“The elect hear my voice and harden not their hearts.”

Hello Mom!

Ha ha I love how the first thing you wrote was, “So what is Bible bashing?” That was pretty funny. I can’t believe you’ve never heard of that! Bible bashing is when you just like debate about the scriptures and stuff. Like, “Well this scripture says. . . .” “Oh yeah! Well this scripture says this. . . .” And so on and so forth. So there ya go. That really doesn’t happen a lot in Albania, but it does sometimes. I am a horrible bible basher because I don’t have enough scriptural knowledge to compete, but I guess it’s a good thing not to be a bible basher. Fighting isn’t really what the Lord is going for. Besides, “The elect hear my voice and harden not their hearts.” (Some scripture reference that I can’t remember.) Another interesting thing. Today we went to eat at this place called the Stephens Center. It’s owned by an American I guess and it has something to do with some church organization. Anyway, there’s a bookstore attached onto it and I saw something interesting in there: a pamphlet called “Ç’është Mormonizmi?” (What is Mormonism?) I couldn’t help but read the first page and see some good old false conclusions about us. Oh yeah. Love it.
ANYWAY!

Okay well, I don’t really know what to write for this week. We seriously were blessed. We taught 11 lessons this week compared to like 6 or whatever last week. We met our “other lessons” goal which was really cool and we found 4 new investigators! Although pretty much all of those have already fallen through, but that’s okay. Really we have one that is really good right now. His name is Danieli. I don’t know if I’ve told you about him before, but he was the one that bore his testimony in fast and testimony meeting two weeks ago. Well this week, he couldn’t come to first hour, but I told him to come for second hour and he came! He participated too which was cool. Tonight we’re actually going to be talking with him and committing him to baptism. I am kinda nervous, but really excited for it. I don’t know if he really knows if it’s true yet, though. But this will let him know that we really want him to pray about it to see if it is the right thing to do. He has read a little and he has prayed, but just not specifically to know about the truth. But I have faith that he will receive an answer to his prayers.

That’s basically all the exciting news I can think of right now! Christmas here is weird. I didn’t want to embrace the Christmas season because it was making me sad that I wasn’t at home (and it still does sometimes) but our branch has been preparing for the Christmas party tomorrow and I realized how much I really love the Christmas season. I’ve started singing Christmas songs to myself in the road and tracting and stuff and now I’m kinda regretting the un-embracing of the Christmas season. It’s a great time of year and we always learn a lot. In church on Sunday, one of the sisters in the branch gave a talk about the birth of Christ. She was so excited to give it, she had a smile on her face the whole time. But the thing that touched me was that it was so simple, but so heartfelt. She just said what she knew and like was so excited about Jesus and I don’t know, it was just really awesome for me. She also had the cutest little boy I have ever seen.

Anyway, I will talk to you on Friday!!! =) Let’s just have fun on the phone okay? No crying!! ;)

Love you, mom!
-Elder Swenson