What up?
Well there’s pretty much one highlight about this week and his name is Xhevo. It’s actually like Xhevahir, but Xhevo is shorter and easier. =) So you’ll remember our referral family that we have been teaching, the Guga’s. Well Reldi Guga is pretty much the only one that hasn’t dropped us yet and he comes to English course every week, too. Well this last week he brought a friend, Xhevo, who is twelve and awesome. I think I mentioned how he had read a ton last week? But anyway, we met him after English on Wednesday and he is really excited to learn more. We took him to a baptism on Saturday which was an adventure. On the way there we were talking a little bit about baptism and stuff and he was like, “Do you know how mad I am that I’m not baptized?!”
“. . . . .Uh. . . .how mad?”
“Really mad!”
We were both thinking to ourselves, “Well we can probably do something about that!” =) he loved the baptism and he wants to get baptized really bad. The only concern we have is being able to meet with his parents cause we don’t want to be working with a twelve year old without his parents even knowing who we are or where he’s going on Sundays and stuff. So we’re trying to set up a meeting with his family this week and hopefully we can get them interested as well. I’m really looking forward to working with this kid.
Donika, the young woman from Kosovo, is doing well also. She is super busy right now finishing school and working and still she made time to meet us this week. Our internet was down at the mission home so we had to do our lesson at an internet lokal which is always kind of awkward. It’s fine for just talking to somebody, but for a gospel lesson it’s a little interesting. For one, only one person can talk cause they don’t have splitters and also there’s a lot of random people that can hear you and, of course, the wonderful music they always play at the lokals here. We were supposed to meet her again yesterday, but she got emergency called into work and so we’re meeting her tonight. She’s not going to be baptized right on July 4th because the couple that’s in Kosovo right now is going to be out of town. She doesn’t want to get baptized without them there which is understandable because they have helped her out a ton and been a huge support. But it will probably just be later that week or we might have to push it back one week because it’s really hard for her to meet often. But she is working hard to meet us and you can really see her desire. We’ve been keeping her in our prayers and so I have confidence that the Lord will bless her and she will do the right thing.
This week we held Zone Conference. Stressful and tiring as always, but very good and uplifting as well. President talked a lot about resolve and determination. Our mission has been doing horribly at finding new investigators and obviously when you don’t find anybody you’re not going to teach anybody and you’re not going to baptize anybody. President issued a challenge for us to resolve that going an entire week without finding a new investigator is unacceptable and to do whatever it takes to find at least somebody. I really like that challenge. So we’re going to be doing that for sure!
We gave a training about working with the branch for fellowshipping and retention which is kind of ironic because I’ve never done anything of the sort before the mission. But it actually wasn’t too bad. The Preach My Gospel DVD’s had a really good example of it and so we figured we would just ask ourselves, “Okay, what do we have to do to become like this?” It’s not gonna happen overnight, but there’s definitely a few things that missionaries can start doing right now to increase our effectiveness and unity with the branch. It was actually really helpful for me to study and see how branch councils and missionary correlation meetings and other such things work. I think it would be awesome to have a calling that has to do with missionary work.
So maybe I should answer some of your questions now? English course is every Wednesday and Saturday. They usually run for about two or three months and then we close them down and try to re-open them to get some new people. Ha ha normal transfers are every six weeks. Well actually there are two transfers every 13 weeks so one is six and one is seven. Every 13 weeks new missionaries come and we call that the “big transfer” whereas the other one is usually pretty small and not that many changes are made so we call it the “small transfer.” There is one Zone Conference every transfer.
Thanks so much for sending that package! I’ll be waiting for it. =) Speaking of which, I don’t know if I told you this, but I got Grandma’s package that she sent and it was awesome so make sure you give her a big thank you from me and Elder Monson.
Sounds like you guys had a fun time at Strawberry! Well I guess more of an adventure is what you’d call it. But it’s good to have those every once in a while. The pictures are great. Especially the ones of Bear. I laughed pretty hard at him and his sleeping bag. It also sounds like you have another adventure ahead of you at
I love you, mom. Thanks for your e-mail and the pictures. Have a great week!
-Elder Swenson
No comments:
Post a Comment