The Spirit Rocks!

Hey Mom!

I hear it’s been pretty cold/snowy? That’s pretty cool! We don’t have snow here at all. Well there’s some up in the mountains, but like none at all in Tirana. Just freezing cold rain. Mmmmm. . . .my favorite! =)

Okay pictures. Ha ha and that goal went really well. . . . . .for that week. =) Sorry! But we just went on a district trip so I will have some more for you next week! And I had a couple more besides that and I’ll take some more this week.

Elder Jones is from Texas and yes I will be with him until he goes home in January. He’s pretty cool. He is really good at the language which is cool. And he isn’t already home ya know? He’s still gonna be in Albania on his mission for the rest of his time here so that is really helpful. And he has weights so I get to lift in the mornings. =)

As for the area, yeah it’s not too bad. But that’s probably just because I’m not doing too much exploring yet. I’m picking areas and working them until they are done and then moving to another area. So I should learn some more pretty quick here.

Ha ha it’s funny you asked that because we live right next to Kolonat which is the Albanian rip off of McDonalds. But I’ve heard it’s actually really expensive and it’s not like amazing or anything so that is weird. I’ll take a picture of it and you can see how much of a rip off it really is. It’s pretty funny.

The work is going well. We did a lot of finding this week, but I think it’s going to pay off because we have a lot of people that we should be meeting with this week. We even have two lessons planned for tonight! I haven’t gotten two lessons in a day since last Saturday. So kind of a cool experience. It was really simple, but nonetheless, cool. We were tracting in an area I call the “triangle” and for some reason I just remembered that there was a pallat over in another area that we hadn’t finished yet. The thought wasn’t that we should go there, it was just that it wasn’t finished. But that thought just like stuck in my head so after we finished the pallat we were in, I said to Elder Jones, “Hey let’s go finish this other pallat.” We headed over there and sure enough we got in the door at a guy named Kushtrim’s house. We taught a good lesson and got him to say a prayer at the end of it. He didn’t agree to meet with us on a constant basis, but it was a good lesson and I think that I had that thought for a reason. It was just interesting to me how the spirit wasn’t like telling me to do something in this case. He just put a thought there. The spirit rocks.

Alright so byrek is this Albanian food that’s just like really flaky bread stuff with other stuff in the middle. It’s like a turnover except with cheese or spinach or onions and tomatoes inside. They also have some with meat in the middle too. It’s pretty good. It’s not my favorite Albanian thing though. And yeah muhabet basically means small talk, but they use it in other ways too. But most of the time, small talk.

I love you mom! I can’t wait to talk to you!
-Elder Swenson