November 22, 2010

I guess the big awaited news of the week is transfers. We got the big call this week determining our fate for the next 6 weeks and...Motra Leit is staying in Vlore with ME!!!!! We were super excited to hear that and celebrated with homemade Root Beer (super delightful)! I was a little nervous because that will make almost a year for me here and I was thinking my time might have run up, so we were quite relieved to get that news.

As for Motra Korita we still don't have much new news. We had a two day training this week in Fier and Motra Korita was able to come down with President Neil and came home with us for a one night slumber party, but had to go back to Tirana afterwards. Her leg isn't doing much better, in fact I thought her limp looked even worse, which was super sad. She went to see some better doctors in Tirana and they did a new x-ray of her foot and ankle. Apparently she is missing a bone in her ankle, or it is deformed or something like that, plus like some kind of cracked something in her knee. I can't imagine how the Doctor here missed that...unless it had something to do with her 5 second glance of the x-ray against the window and that was it. Anyway, I know my description of her diagnosis isn't that accurate, but that is all I really could understand with my measly Albanian. So the verdict is still unknown, but she has at least another 2 weeks in Tirana if not more.

As for our work here in Vlore, it continues to flourish. Satan has kinda been having a heyday causing a few obstacles/road bumps with our baptisms planned for the coming weeks, but I pity the obstacle in the path the Lord,of Motra Leit and I. We will Fitojme! To explain a little...

Power Outage....more flooded streets within just the last 7 minutes. I love Albania! I also love that Gmail automatically saves my email draft...thank goodness!

Anyway, so Denisa who is supposed to get baptized this Saturday, as well as her younger sister who is getting baptized next month, both need a parents signature of consent. And that is a lot easier said than done...especially here. Their mom knows that they have been coming to our English classes and that everyday they come to the church to learn, but when they mentioned baptism she say no way. As for their dad, like most Albanian men, if he even knew they looked twice at some church he would go crazy. I told Denisa that we could come meet with her mother and maybe answer any questions she might have, but she said that her mom doesn't even want to talk to us. And I'll be honest I'm pretty scared to meet with her myself...I'm not exactly the most convincing person. Still, Denisa is sooo excited for her baptism, as are we, so we are just praying for a miracle and I think it will all work out.

Our second major obstacle is for Kozeta. She too needs permission, but from her husband. He officially thinks she is crazy to want to be baptized and is being pretty difficult. In general though he is a much more understanding and lenient Albanian man, so I know that he will eventually give her permission, even if he doesn't like the idea. This week Kozeta told us all the reasons he gave her for why she shouldn't be baptized. It just so happened that right before our lesson with her I had read and printed her off a copy of Elder Uchtdorf's talk "Faith of Our Fathers" which addresses every concern that her husband brought up. Still waiting to see if it helped. In the meantime though, Kozeta continues to be super amazing. This week she told us how one day she was looking for half an hour or so for something on the Internet but just couldn't find it. Finally she just decided to pray, even though it was such a simple thing. She said right after she prayed she found just what she needed, and she was so surprised at how effective praying really can be. Oh I love that woman!

Wow, sorry that kinda sounds like depressing stuff, but really we aren't depressed at all, because we know everything will work out.

So I had another first this past week. Unless I am forgetting some childhood experience that my mind refuses to remember, I'm pretty sure I experience my first time getting in trouble and being lectured for being out too late. Either I was just that amazing of a teenager, or else my parents are just super cool...or maybe a combination of the two. Anyway, it was about 8:30pm and we found ourselves about an hour away from our house up in the mountains after the buses had stopped and the taxis had all gone home. It actually isn't that unusual of an occurrence because one of our investigators lives out there and can only meet at night, and I wasn't worried because we would still be home before 9:30pm if we walked. Granted it is dark, but that is just life here because nice lighted streets are hard to come by in Albania. Anyway, of the non-member parents of one of the girls from church drove by and recognized us and insisted that we get in the car and they drive us home. I at least knew who they were, although we aren't exactly on any kind of name basis. Anyway, I got the whole lecture about being out this late from them the whole ride back to our house. It was quite entertaining!

I hope you all have a super amazing Thanksgiving! We have so much to be thankful for. And know that I am super grateful for all of you and your love and support and prayers. And I'm exceedingly grateful to be a missionary in Albania! It is the best!

Much Love and Misses