January 31, 2011

Happy Last Day of January!
Sorry but this is going to be a short one today because we used our P-Day for a District Trip to a place called Gjinar, which is a tiny little little village out a ways from a city called Elbasan. So we mostly used up most of our day, including most of our email time, out loving life in the middle of nowhere. It is so great being in the oldest District in the mission, cause the newness of seeing big tourist sights in Albania has kinda worn off for all of us and we just want to hang and enjoy being people. I am not sure if that makes sense, but this is what our trip consisted of so that you get an idea.
We drove out to the middle of nowhere and then hiked a muddy trail back into a little forest in the mountains to a pond where we skipped rocks and just chilled. Then we made a little campfire (good thing we had those Eagle Scouts with us!) and roasted hot dogs. I even gave in to peer pressure and ate 1/3 of a chicken hot dog that I charred black hoping to burn off all those unknown chicken parts inside. Then we had a snow ball fight in the snow up there in the forest until our hands were raw. Then we hitched our way back home. Yeah, we are pretty pleased right now with our very untypical trip that we had. Sorry that had nothing to do much with missionary work, but its some of those sideline joys that just make my life so much better.

On the missionary work side of things: We were able to take a young girl who is 14 out with us on Saturday who was recently baptized, because she wanted to kinda have a missionary experience. She just loved being in the lessons and says she wants to spend all her free time coming with us and can't wait to go tracting with us next Saturday. At first she said she would just kinda listen in on the lesson since it was her first time, but she didn't make it through the first lesson without asking if she could say something or share her testimony. It was so great. At first I was thinking it was a little sad that she told me at the end of the day that this was the coolest and happiest day of her life (and it actually was a pretty normal/lame missionary day for us), but really I love seeing her excitement for missionary work, and it inspired me to want to love it EVEN more!

Love and miss you all tons and thanks so much for all your support and prayers!

Love,
Motra Hall