It’s spring now!!

Some cool ruins right next to the road in Durrës

A funny little punëtor (worker).

Ç’kemi!

It’s spring now!! We are wearing short sleeve shirts which is pretty awesome. Some of the days are still pretty cold though, but hey, we’re allowed to so we will. But it’s been pretty nice in general. I am now in Durrës which is right on the beach. Well, my area is not the beach, but it’s still pretty close. I’ve heard it’s the mildest climate for the summer, but I honestly don’t think it’s going to make that much of a difference. It is going to get dang hot and that’s just how it goes here in Albania. But right now it’s nice. Also, I get to drive places which is fun. Ha ha I’ve only driven once and I only stalled like eight times on the way to the church! But only once on the way back. =) Improvement. So hopefully I’ll be rockin’ at stickshift by the time I get out of Durrës.

This week has been pretty intense. We got here and there was nothing for us. No investigators. One recent convert. That’s it. So we’ve been doing a lot of finding and God was definitely on our side this week. The first couple of days we spent mostly street contacting and getting phone numbers. Now, usually it takes about seventy numbers to get an appointment to actually go through (exaggeration, but that’s beside the point), but this week we had eight meetings show up from street contacting! And six of them turned into new investigators! That’s probably the most success I’ve had yet on my mission from street contacting.

We had a really cool experience with one of them yesterday. We had set up a meeting with a kid named Xhefer (Jeff-air) after church. It wasn’t a super sure meeting, but he had said he would come and so we had to go wait for him. But what do ya know he showed up. The only problem was he was with two of his friends. You should probably understand that these were 15 year old boys trying to be cool so this did not give me any outstanding expectations for the lesson that we were going to have. It was hard enough to get them to agree to walk to our little meeting house to actually have the lesson. Then on the way there, his friends were making fun of us the whole time and thinking this was the dumbest thing they had ever done in their lifetimes. We got to the house and his friends wouldn’t even come in (which we were actually grateful for). Xhefer definitely did not want to be there and even if he did, the pressure of his friends was not helping us or him out at all. I was really hoping that we would just be able to teach him without him leaving in the middle of the lesson because he thought it was so stupid. I was praying in my heart to be able to get along with him and help him feel something to realize that this wasn’t a joke and it wasn’t something stupid. So we started teaching the lesson and he listened. He didn’t oppose and he didn’t make fun of us. The Lord helped us to keep it short, but at the same time to say what we needed to say. The lesson turned out to be really good. I know he felt something because I felt something. He seemed to take it all in as well. Maybe he was just putting on a good act, but we’ll see. At the end he even said a prayer and agreed to meet with us again. He turned out to be a really good kid when his friends weren’t pressuring him. As he was walking out the door, I told him not to let his friends bother him about it cause I knew they would. He laughed and said, “Okay.” We have our next meeting set up with him tomorrow and I really really really hope he comes. It was just so cool to see the environment completely change because of the hand of the Lord. If Xhefer has been prepared to hear the Gospel, then God will certainly do everything he can to help him meet with us.

Anyway, thanks for everything, mom! Oh and thanks for sending me the recipe! I’m definitely going to try that out. I love you, mom! Tell everyone I say hi.

-Elder Swenson