Random Thoughts Oct 10, 2016

elders: xhonej, farnworth, ingrëm, schneider, klejtën, boin (have no idea how to spell any)

sisters: me, decoursey, uilli

He loved the unlovable.  Great talk from General conference. 

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2016/10/no-greater-joy-than-to-know-that-they-know?lang=eng

and Elder Ballard, To Whom Shall We Go?

loved when he kept saying ku...where can we go? where?

and then at the end he says kush...who can we go to? loved that (and i even understood that yesterday when it was in albanian)

and Fourth Floor Last Door missionary talk in womens conference by Uchtdorf (Ykdorf? haha)

I Will Not Lose You. Oct 10

So get ready for the worst thing I had to eat this week...yep a chocolate brownie...oh man it was so chocolatey and huge. I just thought that it was pretty weak that that was the thing that i struggled most with eating. 

Best food thing: suflaçes oh my goodness. they're so good. it's like meat in a pita bread thing and there's french fries in it! oh yes so good :)

So with the language....a lot of people know a little bit of english, and it's just really depressing when they start talking to you in english...like dang it, i lost before I even tried. A vash a vash...

General Conference was in Albanian.. the gift of tongues works because during Elder Christofferson's talk I totally understood everything...oh ya it might be because the translater like stopped...but hey I might not have understood everything but what I thought when I was trying to understand was that-it doesn't even matter if what i think they say is what they actually say because if I hear a good message then that's what I was supposed to hear right? Favorite thing was from Elder Nattress's talk when he was talking about what his mom said "I will not lose you" aww :) We don't want to lose anyone. One of our investigators Anisa said this week that she has everything she wants but she still feels alone. Literally like did you actually just say that? I'm so excited to let people know that they are not alone. Because we don't want to lose anyone. <3

Motra Haggard

First Day in Albania Oct. 3, 2016

K so the first day in Albania lemme tell you I had been awake for a straight 34 hours (well like two of those I managed to sleep on the planes). 14 hours of plane rides and 7 hours of lay overs. When we got here I got a temporary trainer and we went out to street contact. We also went to teach a lesson to a member Zana and she has a baby 9 months old :) oh so cute. Oh and it was me and Motra Miles with the trainer and the trainer was on the phone and then we saw some guys up in a house waving and pointing. I thought they were motioning the shape of the book of Mormon so I held it up and they were like ya ya. And we told the trainer and she was like no they are hitting on you. Oh poor americans have no idea what is going on. Oh and we are in the huge city of Tirana and the trainer just walks right into the road haha. Oh the road situation is so funky. Like everyone just dodge cars as we walk across. 

So my first area is Durrës. Beautiful beach city. And yes I am in the one trio that we knew would be. So our trainer is Motra Uilli (willey) and my other companion is Motra Dekorsi (DeCoursey). Motra Willey is super good, she has been her for a year so thank goodness she has gotten things down. Motra DeCoursey is great too. She is the 24 year old which is cool because that's the same thing that my mom did when she went on a mission. Elder Schneider is also in Durrës with his trainer Elder Xhonej (idk how to spell it in english) but he is from New Zealand. So that's our whole district. Its super fun.

We have one of the two church buildings in the mission. It is great! And we actually have an organized ward with a productive ward council. We met with the Stake President and had lunch at his house with his kids. They set up a dinner calendar for the missionaries. How cool is that?? Basically it's like enjoy (it was very hard to spell enjoy haha) now cuz we are never going to have a ward like this again. I am excited for the holidays because the ward council said that we are going to help with the halloween party cuz we are american and we actually celebrate it haha. Also the stake president and motra uilli told us to get super excited for christmas because christmas in Durrës is super cool. Can't wait!

Oh and Elder Xhonej was driving us to the stake president's house for lunch and he's from new zealand so he was driving for the first time on the left side of the car. it was super funny...and scary haha jk he kept asking elder schneider "Ke besim?" [mom note: Do you have faith?]

Our investigators are Anisa and Blerina. I love actually teaching to real investigators. It is super fun.

I can't understand anything but eh ya know :) i just smile at people as they talk to us. They talk super slurred and quiet so if i knew what they were saying first of all i could starting to try to figure out what the meaning of the words were. but the cute old ladies are so cute. they just keep saying marshalla which idk what it means but hey idk. Love them!

So yes I have tried dhallë [buttermilk] but apparently the one we tried is nothing compared to the homemade ones...so the worst is yet to come. it's not that bad as a little sip but to drink the whole cup-that's the difficult part. yikes. but we also tried byrek which was good. and the fruits are good. idk what kind of persimmon we ate at grandma's but whoa they are actually good here haha. Ya well life is good. Life is an adventure.

Motra Haggard

[mom note:  First PDay..oh ya we went to the beach today and got to see it then had ice cream and byrek. oh and the one thing else the member who fed us on sunday gave us was these little coconut ball things that were like wafer balls with creamy white chocolate inside. It was super good.]

shiko how beautiful our apartment is!! Ya way getting spoiled for the first transfer. And wow ya pics from plane and on the beach of durres. look for the big D for Durres on google maps cuz we went to it. thats the stairs looking thing on the beach that apparently is in the shape of a D as a helicopter view.

oh ya and our shower is so cool haha and you flush the toilet with a horse hah [mom comment:  and notice the bidet toilet next to it.  is this a 5 star hotel??  spoiled is right.]

oh boi and i cant wait to start driving here oh scary...literally the APs taking us from the airport...well here we go oh wow you are going fast and oh wow there's a person crossing the street and nobody is slowing down...and they don't stay in lanes here...ah what an adventure...i definitely don't wanna drive...o bobo