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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