

AHEM okay now that I've gotten rid of everyone who's not willing to read more than a paragraph let's get into the amazing experiences we had this week. I personally had quite a few experiences I will never forget and I'm just happy I got to be here for them. 

First off, Iris was baptized on Saturday. :)) We spent a good chunk of our time this week preparing for this baptism and working out the details of the program so that this experience could be the best possible for her, and let me tell you it paid off. Everything went off without a problem at all which was amazing. We had a couple dozen people attending in person and over 30 more attending virtually! We can safely assume that people were very excited for this baptism. The messages shared by missionaries and members alike, the ordinance itself, and then finally Iris' sweet testimony to conclude the service were all incredibly impactful. Elder Esquivel and I are truly just grateful we got to be the ones here to witness it. Her decision to make this promise to God has clearly changed something within her that you can almost physically see now. This observation was backed up yet again the next day in sacrament meeting when I had the unique privilege of being able to confirm Iris a member of the church. She sat back down on her bench afterwards with one of the biggest, most genuine smiles I've ever seen on anyone's face. I will restate what I said in the title of this email. This church changes lives and it does so because God himself is heavily involved in it's work. I've had way too many powerful experiences out here to think or believe otherwise. 

Now a small update on the work here: There are 2 great bikes that have been sitting in our teaching center here for quite some time. There's nothing wrong with them except for the fact that all 4 tires were flat. So, on Saturday after the baptism, we met up with our good friend Hasan and he took us over to a little bike shop run by two old men and they hooked us up. Now we've got two bikes that work perfectly well and we're about to start cranking on our less-active member work like never before. We've got a large number of pins on a map left to us by some missionaries from the days of ol' that we are going to use to start hunting some people down and giving nice little gifts to. We are highly optimistic that we will get in contact with some people who have needed the gospel brought back into their life and we are super stoked. We're also excited just to be able to zip around the city on these bikes too. We have a car, but parking is pretty bad in the cities in Albania so this is going to be so much quicker and convenient in all honesty. It's been really cold though the last little bit so I need to grab myself some gloves and a hat so my ears and fingers don't fall off of my body. We unfortunately will not have a lot of time this week to give to these member hunting shenanigans, but we are happy to get at least some in and then hopefully next week we can crank it really hard! 

Pday today was great. We had an Elders Kalceto football day which was a party, but I probably played a little too hard as per usual. Elder Perrine's ankle and my shin collided pretty hard haha. Apparently it made a good bone on bone clashing noise so that's neat. My shins bruised but surprisingly feels pretty good. I'm walking just fine but we will see how it feels tomorrow. My calf is really sore though which kinda stinks but kind of cool because science. 

Have a good week! Love you all. 

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Getting Wine? Albanian Motor Scooter Gang

What a crazy busy week!

On Tuesday, Elder Rowley and I drove to Tirana to start the crazy transfer our mission had. He was flying out Wednesday morning so he had to be there early for a COVID test and such. Because of that, we spent some decent time with the AP's and then afterwards I joined Elder Anderson and Elder Esquivel in a trio in their work that evening and stayed with them! It was super fun. The Tirana ZL's drive a big beast of a van around the city which was so fun. It brought me back to my days of learning to drive my family's 15 passenger van. Very cool experience. We helped to drop off Sister Koutouri at the airport so she could head back to Athens for transfers and then went back to the mission office to continue to assist with the transfers up here. When that was all done and good, Elder Esquivel and I triumphantly returned to Elbasan together!

Since Tuesday, we used pretty much all of our time preparing for the zone conference we had on Saturday. Being the Elders in the area where the chapel is used and also being the zone leaders, there was a pretty decent to do list for us! All is good though we were happy to do it and we got it all done. Definitely a growing process! Pretty satisfying to know we got the food catering and everything organized with trainings for 50 people. The two of us have come a long way in these 5 months of being in this country. Very good stuff and I definitely grew from it as well.

Zone conference itself was great too. It's really different being on this side of things though and it felt like I couldn't enjoy things quite as much. However, like I said before, we were happy to do it. It's a privilege to organize this kinda stuff for all the other missionaries. I'm always impressed by how helpful and perfectly timed the messages given at zone conference are and this time was no exception. The Spirit definitely guided each individual training and they all built off of each other so well. There was a big focus on controlling what you can control - your attitude, your mornings, your scheduling, your studies, etc. - and it was great. Such a good reminder for all of us.

Alright now time for the title. On Thursday Eski and I went to help out a member here chop some more wood with her classic sledge hammer and railroad spike. Super great. We wore ourselves out yet again. Afterwards however, she invited us in to warm up by the fire and feed us and stuff. While sitting there she brings us over this red drink. Of course, I ask her what it is, and she tells us it's grape juice. A little concerned, I take a sip and immediately realize it is not grape juice at all. So, trying to stay polite I asked her a little more. She ended up telling us that she made it herself through means of preservation, and that she loves it because it doesn't get you drunk and it's sweet. Hmm. Anyways, she wanders out of the room and I immediately chucked mine into the fire. However, it was more than I thought and it almost put out the fire... Eski was gonna do the same thing, but because I almost put the fire out he decided to just dump his drink into my cup... Dirty move I know but we just tried to move on. We did pretty well until she filled our cups up again and them when we were leaving she asked why we didn't drink it. I started explaining but before I even finished she interrupted saying "oh yeah because you're driving!"... ummmm... so yeah we got outta there haha so she couldn't keep trying to get us to drink her homemade wine.

The other half of the title: our pday today was my best ever. We went over to Belsh and rented these sick electric bike scooter things out. They were so much fun and we just ripped around on those for an hour. Got some sweet pictures and then afterwards played some good ol football with all the missionaries that came. Such a wholesome day and because belsh was so close we got back to our area at 4 with plenty of time to spare to hang and write emails and such. Such a great day. Enjoy the pictures.

See you all again next week!

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Triumphant Return Home & Bald Captain America

Hejjjj what's up my dearest beloved people that love me enough to read these emails. You're the greatest and you're in for a real treat this week. I think I've got some good content for once. 

So first off, this week involved a lot of travel for us. Elder Rowley and I made the long journey down the the best city in Albania - Gjirokastër - in order to have a super exchange with Elder Snider and Elder Cannon. It was good to see my son again and how far he's come. What a good dude. It was also an absolute blast spending the day doing splits with Elder Snider. It was a bit of an irregular exchange, since we spent a lot of the day looking for an apartment for rent for a member down there, but it was very enjoyable with my guy Snider. We also ran into my good pal Arli and his buddy and they decided to help us look for a house as well! Very cool little interaction arranged by the Lord. On top of that, we got to all 4 teach a lesson to Martin. Martin is someone I had been in contact with a couple months before I left Gjirokastër on Facebook, but I'd never actually met him in person until my last weekend. It was great to see him again and to see he had gotten most of the lessons! On top of that, he's expressed interest in being baptized! Super super cool. He's actually gone back up to Tirana for school, but he's said he'll keep meeting with the missionaries and going to church there which is sweet! His baptismal date is set for the end of his semester which is in about a month! Very stoked for the guy. We also met up with Nora and - of course - we met up with the one and only Dritan and played Mulan with the guy. Dritan is probably in my top 3 people I've met while being in Albania. He is an incredible man and I've missed him a lot. Good experiences from this city for sure. 

Some great exciting news this week from Elbasan. I believe I have talked about our friend Iris. She's awesome and we are so excited for her because she asked us if she could be baptized in 2 weeks! She will be baptized on January 22nd and I'm so hyped. She's already a great participating member in church every week and she's not even a member hahaha it's crazy. Updates to come on that! I'm beyond excited. Also, we have been meeting with an inactive member family and their youngest boy, who is 9 and unbaptized, also accepted an invitation to be baptized the same day as Iris! We will have to see if we can get through the rest of the lessons and get the family to church, but fingers crossed we can have 2 baptisms the same day! So exciting. :) Baptism is truly such a special thing and a huge step for all of these people in their efforts to become who they can be and learn what God wants for them and it's incredible to see the effect it has on people and all of the people around them actually. They change in a way that is hard to describe, but simply put, their countenance or their presence that you feel when you're around them is lighter. You can feel God's love from them and it's absolutely incredible. There's nothing like it. 

Okay now for the title. As you will see from the photos this week, I got quite the haircut from my good ol AP Elder Christensen. I've joined the buzz cut gang, and while I miss my hair, I am pretty pleased with the results. It has grown on me quite a lot and actually has reminded me every time I see myself in the mirror of my commitment to serve the Lord, to leave behind old things for now and focus on the work. Any reminder to stay focused and work harder out here is a good one and so far it has been great for me. I haven't decided how long the short hair will stick around but I guess you guys will find out. 

Now for the second part of the title. We did some service for a member here that lives in a little fshat (village) close by and she had us chopping wood for her. Now, a lot of you have probably chopped wood before. Forget everything you know about it because we were chopping big logs with a sledge hammer and a railroad spike. It was awesome. She did have axes, but those were used on the smaller stuff instead of a saw. Haven't seen a saw in her possession but I think it'd be a good investment. Anyways, we were having some fun slamming a railroad spike deep into cut logs and got some content you will all for sure appreciate. I got one log most of the way split with the spike and then decided to go captain America and just rip the thing in half from there. Looked almost as epic as the movie so now I know that it is quite possible.

Also update on transfers: Elder Rowley is of course going home this week, so I will be receiving a new companion here. I was very pleased to find that I will be receiving the one and only Elder Esquivel from my MTC group! He is an absolute beast of a missionary and so fun to be around so I'm really excited. We're good friends too so that'll make it a blast from day one. I'm hoping I get a couple transfers with the guy here but we will see! 

Enjoy the photos and have a great week you guys!

Wow. What a year. It's hard to believe that 2022 is upon us already. It's also weird for me to think that for most of 2021 I was a missionary as well! Pretty strange stuff. Time is not what I thought it was to say the least. Anyways, I'm super hyped for this year while being a missionary 100% of the time. I fully expect it to be the best year of my life because these last 7 months as a missionary have easily been the best already. I imagine that as the language becomes more natural and I put more experience under my belt that it's only going to become even better. 

We had a great week as well. We've got some great potential baptisms coming up which is always super exciting. It's just amazing to see the change in people as they choose to make such a powerful promise to our Lord and Savior. Updates to come on that as we teach them. One of the candidates is actually a 9 year old boy from an inactive family here in the branch. They are such a sweet family and we're really happy to be meeting with them. The other candidate is a friend of the sisters that actually got passed onto us. She met with and got all of the lessons from the sisters here in Elbasan a few months ago and was even on baptismal date. However, she left to attend a program called "Cumorah Academy" in the Czech Republic for 3 months. It's a program that is heavily run and endorsed by the church, so she was able to meet a lot of really great members over there and learn a lot about us. She has come to sacrament meeting a couple times already and we've met with her once since she got back and she is awesome. She is 100% ready to be baptized and I have no doubt that she will be. The question is whether or not she believes she is ready for baptism yet. Updates to come on that as well! We are so excited.

New years was an absolute blast. We had the Elders of Gjirokaster, Fier, and Lushnje come stay with us here in Elbasan for the night and we received permission from our mission president to stay up until 12 to experience the new year and the fireworks! Having 8 elders in one apartment is definitely a party by itself, but throw the Albanian new years experience on top of that and you've got some real life-long memories. I've seen some big fireworks shows in my life, but nothing compares to how spectacular this display was here in Elbasan. I've probably even seen fireworks displays with more fireworks, but those always come from the same place. Here in Albania, somehow everyone has massive fireworks and they're lit off with no regulation all across the city. It's kind of concerning actually but I think that the fact that 99% of everything is concrete makes it a little bit less of a fire hazard. It is truly incredible to stand on top of the roof of our 13 story apartment building and look out all around us at thousands of colorful explosions. Some of those explosions actually happened pretty close to us which kind of surprised us haha. We were all in complete awe the entire time. Also on a side note, before we watched the fireworks, we had some really dank games of "BANG!" going on which was super fun. Love the amount of board/card games we play out here in our evenings especially when you've got a large group of Elders in one place for 8 hours straight (we were asked to be indoors by 4:30 in order to avoid the potentially dangerous partying that was happening).

Elder Rowley dies in a week which is sad. We'll get transfer calls this weekend and I'll find out who's replacing him then. We've had some really quality and weird experiences here serving together in Elbasan. Definitely a transfer to remember. Here's to one last week with the homie!

*As an extra treat this week I included a couple videos I had previously submitted to the mission's variety show into the album. Ju befte mire*

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Sorry the pictures are basically just new years lol that was definitely the highlight