So here's my week...
We helped one of the members sing Be Still My Soul. They just translated it and they are going to sing it in Vlore next week as a stake choir. Sister Z and I going to Vlore next Sunday to sing a special arrangement of Praise to the man with 6 other missionaries. I'm super excited to go to Vlore. It's like 5 hours and it will be a super fun road trip! We went with the relief society president to visit a member. We knocked on the wrong door...they don't have addresses here. We had an encounter with some guy. Then we knocked on the right door in the next building over, and had a lesson. Most people in Tirana live in apartments. There are a lot of private houses though. People usually only live on one floor of the house and someone else lives on another floor. Every house has a gate, but no one has grass.
Thursday I had made cookies so I gave 2 of them to Anthony because he loves chocolate chip cookies. Usually he is polite and waits to eat them until later or share them with his family. This time though he was super excited and just unwrapped them and took a giant bite out of them. I was super surprised. He couldn't talk because he was laughing so hard at the face I made and the fact that he had an entire cookie in his mouth. It was quite hilarious honestly...even though I was slightly concerned he was going to choke. We went as a group to the same cafe we went to the week before. I got the right kind of hot chocolate this time. However, it was so sweet I couldn’t finish it. It was better when we mixed the sweet cocoa with the bitter chocolate. They walked us back home like they always do to make sure that we are safe.
Friday we literally spent the entire day inside. We went to zone training in the morning which was really good. We had lunch with our zone and did weekly planning. We had to do special goals for weekly planning. Then we did daily planning, and it was time to go home, not joking. It literally took that long to do everything. It doesn't usually take that long.
Saturday we had futbol in the morning, then choir, studies, and institute. We didn't even have enough time for lunch break. After institute we used our lunch to play chess. I didn't do so well, but Aaron helped me so I wasn't destroyed so badly. Now I owe Anthony some hot chocolate because he beat me at chess. We had a lesson scheduled but our investigator didn't show up so we just did Albanian language study.
Sunday we had church, then studies, then lunch. We had our first lesson with Elder Verushi's cousin who is investigating the church. Then we went with the Relief Society president to find a recent convert, it turns out our convert moved to Greece. Then we went to the RS president’s house and she made us a whole dinner. It was really great.
Today was a pretty good pday. We played basketball in the morning with everyone and we all went to lunch which was really good. We went bowling with Sister Henderson and Sister Foller and decided to play pool. I thought I could redeem myself from losing at chess by playing pool. We only played 9 ball though.
This week we did a lot of finding and only had a total of 11 lessons including English, recent converts, members, and 1 investigator lesson. It is a little discouraging. We only have 1 investigator and we possibly lost her. She is Elder Verushi's cousin and he is starting to tell us how to teach her and we’ve only had one lesson with her. She's in our ward, but they may move her somewhere else. The mission president gets to make the final decision.
People say that Americans are loud, well I think I am actually really quiet here. I get confused sometimes because I think people are angry at each other when they are just talking. They talk loud here and smiling is normal. They LOVE Americans. We get personal treatment because people respect Americans. I think it's the only place in Europe that does that. We do get people sometimes that just want to meet with us, but they aren’t interested in hearing the Gospel. If we went with people every time we get asked if we want to "pi a kafe" we wouldn't have to buy food ever.
I hope that this week we can find some new investigators. This trial of our faith has gone on long enough. I want to find someone to teach so badly. I love you all more than I can express. I would cross the world for you. I love you all to Gallifrey and back!!
Love,
Motra Xhohansen
We helped one of the members sing Be Still My Soul. They just translated it and they are going to sing it in Vlore next week as a stake choir. Sister Z and I going to Vlore next Sunday to sing a special arrangement of Praise to the man with 6 other missionaries. I'm super excited to go to Vlore. It's like 5 hours and it will be a super fun road trip! We went with the relief society president to visit a member. We knocked on the wrong door...they don't have addresses here. We had an encounter with some guy. Then we knocked on the right door in the next building over, and had a lesson. Most people in Tirana live in apartments. There are a lot of private houses though. People usually only live on one floor of the house and someone else lives on another floor. Every house has a gate, but no one has grass.
Thursday I had made cookies so I gave 2 of them to Anthony because he loves chocolate chip cookies. Usually he is polite and waits to eat them until later or share them with his family. This time though he was super excited and just unwrapped them and took a giant bite out of them. I was super surprised. He couldn't talk because he was laughing so hard at the face I made and the fact that he had an entire cookie in his mouth. It was quite hilarious honestly...even though I was slightly concerned he was going to choke. We went as a group to the same cafe we went to the week before. I got the right kind of hot chocolate this time. However, it was so sweet I couldn’t finish it. It was better when we mixed the sweet cocoa with the bitter chocolate. They walked us back home like they always do to make sure that we are safe.
Friday we literally spent the entire day inside. We went to zone training in the morning which was really good. We had lunch with our zone and did weekly planning. We had to do special goals for weekly planning. Then we did daily planning, and it was time to go home, not joking. It literally took that long to do everything. It doesn't usually take that long.
Saturday we had futbol in the morning, then choir, studies, and institute. We didn't even have enough time for lunch break. After institute we used our lunch to play chess. I didn't do so well, but Aaron helped me so I wasn't destroyed so badly. Now I owe Anthony some hot chocolate because he beat me at chess. We had a lesson scheduled but our investigator didn't show up so we just did Albanian language study.
Sunday we had church, then studies, then lunch. We had our first lesson with Elder Verushi's cousin who is investigating the church. Then we went with the Relief Society president to find a recent convert, it turns out our convert moved to Greece. Then we went to the RS president’s house and she made us a whole dinner. It was really great.
Today was a pretty good pday. We played basketball in the morning with everyone and we all went to lunch which was really good. We went bowling with Sister Henderson and Sister Foller and decided to play pool. I thought I could redeem myself from losing at chess by playing pool. We only played 9 ball though.
This week we did a lot of finding and only had a total of 11 lessons including English, recent converts, members, and 1 investigator lesson. It is a little discouraging. We only have 1 investigator and we possibly lost her. She is Elder Verushi's cousin and he is starting to tell us how to teach her and we’ve only had one lesson with her. She's in our ward, but they may move her somewhere else. The mission president gets to make the final decision.
People say that Americans are loud, well I think I am actually really quiet here. I get confused sometimes because I think people are angry at each other when they are just talking. They talk loud here and smiling is normal. They LOVE Americans. We get personal treatment because people respect Americans. I think it's the only place in Europe that does that. We do get people sometimes that just want to meet with us, but they aren’t interested in hearing the Gospel. If we went with people every time we get asked if we want to "pi a kafe" we wouldn't have to buy food ever.
I hope that this week we can find some new investigators. This trial of our faith has gone on long enough. I want to find someone to teach so badly. I love you all more than I can express. I would cross the world for you. I love you all to Gallifrey and back!!
Love,
Motra Xhohansen