Pershendetje everyone. I'm currently in a state of thinking about way too much at once and it's an experience to say the least. It's approaching the time where I need to start worrying about if I'm going to go to college right when I get home or not so that has been on my mind a fair amount. If any of you have any random advice or recommendations I will welcome them all. Turns out that focusing heavily on the moment and in the work can kind of make it difficult when it comes to making decisions on your future.
Anyways thanks for reading that random small crisis I'm in right now. Not a problem at all and I still have over a year until I'm home so I aim not to focus on it too much but it is something I have to keep in mind. In regards to the mission work, things are good. Things have gotten overwhelming trying to help and support the members at times, but other times it has been really great and not a problem whatsoever. Having those kinds of ups and downs helps you to remember to be grateful for each moment so I appreciate that. The focus has been heavily on connecting with each member here in Lushnjë and we are making good progress. I never thought I would be doing this kind of work though - delivering food and wood and the likes. We are also trying to organize a way for all our old ladies in the village to get to church every week without them having to pay for the bus because that adds up significantly. - I've just found that there is a big to do list and you just slowly mark things off as you go. I'm learning a lot.
Some fun stuff that went down this week:
- Zone Conference! - very enjoyable gathering every time. I definitely enjoyed it a lot more this time not having to organize it haha. I also got a blessing from President Burdon right afterwards too which was also great. Enjoy those pictures.
- Like a grand total of 3 sleepovers - we had the Fier or Gjirokastër Elders stay at our house a few nights either because we had embassy work to do up in Tirana or because of zone conference. It's a great excuse to connect and hang out with the boys, but I found myself without as much sleep as I needed on those days as well so it's got its drawbacks haha.
- 4th member baptized in Gjirokastër! - after I got transferred out of Gjirokastër, my good pal Elder Snider got put in there and has done some good work. They just baptized a 19 year old girl on Saturday and we got to attend it because they actually did the baptism in Vlorë (I guess the girl didn't want to be baptized in the freezing cold river).
- I learned how to make Byrek and ate like a king - Byrek is an amazing food I have probably talked about before. Its hard to describe but it's basically a really good, thin, greasy pie but they don't use fruit at all. They only use things like meat, onions, tomatoes, spinach, and something called gjiz which is basically really good cottage cheese. Anyways, this member taught us how to make it at her house and we had a very good time. That is something I'm going to continue to practice while I'm out here so I can become rich and famous selling it when I get home.
- Tiwi - so the new tiwis here are pretty bad. We all knew they wouldn't work very well here in Albania so I guess we were ready for the pain though. Tiwi, by the way, is the program the church uses in its mission vehicles to monitor driving. It tracks things like speed, location, and vehicle motion and gives annoying verbal warnings and reports to the vehicle coordinator when you drive more aggressively than it likes. Albania requires aggressive driving so that is the problem (you have to be here to understand its a whole new level but it's honestly so cool that it even works). On top of that, the speed limit database is fricked up so we constantly hear tiwi yelling at us for speeding when we are perfectly fine. We are the test dummies until the church can figure out how to make it work well.
- BEER - Okay I almost forgot to talk about the title. There's some really good non-alcoholic malt drinks out here that I've discovered this last week. I've been having one every day at lunch. Something to note though: you have have get the flavored stuff because the plain beer flavor is pretty bad. I think my favorite so far has got to be the apple flavor because it was pretty much apple cider. Pomegranate and peach were good too. Next up I'm grabbing myself a strawberry flavored one.
Well that's pretty much the rundown for now. I guess another cool thing is that we had a branch council on Sunday before church. It's so weird being the one to have to organize stuff like that. I'm just grateful that the Lord is so involved in this work otherwise I think Lushnjë would be screwed haha.
Have a great week everyone!
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