Just Before Entering MTC July 27, 2016

While in the MTC, met some friends of friends.

Just before entering the MTC on July 27, 2016

For those of you learning Albanian :) Aug 15, 2016

Besimi në Jezu Krisht është më i rëndësishëm. Ne duhet të kemi besimin për të jemi më afër te Jezu Krishti. Qëllimi ynë si misionaret është ti ftojmë të tjerit të vijnë te Krishti nëpërmjet besimit në Jezu Krisht dhe Shlyerjes së Tij...kështu mënyra të vijnë te Krishti është nga besimi.

(see how the endings of Christ and besimi change? ya all of that depends on where it is, the gender, the plurality, and the definiteness of the word... isn't that great? wow so much to concentrate about when writing simple sentences....)

and...oh, you could send more pics for my picture thing cuz apparently I thought it was to show Albanians but it's really for me to just see pics.  [mom note: so sending 4X6 or smaller photos to put in her happy memories album would be great.]

Continued. Aug 15, 2016

Finally I can go into lessons with no notes. I'm just relying on what I know and dhuraten e gjuhe.  [gift of tongues]  Also trying to learn all these crazy noun conjugations. Oh weird note for all of you that have Librin e Mormonit (that's correct, mom, grammatically cuz it's accusative not nominative like it is on the name of the Book of Mormon in Albanian. 

Ok cutest thing Motra Bland (in my room and district).. her mom sent all of us motrat letters :') it was so stinking adorable. 

Also from nëna Bland: [Mom Bland]  Picture the puzzle of your life...dark blue ocean with dark green grass and light skies with clouds-your perfect heaven with all sorts of colors. Everything you go through in life will paint this perfect heaven so when you have dark times it is just painting the darker colors in the picture but you need all of those different colors to make your heaven perfect. What a sweet way to put it.

For class we were combined with the other Albanian district and Motra Kokol was teaching. She wanted someone to be the missionary for her (roleplay we do it a lot) and after like 3 minutes of silence...she gives me this glare  and I'm like C,farë?!   [What?!]  Fine, I guess I'll do it in front of both of the districts...Wow I was so shaky and scared to do it but like it was flowing out and I just taught her about how Christ knows everything we feel and every struggle (her role was a person who has had a very hard life) and wow it was so cool to feel the power of that simple message as I tried to say it as best as I could in Albanian. I think it is definitely getting better and I'm so grateful. The Hungarians leave today for Hungary...I told them to look for Lee Elder! They are some of my favorite people so it's sad to see them go, but I'm so excited for them and to get our new huns on wednesday and we get to host them! 

Now here's some shqinglish phrases that our lovely distrikt always says...oh dear...

Wow thats the "shumëst po" I've seen all day (seriously Albanians use shumë (much) for everything and somehow we just added it to po (yes) and now it's a thing...

"Top fare" literally translation- ball total or of course baller

"C,farë-ever" whatever

But for real Albanian things that they actually say ...

"yll fare" total star (apparently a hip teenager saying haha)

And they suck in their breath to say po

They also have cool signs for bukur (beautiful-which they use a lot: an ok sign dragged horizontally) and tamam (exactly: an ok sign dragged vertically) so for stuff that they really like they do both to mean exactly beautiful

The Dutchies are jealous of all our cool hands and noises. haha ya it's pretty cool learning all the neat cultural stuff.

The Boys. Aug 15, 2016

If you have any trouble about getting up or the hard work ahead, it's always comforting that the first thing on the schedule is breakfast. Elder Neil L Anderson came to speak to us on Tuesday night devotional. How amazing is that?! It was completely overwhelming when he walked into the room. Everyone was standing and singing the prelude, and the Spirit was so strong. 

I learned this week that our little hour for exercise is waaay important for my sanity. Haha I love playing volleyball everyday (and sometimes I make myself run :/). So we had to go to the doctor so we missed exercise and it was a really hard day....(continued to be)

These are our elderat in our district. Wow! What studs on Pink Tie Sunday.

More from week two. Aug 8, 2016

[mom note: Majlinda Kelmendi made history in Rio de Janiero Sunday by becoming the first athlete from Kosovo to win an Olympic medal. Women's judo]

Cool! Tell me all about the Olympics. Haha one of our investigators/not really he is our teacher said he would tell us all about the outside news like that. Haha but yes love to hear about the Adriatic South Olympians!

siblings

Complicated Albanian Grammar

friend = shok or shoku or shokë or shokët or shokun or shokut or shokëve...yikes!

Gur gur bëhet mur. Aug 8, 2016

Gur gur bëhet mur; mur mur bëhet kalaja.

Love learning the Albanian proverbs. This means rock rock becomes a wall; wall wall becomes a castle. So applicable haha we are feeling like rocks...because we are not that great at speaking this language but the gift of tongues is real! We will be built into castles (hopefully soon) so that we will be able to teach in this crazy language. So you know how in English we say "I hit the rocks", in Albanian you have to change the nouns according to the article before it and where it is in the sentence and how it is used in the sentence. So depending on how many rocks and if they are definite it's a totally different ending...so no, we do not use any articles like a, an, or the...wow this is going to be hard.

Probably the funniest thing this week was when I was a pretend investigator and Elderat (see not the elders but elder-at) were teaching me about the Restoration. My "husband" just died and when he tried to say that family is forever, he said death is forever hahahaha love it. We will get those language mistakes out now so that doesn't actually happen there hopefully. 

We now have 4 elders going to Turkey in our zone. What crazy places our zone is going to! 

Lopë e Shenjtë! [literal translation: holy cow]

Yesterday in mission conference meeting President Burgess's wife told about how her son was one of the first missionaries to go to the Albanian mission! Our whole district looked at each other like yeah!! Shqipëria (makes the eagle flag hand motion).  [mom note: You can see the very common hand motion at second 14 of this video.] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDl9km-nyrU

It was super cool. She said that they didn't even have the Book of Mormon translated into Albanian so they were part of that 6 year process of making it available. These faithful saints in Albania believed in a book that they couldn't even see yet, how amazing! There is a picture depicting a woman who just received a copy of Librin e Mormonit and immediately opened it and starts reading it. Look it up. It is by Winberg. I loved it because those are the people we are going to! How cool!

Also our teacher said that Albanian is one of the oldest languages in the world. 

So in class one day Motra Kokol asked me to be the investigator that she would teach. I started freaking out like, "Wow, I need to be able to understand what she is saying and react like an investigator and know what to say." Well, I'm glad she did this because that was the most amazing experience. I've never quite had that perspective as being the investigator before. She was teaching me as if I had no idea God loved me and that's what she was trying to get across. It was amazing. I hope to be able to teach people that God loves them and that he listens to them this simply and beautifully.

Të dua

Motra Hagërd

More from week one. Aug 1, 2016

I only have so many things that I remember.  It's all been such a whirlwind.  Don't worry.  I'm not super stressed. I haven't even cried at night except in my prayers on Saturday, so that doesn't really count. I guess I cried doing emails, but that's not your fault. Thank goodness I told you the rules but others apparently didn't know that they weren't allowed to make me cry. It's weird to think that this is hard for you. [mpm note:  It was hard letting my baby go.  But I'm doing better now.  :) ]  Tell all my baby 4s that I love them!!

Before Becca left on her mission, she was teaching the 4 year olds in Primary.

I've seen Sister Christensen a lot actually.  Haha the first time I saw her she like screamed (You know how loud she is.)  Haha in the middle of the cafeteria. Trying to eat healthy, but I accidentally spilled 3 rolls on my plate yesterday...at least I'm only eating a little (which could be nerves idk) but at night I'm soooo hungry haha I'll get used to the whole no snacking thing I guess this is good for me. I'm trying my best to learn a lot everyday and as long as I don't think about how much stuff I need to learn I'm fine haha. I have the missionary purpose down so far and I'm gonna work on memorizing more scriptures (5 memorized by next thursday and a lot more vocab to memorize) It's hard that I know more vocab than my distrikt...cuz Idk when they want help or when I'm really not helping them feel adequate but I know we will all be caught up in a couple days so we are good. Also when we are teaching I get too caught up in what I don't know and my companions are so much better at not worrying and just feeling. Like I came out of a lesson and they both were like wow the Spirit was there. and I guess I knew it was there too cuz when I bore my testimony I choked up a little. 

Love you 

Te Dua

Motra Hagërd

More from Week One

First Week of the Mission 8/1/2016

First miracle of the mission was before I even got into the MTC (mission training center). We lost my CTR/ZTD (choose the right/zgjedhin te drejtin) ring in a grass field...searching for it was like a live game of find the CTR ring that they do in those Friend magazines. Holy cow we looked for it for like an hour, but then for some reason even though we had already looked in that spot plenty of times before, Kori found it. It's like all it takes is to have a new perspective (and here's the missionary turning everything into a lesson haha). We can look over scriptures and hymns all throughout our life and still get more out of it, which I did this week. 

So the first day I got there and I was surprisingly calm and not stressed. My companion never actually showed up...so we think she got married haha. So I'm in a tripanionship with Motra Dunn and Motra Suckow. If you want to look up a sister that got a call but then got married feel free and then tell me if she ended up getting a better companion haha. Probably the saddest thing is that Motra Bland who is in our room and district is gluten intolerant!!! Like wow how are you going to live in Albania with all that bread? Broke my heart...

We get to exercise every day so I'm thinking I'll run a mile and then play volleyball because a lot of people in our zone are good at vball! but the handbook said we aren't allowed to be competitive...well I'll work on it.

Our zone consists of the Dutch, the Hungarians, and the Albanians (the newbies), so we all sing and give talks and prayers in our own languages so I can't actually understand half of what is said at sacrament meeting. But all the languages are so cool.

On Sunday we went to choir, and it was so cool and so much more than a regular choir. We sang Lead, Kindly Light. Have you ever actually looked at the meaning of that song? Wow, so powerful! We are asking Christ to lead us everyday. We don't ask to see all of what's ahead of us, only a couple steps. We have put our trust in God as we chose to serve missions for him, and I know that He is leading us.

Another scripture that I have read and known the story all my life is the story of the brother of Jared (Ether 3:4) when he asks God to touch the stones to light them so that they will have light on their journey across the water. We were listening to an amazing talk by Elder Bednar called the Character of Christ and as he talked about this story it totally hit me that we are the stones. We are being touched by God to be a light for others so that they might see out of the darkness.

Të dua! Unë e di që Perendia ka plan për ne.

Motra Haggard

[lyrics for Lead, Kindly Light]

1. 1. Lead, kindly Light, amid th'encircling gloom;
   Lead thou me on!
   The night is dark, and I am far from home;
   Lead thou me on!
   Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
   The distant scene--one step enough for me.
2. 2. I was not ever thus, nor pray'd that thou
   Shouldst lead me on.
   I loved to choose and see my path; but now,
   Lead thou me on!
   I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
   Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years.
3. 3. So long thy pow'r hath blest me, sure it still
   Will lead me on
   O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till
   The night is gone.
   And with the morn those angel faces smile,
   Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!
4. Text: John Henry Newman, 1801-1890
   Music: John B. Dykes, 1823-1876

Week before entering MTC

Mission Scripture

...yea, I say, blessed be the name of my God, who has been mindful of us, wanderers in a strange land.

Now my brethren, we see that God is mindful of every people, whatsoever land they may be in; yea, he numbereth his people, and his bowels of mercy are over all the earth... 

          Alma 26:36-37

 

New Mailing Address...

Sister Rebecca Lyn Haggard
SEP28  ADRTCS
2005 N 900 E Unit 163
Provo UT 84602