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

Mountains are still the best

Sorry to disappoint ladies and gentlemen, but this weeks email will be short and sweet.

Work continues! Not a whole lot changing but we are still heavily working with the branch presidency and getting our active members a little more solid. We actually started doing a family home evening out in the town with all our members there which went really well. Excited to do it again. We are also continuing to meet with Besnik and his wife and all goes well there. 

This weeks pday was the best. We climbed a mountain. There is a very tall and well known mountain here called mount tomorri. Well, legend has it no missionary has ever been able to climb it since it is such a beast. While I didn't get to the high point of the mountain range, we did conquer one of the peaks and wow was it amazing. Had to drive up a terrible dirt road to get to a good starting point, and we kept losing the trail while trying to follow a crappy map I took a screenshot of since maas won't let us have a good GPS map, but it was still amazing. Included are a great number of pictures and videos. It was incredible and gave me high uintah vibes combined with the wellsvilles in how steep they were. My calves are killing me but it was so worth it. We may have been able to peak the high point, but I took us the wrong way and instead we bushwhacked up to a false peak. Still dope. Mountains are always going to be the most beautiful place in the world. The beach is cool, but it gets old. Those mountain sights continue to blow my mind every time. You cannot beat the mountain. 

Have a good week everyone! Hopefully my calves recover soon. 

Photos

Elder Perrine Used Explosion - Bye Bye Shower :((

Well, another week has gone by. Can't say I'm all that surprised at this point. Maybe if I had amnesia it would. Come to think of it life would probably be super exciting and fresh all the time with amnesia. Maybe not though I don't know a whole lot about amnesia gotta be honest. Maybe split personality disorder could be cool.

Yeah clearly I may be losing a little sanity but I'm still here enough to work so I call that a win. Speaking of work thats going decent. We finished our temple class which is dope. Now I can start doing some interviews which is one step further in getting these guys to the greatest place on the planet. When it comes to other work, we have been trying to work with and find new less actives because our old less actives are pretty active now hahaha. Guess we did a good job. We are also still working with Besnik and his family. I am getting excited for them because I think at the very least Besnik and his wife will get baptized together here in a few months. Pray that they will have the opportunity to come to church! As soon as they can consistently and do, they are ready for baptism. 

We had another exchange this week. The zone leaders decided to do a cool mega exchange thing where they split up going to Berat and also here, and then they split up our companionships too so Elder Gallagher went to Berat while we got Elder Perrine and Allred here with my good ol buddy and now ZL Elder Starr! Good exchange. Very good productive stuff went on. We even got to dump wheat grain off of a truck down into these big grates. Wild.

Flash forward to the next morning. Poor Elder Perrine wasn't feeling too good so he was up most of the night. As soon as 6:30 came he jumped right into the shower. About 30 minutes later I'm still kinda out of it (hard morning haha) and I just hear this massive crash and the sound of shattering glass. Going to investigate, I head over to the direction of the noise. Elder Allred had the same idea and checked to see if the mirror in the room I was in fell off or not. Background info about our bathroom: It is very small and the mirror in there is tiny. It is definitely the worst mirror in the house and it would be hard to even get that thing off the wall because its like bolted. My next guess was maybe he had somehow knocked the sink over because that was porcelain, but same problem there. There was no shot. Anyways, my tired brain decided he must have dropped the towel rack or something and instead of knocking to see if my boy Elder Perrine was okay I just shrugged it off. 2 minutes later the door opens and I just hear "you might want to see this". Well, I was wrong about the towel rack. The floor was completely covered in glass shards of all shapes and sizes. Our shower is one of those small ones that has the round glass wall around it. It has two sliding glass doors that meet and seal together in the middle. Apparently, when Elder Perrine went to open the doors after finishing his shower, one of them fell off its hinges and released a portion of its harnessed nuclear energy. The result was more shattered glass I've seen in one room maybe ever except for in movies haha. Anyways, thankfully I came to my senses and I very quickly asked him if he was okay and found that his feet were pretty wrecked from the glass. Not only did a lot probably fall on him, but he had to sweep the glass away with his feet to move across the room to the door and put his clothes on. I spent the next hour or so keeping the mood light and patching my boy up using our really sub par first aid kit. Elders Starr and Allred came in clutch and cleaned up a good amount of the mess in the meantime, but not before getting a good picture of the carnage. The picture really doesn't do it justice, but it's still pretty dope. Morale of the story: I need to get the missionary apartments some better first aid stuff. Also I need to work on my first responder skills. Probably should've gave a knock to check in. In my paranoid mind it could have been a lot worse and hit an artery or something and he could've been mostly unresponsive from shock. The locked door would've caused a problem too, so we are grateful God is looking out for us too. Since it all turned out well though, it makes a great story and something to laugh about with the guy. We are still trying to find a new shower door. 

Anyways thats about it. Went to a cool little waterfall today and did a barefoot hike. Felt nice until I made the wrong trail choice and walked into a bunch of goathead seeds. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Yall are dope. Jave te mbare merre lehte paqe jashte

Photos

 

Spies for Jesus

If you're still reading my emails at this point, you're either one of my parents or have fallen deeply in love with me or something. Hey, I love you guys too, thanks.

Lessons from the week:

- its really hot

- night time field work is the best

- night time runs are the best

- Vladamir/Lenin Putin lives in Lushnje

- Old men are hilarious

Speaking of the Putin guy, we've been spending a few minutes sitting down with the giant congregation of old men playing dominoes the last few days to build our old people connections. This last time we did it though, I sat next to someone who immediately accused us of being spies and then wouldn't tell me his name. Even though we had an old man friend from last time we sat down backing up or validity as normal people, our new friend wasn't convinced. He then pulled out his ID and covered up half of his signature on it so that all that was visible was the name "Vladamir". He then went on to tell us he was Putin and when we didn't believe him he told us he was Vladamir Lenin. That was convincing enough for us. The funniest part about the ID thing though was that he only covered up his signature and not his name where it was actually printed out on the card, so I totally saw his name from the beginning... hahaha.

We had the Berat elders come up to Lushnje for a super exchange because we did some epic service. Wednesday night after family home evening, our good friend Besnik urgently asks us if he can have our help with some fshat work at his place, so we hesitantly agreed though we didn't have much time left in the day. Boy, am I glad we did, because that was the best service I've ever done. We arrive, and turns out he needs us to haul hay, but it's not actually hay it's straw thats been cut from wheat stalks so it's super light and makes us feel super buff and cool. The coolest part though was definitely the tactic of stacking like 8 layers of straw on top of this small trailer behind his tractor. It was nuts and he just tied it all so it wouldn't fall off. The pictures don't even do it justice it was epic. Anyways, with all that explained, of course we called up Berat to come up the next day because we wanted them to take part in the epicness. Not only did we get more epic straw hauling experience, he fed us amazing fshat beef and salad and stuff. He's such a baller.

SIDE NOTE OF IMPORTANCE: Albania doesn't have any dish that is remotely spicy, but apparently they do have some mega hot peppers. Besnik gave us some peppers and so of course I got all excited (because I miss spicy food) and shoved the entire pencil length thing in my mouth and start chewing. The result was that I was crying and almost regretting my very existence for the next 15 minutes. Maybe I'm just not used to spicy food anymore, but that thing was at least a habanero level hot and 3 times the size. The pain just kept getting worse and worse and I had no milk. Besnik was like "bro you're supposed to eat little pieces not all of it at once"

Cool update on the branch: We split into priesthood and relief society for the first time since I got here and it went quite well. Everyone seemed to enjoy it and it seemed to get people more involved. Progress! We also should be sustaining and setting apart a new relief society presidency next week which is dope.

Our teaching pool is still very small. It's basically just Besnik and his family. Other than that we are still trying to work a lot with less actives. Most of the less actives we have been working with have actually become pretty active so thats a win but now we need more less actives to work with hahaha. It's a process.

Yup. Thats all. Catch yall again next week.

Photos

GEZUUUAAARRRR AMERICAAAAA WOOOOO

I need to go to bed so I hope bullet points are good enough this week

• Albanian frogs sounds weird

• Scooped more poop but this time we spread it over an entire field with pitchforks

• zone conference again

• lots of planning and a little stress because

• we had a dope beach activity on Saturday combined with the Fier branch and Vlorë ward and u kenaqem shume. 

• Lushnjë now has a full branch presidency YUS 

• America is the best so we made no bake cookies for everyone in our apartment building so they could celebrate independence day with us

• Beach party grill 4th of July is dank 

• lots of pictures and more to be added once I get them because typically I'm not the one to take them

• love you guys

• have a good week

Photos

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