Short again

Yes, sadly it's true. My likely one and only companion shorter than me has left. He is now bravely traveling the land of Durrës 40 minutes away. It is just so sad and I'm still getting over it. I'm just here with Elder Gallagher now, a piece of our trio brutally and violently taken from us. 

Other than that, honestly nothing super noteworthy has happened, hence why I didn't write an email last week. I hoped this week would be more eventful, but it kinda wasn't hahaha sooooo rip. Can't leave you guys hanging though so this is the show of my love for you. Anyways, it's been good. We've had some service, lots of little branch work tasks, temple prep lessons, and melting because it is quite hot here this time of year. I actually ended up buying some plane tickets for some people going to the temple so that was kinda cool.

The hope is to have more to report on in the near future. I'm wanting to find more time for finding new people to teach because sometimes in Lushnjë and specifically in this calling it's hard to feel like a missionary. It'd be nice to teach some regular missionary lessons to new friends again. Things are progressing well though. I've said it before, but it's very cool to be able to teach temple prep and get our members ready to go to the temple for the first time. I'm excited for the Mati family to get back later this week to see how it was for them. People making it to the temple to be sealed together forever is definitely the one of the end goals of missionary work like this!

On a side note, the girls who work at the grocery store across the street like me a little too much. We buy a lot of stuff from them and we're definitely their #1 customers. Anyways, I definitely made the mistake of telling one of them my first name and now every time I walk in I hear "Heeeej Jacoooob" in a uncomfortable Albanian flirty way. Oh well it was kinda worth it because I actually got them to give me one of their employee shirts so now I can walk around with this Iper Market polo and flex on all the other missionaries. It's kinda the ultimate Lushnjë trophy. 

OOOH I almost forgot but something noteworthy DID happen. Jehovahs Witnesses used to have a big proselyting presence here in Albania until about two years ago when there were some suicides tied to some people they were teaching in regards to trying to get resurrected... People hate them a lot now and they kinda stopped proselyting. It stinks though because everyone thinks they we are them so sometimes it's hard to get good first interactions with people. Anyways, THEYRE BACK IN LUSHNJE. We've seen them 3 or 4 times now with their stands on street corners handing out pamphlets. Based on some stories I've heard from returned missionaries, they may cause problems for us. Not to mention even more people will probably think we're them now that they're back out. Oh well. I said hi to one of them and he was cool. We'll just have to make sure everyone is getting the full restored truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and teach people how to receive answers to their prayers through the spirit and we shouldn't have any problem because God is clutch. 

We went to some dope ruins I haven't been to since last year today and then after went to the beach and made this really dope arch out of sand that I could crawl through. Good stuff.

That's all for these past two weeks. Hopefully there are some entertaining pictures/videos for you below :))

Lushnjë Week 17 photos

Lushnjë Week 18 photos 

Return to the Fatherland

This week was madness. As it should be. 

One thing that was pretty awesome was that we had the unique opportunity to clean the home of our relief society president. For the last few months she has not been very active in church and started working 24/7 as a nanny. Because of that she hasn't had the opportunity to clean her own house, so in spite of her turning down the offer over and over again, our district met up Wednesday morning and cleaned it all up. It was awesome and it really touched her. :))

I also, as mentioned in the subject, returned to the holy land of my fathers. Gjirokastër is probably my favorite place in the world. Starting my mission there, as well as the fact that it is incredibly beautiful and awesome, makes it have significant meaning for me. We were invited to go down for a large service project at a school near Gjirokastër. We stayed an entire day and then some down there before returning which was so so so awesome! I love that place. We painted this school and throughout the next couple weeks we will be returning and putting in some playground equipment which is dank. It's been a neat experience especially when the school kids have helped out. We will be returning on Wednesday.

Gjithashtu we had some RM's visit lushnje this weekend. One of which actually served here an entire year and was also branch president. We got to spend some time with them and learned a ton about the area and about the members. They also came to church the next day and brought a bunch of less active members with them! It was such a great Sunday. We had the whopping attendance of 23 which destroyed the previous record. We usually have about 10 less people hahaha. Very neat to learn from the legends themselves. I've got a lot to live up to but they for sure have given me a lot of inspiration!!!

Beach pday again. What can I say it's just the best. 

Cau cau pafshim 

Photos

Did you know you can get sunburned through a shirt?

Yes that is true. I learned it today. Once again, we had an incredible beach pday playing volleyball. I chose to not wear sunscreen thinking that my tan had me well protected already, and I was very wrong. Everything hurts hahaha. I may never be the same man again. My shirt was on the whole time without rolled up sleeves or anything (like a good missionary because there were sisters there) and somehow my shoulders and back are burned to crap. The sun was incredibly powerful we can just say. I don't really know how the UV spectrum works when it tells you that number on the weather app, but I'm pretty sure today must have been like UV 1000 because I am so defeated right now. I will be recovering for at least the entire week I think.

This was a good week indeed. We had zone conference to start things off with the 3 countries here in the north which is always epic. Love seeing all my buddies. I also got root beer which was sick. I miss that stuff so much. The root beer flavor packets just don't do it justice. Also at zone conference we received our new shoku elder Gallagher. We are now happily living the trio life making fun of each other and stuff. 

ACCOMPLISHMENT: we finished constructing our bean bag this week after an entire transfer of trying to gather materials and put it together and not waste work hours. It is incredible. We need some more stuffing actually but we will hold out on that for a little while. I've spent a little longer than I probably should've on that bean bag these last few days since we finished it. Pictures included of course.

We also spent a grand total of 12 hours or so working inside the completed product of our previous greenhouse service projects. It is fully operational and we did 12 hours of weeding. I thought our garden was big growing up but man I miss our garden right now. There is no end in sight. 12 of us going at it for 4 hours completes only 6 rows and I'm pretty sure there's like 45. Pray for us and also my sunburns while you're at it. 

We started our temple prep class this week too and it was awesome! It is so cool to be teaching that class. I'm very excited for these guys to be able to go to Rome. More of them showed up than I expected to be honest which is great! We get to do this for the next 6 weeks or so and it'll be an awesome journey. 

Now it is time for the deep thought of the week. Elder Skene and I had a really good conversation about what friendship really is on the way to zone conference. It was prompted by some talk we had to listen to that only briefly talked about it, but it stemmed a thought provoking powwow session. Anyways, the talk said that true friendship is based off of compassion and respect. That is such an awesome concept. There is nothing in that description that has anything remotely to do with getting gain or profiting from the relationship. It is solely a relationship built on showing these two things to someone. We then went on to discuss how these two things are what really determines if a friendship or relationship is genuine or not as well. When you can just continue to give real compassion and respect in every interaction with this person, that person is going to feel incredibly and genuinely loved and appreciated. As a consequence, they will feel inspired by their compassion and respect for you for being such a good friend, and they will do the same back to you, creating this cycle of exponentially growing love. However, we discussed also that for some reason, often times it is hardest to show these simple two things with the people we are already closest with. There are quite a few possible reasons for this, but one that we discussed was the fact that there is a difference between natural behavior and genuine behavior. Being genuine takes some sacrifice and a great deal of effort some times, which is far from our natural fallen preference. It takes consistent effort and adjustment to continue showing this genuine compassion and respect to the people we care about which can sometimes lead us to fizzle out in our genuinity after a while with those people we are around often. We fall into our natural habits and stop being completely genuine in that sense. So, the obvious solution is that we must change our human nature. We must force ourselves to put in that extra genuine effort so often, that our natural habit becomes that genuinity. It's a lofty goal, but certainly changing our nature is a big reason we came here to Earth in the first place. 

Anyways, those of you who were able to follow that likely scattered thought process get Jacob points. Remind me to give you an extra hug when I get home. That is your reward.

Have a great week everyone! I love you all!

Photos