Holy crap my feet hurt but it was so worth it

WOOHOO I did the coolest thing ever today. A little over a month ago me and some bros decided to hike mount tomorri, which is a very prominent and tall mountain which can be seen from all of central albania. We ended up taking quite a few wrong turns and didnt quite make it to the top unfortunately. Anyways, me and some other bros returned today, and this time, we MADE it. Or 3 of us did. The other 2 stayed down lower. It was amazing. So incredibly beautiful and exhilarating. Summits are the coolest. It was also probably the hardest hike I have ever been on. Not only is there not much of a trail most of the time, but the trail that does exist is steep as frick. My calves have never hurt so bad, but again, it was so worth it. We also had to add an extra 3 miles onto the beginning and end of our trip because the road is terrible and all we got is a little hyundai accent. In total we hiked 16 miles and gained/descended about 6000 feet in 8 hours. It's unbelievable that we actually pulled that off. We were hauling butt even though it hurt bad. You gotta do what you gotta do when you need to be back down to work in your areas at 6. To make things even more exciting, not 20 minutes after leaving the peak, it started dumping tons of cold rain and hail on us. Lots of loud thunder. Classic mountaineering experience. Just didn't think I'd get it on the mission.

Anyways, me and Eski have been cranking here in Lushnjë. Getting some good village manual labor done as well. It's been awesome and a whole lot of an adventure. Elder Esquivel is probably one of the greatest guys I know and it's been a privilege to serve with him again. 

Well, saturday night president decided he wanted to surprise us with yet another transfer call. After some suspense while we pulled the car over, he let us know that I would be transferred to serve in Limassol and Paphos, Cyprus. Definitely unexpected we could say. I will be flying to Cyprus on Saturday so thankfully I will have most of this week to enjoy my last bit of Lushnjë. These people have really made an impact on me, and these last 7 months have gotten me really used to the small city life. But, now it's on to the next big thing. My new companion in Cyprus will be Elder Nilsson which is dope because I actually know him. We both did Williamsburg throughout high school, and though we never spent a lot of time together ourselves, we have quite a few mutual friends. Should be dope. I'll give a thorough report of Cyprus and how it's treating me next week. After all I will have been there 2 days so I'll be an expert.

Well, I need to sleep so my body can recover from the 8 hour backpacking trip we did today. Take care everyone!

Lushnje Week 26

Lushnje Week 27

Banana-Cola

I'll put the pictures first this week as temptation to be lazy and not read the email:

Photos

Nice.

First and most important is the subject of banana-cola. Me and Eski invented a new great flavor of coke. You already have vanilla and cherry coke, but now get ready for BANANA COKE. Banana juice is available in abundance in stores here and it is super tasty. One evening while hanging back at the house we were drinking both coke, and banana juice, and decided to combine the two. It was kinda like the pilk (pepsi milk) mentality but it turned out way better. I'm probably gonna have to start selling this stuff across the border.

This week was good though. Went by super quick and we got a lot done. We are just trying to meet all of the members for elder esquivel so he can be really familiar with the area before I head out. We've got some time still, but the sooner he gets the hang of things the better. The members love the guy as we would expect. He is a tall, blond, muscular, and happy american. President really is making it up to the city of Lushnjë after condemning them to be cared for by me of all people the last 6 months. I'm sure they grew a lot from it. 

Besnik loves the guy too. For the first time ever, he fed us cantaloupe instead of watermelon. It was insane. Breaking tradition one cantaloupe at a time. Cantaloupe is so good here I could literally just eat a whole cantaloupe every meal.

We had zone conference again which was dope. I wasn't finding any pictures besides a couple I did myself, but we didn't do many anyways. Our camera tech man wasn't there so you can't expect much from the rest of us haha. Zone conference was super good though as always. I love spending time with the other missionaries and just learning from them. A big reason I was called to serve here was definitely because I need to learn all these lessons from these guys. 

We also made some good meals this week because we wanna be healthy. Its bulking season up in here again but this time we are eating more than just chicken, eggs, and pasta. We've been hitting the workouts hard and making gourmet meals in the evenings. One of these said meals was chicken pot pie. The only casualties were eski's finger and the floor. We chillin tho. Chicken pot pie was fire. I'm actually about to eat some of the leftovers right now and I'm stoked. 

Well, have a good week everyone! Love you all!

This is goated gezohemi shume

Hey fam and others that are basically like family, sorry I failed you all last week by not emailing. I try not to drop off the face of the earth like many missionaries do, but I honestly feel like there is not a lot to report on all of the time so my apologies. That's not to say that nothing is going on, but it's kinda just the same stuff over and over again every week. It really is kinda getting monotonous. I have been here in Lushnjë a really dang long time. BUT we find ways to make it interesting. For example, we found a way to play two player catan for comp study and I did a really good job creating the roman empire and completely stifiling the growth of my beloved companion. I've also been trying to do some more work on Facebook and the likes, because even though I'm not super fond of it, if I've been given it as a tool to help spread the gospel I should probably use it for things other than just making sure you're all still alive hahaha. 

Some unique stuff this week did happen though I gotta give it some credit. For instance a member got super mad at me and called me a liar and a deceiver because he came early to our FHE activity out in the town and the old lady told him it wasn't happening because we weren't there yet. He called me to yell at me while we were actually holding this meeting and when I said I needed to hang up to keep the meeting going he said "No I called YOU this call is only done when I say it is!". I humored that thought only for about 10 more seconds before I was forced to hang up on the guy. Gotta love cranky albanians.

Fun fact time: we are eating a ton of watermelon. Every time we have a presidency meeting, brother hazizi brings out half of a watermelon chopped up. Every time we are at Besnik's house, he chops up half a watermelon and makes us eat it all before we can start the lesson or take him to FHE. With those, we usually have this happen to us at least 3 or 4 times a week. Not to mention Besnik has also given us like 5 full watermelons to take home. It's totally chill though because they taste so good. Gotta enjoy it while they're here! This is my last watermelon season in Albania :(( To switch it up today I ate an entire cantaloupe on my own for dinner. Fruit is delicious. 

Speaking of Besnik, he is now tentatively on date to be baptized! I am super excited. We are aiming for the end of October. With this being the case we got permission to take him and his kids with us to a baptism in Berat on Saturday. That was super fun but I had to babysit during a church meeting for the first time in a while. I had to use my legs as a barricade to keep the little kid from leaving the row. It was just like the good old days in church with my young siblings.

But the real reason that this email is goated and that we gezohemi shume is that we got transfer calls. Elder Esquivel is going to return!!! We were mercilessly ripped apart 6 months ago when I got transferred here to Lushnjë, and now we will have the chance to serve together again for the next transfer while he gets trained to become the next branch president. :D Very very stoked. Eski is the best. We will pick him up tomorrow morning. My current companion, Elder Gallagher is actually getting transferred to Thessaloniki in Greece so that's dope too! It was quite the exciting transfer call for the both of us. 

Anyways, things should pick back up a little here in Lushnjë. I'll be needing to get Elder Eski all learned up with the area so he can take the mantle and level up. I'm not suggesting that I'm on a higher level than him because he's literally the coolest guy and best missionary, but he will definitely level up even more than he already has because serving in the branch presidency helps you to grow a lot.

Random fact and thing you can maybe try at home: we ripped off the skin of an old soccer ball today to make a mega bouncy kickball and then used it to play 4 square. It was amazing. One of the best games ever. We used the churchs chalkboard chalk to draw our squares in the parking lot. Very very very dope even though it was like 100 degrees and we were dripping constant sweat. 

Have a super good week and be super dope like always!

Lushnjë Week 23

Lushnjë Week 24