She chooses to laugh instead of cry.

Ç’kemi!!

Yeah gëzuar ditëlindjen means happy birthday. “Më mirë kështu” means “better like this” or like “better this way.” And yes I did get a package from the Call’s for Christmas!! It was great and it’s actually probably gonna help out a ton! I was trying to think of a way to organize some good scriptures for the principles we teach so that took a lot of the thinking out of it. ;) I think I sent them a post card. . . . .maybe not. Crap I can’t remember. But if they haven’t gotten it yet maybe not. Apparently the Albanian post system is really sucking it up right now. But what can you do?

Also that reminds me! So you know how on Christmas you told me you sent me a CD with all of our favorite hymns on it and I didn’t know which one it was? Yeah that’s because I only had one of the two packages!! The other one came a couple weeks ago and I just kept forgetting to say thank you in my e-mails. I’m sorry! So I will say it now. Thank you so much!! We just barely made use of the hot chocolate actually. It was great because I made it and I guess my companion doesn’t like mint and chocolate put together and he didn’t know it was gonna be minty so he couldn’t drink it. So I had a bunch of dang good hot chocolate. =) Thanks for all the stuff you sent me! I usually wear those under armour things like everyday now. Well at least the tops. They are great. And I think the absolute best thing ever is the music. I love the music. And my companion brought a CD player that actually works. It is so good. We’ve even gone to sleep to it a couple of times.

You guys are doing Trek this year?! That is cool. ;) Ha ha well maybe. Good luck!

No, nothing ever happened with Danieli or Odise. Danieli just wouldn’t ever set a time to meet. So we decided to give him a break for a while and try again and if it doesn’t work then, we’ll leave him in the former investigators section of our Area Book and when he’s ready, the missionaries will try him again. Odise has been helping out with the flooding up in Shkodër and so we haven’t even met him besides that one time a while ago. But we did find a new woman named Ingridë this week. We’ve met her twice and it’s been pretty good. She is of the opinion that she can’t change her religion when she’s 54 years old, but we’re working with her. I love being at her house cause everybody there is just so easygoing and happy. She chooses to laugh instead of cry. Life is a lot better like that. She is going to be hard to get to come to church and stuff because she hasn’t been able to leave her house for the last 3 months, but we know that God provides a way for those who are trying to obey his commandments. He will do the same for her and we are going to do whatever we have to do to help her.

Okay thank you for sending that thumb drive! I will try to send you a pic with me and my companion today, but we’ll see how it goes ha ha.

I love you, mom!
-Elder Swenson