We just had to have something cool set up for the 4th of July.

Hey Mom!

This week was a pretty frustrating week, but then some really good things happened too. That girl that I was talking about last week—the one that was super pumped to get baptized—is now not getting baptized. I guess her cousin just was feeding her a bunch of dumb stuff about the church and just about religion in general and so she decided to listen to him instead of God. But someday she will be independent enough to make the right decision.

We replaced her baptismal date, however, with another one. Donika, the one from Kosovo, is going to be getting baptized at the first of July. We set a date for the 4^th, but it’s probably going to happen on one of the days close to that. We just had to have something cool set up for the 4^th of July. ;) But she’s doing well and we’re going to try to get her hooked up with some of the Albanian members on Facebook so she can have more friends in the church. Also, there is actually a pretty good possibility that she will come down to Tirana to be baptized which is gonna be sweet! I can’t wait and I hope everything goes well. She’s gonna be really busy these next two weeks and so I hope she can make time for God so he can help her out with all this school stuff that she’s gonna have to do.

Yesterday at church was INSANE. We have just recently started our English Course and it ended up being basically just a ton of kids that came. There are older people too, but a lot more kids. So we invited them to come to church! And they came! Well at least quite a few came. The whole front two rows of our chapel were full with kids. There are two super cute little girls named Alisja and Vjollca that have invited like all their friends to English and brought some of them to church. They actually live right by where we live too so we see them a lot just in the road and stuff. They are so funny. But of course they love the sisters like a hundred times more than they like us.

Also Reldi Guga (the 13 year old in that family) brought one of his friends to English and he came to church yesterday! In English on Saturday we talked about the Book of Mormon and gave out copies to people that wanted to learn more about it. I didn’t even notice that Xhevo (his friend) took a book, but me and Reldi sat by him at church yesterday and I asked him if he had read any of it yet. He said, “Yeah!” I asked him how far he got and he showed me that he was already on the fifteenth chapter of 1 Nephi! Yeah. So I’m pretty excited about meeting with him. I told him to come back and talk to me after third hour yesterday so we could set up a meeting before English or something, but he and Reldi forgot and left after class before I could get down there. He’ll be at English on Wednesday though so we’ll for sure be able to set something up with him there. He loved what he read and he had a good time in church. Well, he was kinda bored, but then again so was I. ;)

So Lindsey’s moving out, eh? That’s scary. ;) But exciting at the same time. Hopefully she’ll do well. You guys are gonna be pretty lonely in the house without us! But at least you’ve got a lot of stuff to keep you busy. Or that’s what it sounds like from your e-mail. You’ve got all these wood things from Sher to do. Does that hurt your hands to be sanding that much? It seems like you’d get tired pretty fast from that. But I’m sure she’s very grateful you’re helping out.

Well I will definitely check out the priesthood session talks as soon as they get to us. We get the conference issues like right before the next conference. So I’m excited to read them! We only get to see the two morning sessions here cause the other ones are too late. That would be sweet if we could have like a conference sleepover at President’s house, but for some reason that just doesn’t fly. ;)

Oh! Tell Grandma I got her package and it was awesome! Tell her thank you a hundred times! She sent me her homemade caramels and they were amazing. And some jerky and Mike ‘n’ Ike’s. Good stuff. =) Much appreciated both by me and my comp.

Mom, thank you for your e-mail! I love you so much and I’m praying for you always! Love you!!

-Elder Swenson