The work. . . .is hard.

Hey Mom!

Our thanksgiving was pretty good. We all went to the mission home for thanksgiving where we had turkey and stuffing and all that good stuff. The dessert was supplied by the missionaries and there was a TON of it. It was good. =) So I definitely ate quite a bit for thanksgiving don’t worry. Yours sounded fun. The train looked way good! I’m jealous I wasn’t able to help. Ha ha that’s hilarious that there was another dog in our house. I can’t even imagine that and what Bear would do. That’s funny. I’m glad you had a bunch of people over too. I think that’s awesome. It sounds like a party that I missed out on!

And no I don’t think I was better with the language than I thought. I’m pretty sure I sucked. =) But it’s getting better. I can understand now and I can definitely communicate, but it’s still hard and I still make lots of mistakes. I have definitely seen that the language is going to be something that will keep improving my ENTIRE mission. There’s not going to be a point when I’m like, “Yeah I can speak Albanian.” There’s just way too much to learn. But it’s an awesome language and I’m excited that I will be able to speak decently after the mish. It’s a good thing that Albanian is used so much in the world. ;)

The work. . . .is hard. We as of right now have no progressing investigators. It didn’t help that my companion has been sick for the last 3 days, but hopefully we’ll get things back up to par quickly. We do mostly finding. It is really difficult because like one out of 5 doors actually answer and then divide those by like a million and that’s how many people let us in. So it’s really frustrating, but I’m trying to keep my head up. It’s funny because at district meeting this week, we were each assigned to give a 5 minute doctrinal lesson on whatever we wanted. It turned out that everybody else had chosen something that had to do with patience. . . .except for me. Ha ha I chose to talk about goals and setting good goals. But I figured that everybody else chose something about patience because I needed to hear that super bad. Ha ha I’ve been getting frustrated a lot lately because it feels like absolutely nothing is moving forward. But I have to take a step back and realize that it’s not really out of any fault of ours. We have been working hard and doing what we’re supposed to be doing, but people keep not showing up for meetings (like ridiculous amounts of people), and nobody’s answering their doors. So I’ve had to learn a lot of patience with myself and with the Albanians. Ha ha we’ve had some pretty annoying conversations at people’s doors this week, but that’s okay. Now that being said, I still am having a great time and trying my best and learning. One of the things that I have enjoyed most is spending most of my personal study time reading the Book of Mormon. These last couple days have been A.W.E.S.O.M.E. I just read like 2 Nephi 28 – 32 and oh my gosh those are awesome chapters. Some of my favorite by far in the Book of Mormon. Nephi just goes on this crazy prophesying rage and it is sweet. Love it.

So I did get some pictures off to you this week! Yay!! I actually set a new goal for myself to take a picture everyday so we’ll see how that goes. And I took a picture with the tie for Tim’s birthday with our English class, but you can’t really see the tie so I had to take a lame one of my doing some Bible bashing. . .with the Book of Mormon. But yeah sorry those took so long to send. I had some troubles the last couple of weeks and I could not send them, but it should be good from here on out.

Oh! Before I go, tell the Brigg’s a HUGE thank you! They sent me a Christmas package which was way too much for them to do. Tell them that I am super grateful to them. That made my day. And I’m eagerly awaiting yours. =) And don’t worry about the forgotten stuff, it’s all good! I will try to get your package sent next week. I finally finished getting the stuff today.

Well I love you mom! You have an awesome week! We’ll talk soon!

Love,

-Elder Swenson