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

I Love the Plan of Salvation

Hey Mom!

Yeah I actually knew that Sam was in Hawaii from facebook before the mish. =) Ha ha, but we never really talked or anything which was kinda stupid. But I met some kids in the MTC that went to Highland High and I asked them if they knew him and they said that he was the coolest kid they knew. So there ya go! Apparently he’s still doing well!

I guess January is just the month for birthdays isn’t it? Tell everybody that I said Happy Birthday to them. Or better yet, Gëzuar Ditëlindjen! Më mirë kështu.

Primary is always fun, isn’t it? You guys have a HUGE primary. The primaries here in Albania are just all the kids combined into one class and it’s usually around like 10 kids. But it’s still great. The other elders in 3rd branch got an AMAZING referral off of a primary aged kid. So you should get the class to do missionary work. ;) Speaking of which!! Forever ago, I got a letter from some of the primary kids and it was probably the best thing I have ever received on my mission. It seriously made me and my companion super happy. So tell them thanks if you get the chance. So how old are those kids that you sub for? I love the Plan of Salvation too. I still think that is my favorite lesson to teach. It is just full of hope and happiness. The cool thing is that it’s so simple, but at the same time, we can’t even comprehend everything there is to it. I love the principles that we know because of the restoration of God’s true church.

And speaking of the Plan of Salvation, we taught an awesome lesson on Friday. Me and Elder Jones found a family tracting a couple days before he left Albania and we went back on Friday. The first time we taught them, only the parents were there, but this time both of the boys were there too. So we had a lesson about the Plan of Salvation and the Atonement with the whole family. It was such a great lesson! We got the boys to participate and they seemed to like it! We talked about how we were with God before this life and the reasons why we came to earth. We talked about how God loves us enough to create the world and to give up his ONLY son for us. So that we could all return to him one day and be with all of our loved ones again. We talked about the importance of Jesus Christ and how huge his sacrifice was for us. I don’t think there is any topic that brings the spirit more than the Atonement. At the end of the lesson, Elder Anderson (my new trainee! I’ll talk about him later) added his testimony of Jesus Christ and the power of the Atonement. It was super simple because it was his first day in the country, but it definitely brought power into the lesson. After we finished teaching, we set up a teaching plan with them to come two times every week and so we’ll be going again tomorrow. I can’t wait!

So my new companion. His name is Elder Anderson and he’s from Roy, Utah. He’s really cool and ready to work. Training definitely brings me back to my first days and weeks in the country. I remember how weird it was and how stinking hard the language is. Already he’s helped out with our lessons and on Sunday, the Branch Presidency asked him to bear his testimony in sacrament meeting so he’s definitely getting some good practice with the language in. He’s kinda just a relaxed kid, but really nice and willing to work. Last night, we talked about some of the music we liked back home and just different stuff we liked to do. I also got to see a bunch of his family pictures and friends and stuff. It was really cool. It’s interesting because he actually knows Binoi Tamang (spelling is probably wrong on that) who is our stake mission prep teacher! Small world.

Thanks for your e-mail, mom! I love you!
-Elder Swenson

I’m Training this Transfer.

Hey mom!

That is way awesome that you finished the Book of Mormon! I love that book. I have been reading it in my personal study time and it has been great. I am in Alma right now. I just finished where he gives council to each one of his sons, Helaman, Shiblon, and Corianton. I think those are some of my favorite chapters ever. And it definitely shows what kind of a parent Alma was. It shows how hard it was for him to see one of his children go down the wrong path and how he pleads with him to come back. But it’s just because he knows that Corianton will never be happy without the gospel in his life. All he wants is the true happiness of his children. Kind of like what you were saying with Moroni. He is seeing all these people that might be happy for the two seconds that they indulge in their pleasures, but he knows it can’t last and he’s just begging them to come and find eternal happiness.

So you’re doing the Old Testament in church this year? That is way intense. Ha ha yeah I’ve never gotten even close to reading through the whole Old Testament. But it definitely has some way cool stories in it. Some of the most amazing miracles and people ever.

Well it sounds like you definitely had an eventful New Year’s Eve. But you got to relax, right? And that’s always good. We had a crazy New Year’s here! Every person just lights off as many fireworks as they can get their hands on and it is ridiculous. But pretty cool to see. We were kind of upset, though, because our pronari said that he was going to come open the roof of our 10 story pallat so we could see all of Tirana and watch the fireworks from up there, but he never came!! So I had to look out the back window of our apartment on the 3rd floor. Which basically means I saw none of Tirana, but it was still pretty cool. Fireworks everywhere. I got a good video of it so you can see when I get home. Speaking of which, will you send me that program because I don’t know how to send you photos without wasting like all of my internet time.

That is way cool that Eric is going to Uganda!! Holy crazy sauce! Ha ha that is definitely perfect for him. So make sure you get me that address cause I definitely want to see how he’s doing. How was his mom? That’s too bad you couldn’t see his farewell talk.

Yeah there is an Elder Vail here. There’s actually three Elders here from Alpine. Crazy, huh? But I think Elder Vail heads home in April. He’s really cool and from what I can tell a really good missionary. He had to go back to the U.S. for health reasons, but then they let him come back and finish his mission in Albania!

And as far as investigators go, everybody was out of town last week and it was just kind of a bizarre week. So we should be meeting with Danieli again soon and we actually are meeting tonight with a man named Odise. I can’t remember if I told you about him, but he does something with like the ministry of trade, but at the same time writes children’s books? Yeah it’s kinda weird, but we do half English, half gospel lessons with him. We only got to meet with him once before the holidays though and so he’s finally back in town. We also tracted into a family a couple of days ago and had a really cool lesson with them. The parents were the only ones home at the time, but the mom was like calling the boys to tell them to come home because they were going to have a family night. (Nobody does family night in Albania) So we are excited for them and hopefully we can meet with the entire family this time.

Well I’ll talk to you next week. . . .when I have my TRAINEE!!!! Ha ha I’m training this transfer. Sweet, huh? They come on Friday so I’ll tell you about him next week. I am so excited that I’m not going to the office and that I get to train. So look forward to some cool stories from this next transfer. =)

I’ll talk to you next week. I love you, mom.
-Elder Swenson

Christmas Was Pretty Much the Best

Hey mom!

Yeah Christmas was pretty much the best. I loved it. Ha ha and yeah I was doing fine too until we had to say goodbye! That’s so hard. But it’s good to get back to normal just like you said. It felt really good to just get back to work and try to do something so I didn’t have to think about home. But man that was so fun. But I’m glad you guys had a good Christmas with lots of people! It’s always good to be with others on Christmas. Ha ha I love the pictures of you guys and Bear and all your new stuff. It looks like you had plenty of fun.

Well not much has happened since Friday. =) Danieli came to sacrament meeting again. Hopefully we’re going to meet with him tomorrow or Wednesday before he leaves to Korça for New Year’s. The holidays are murdering missionary work. In our weekly planning this week, we only had one person to plan for because everybody else is gone and we haven’t been able to find anybody else that can meet with us. Most everybody goes home for the holidays and a lot of people are just in Tirana for school or work or something. So this week should be interesting. We’ll see how it goes.

Ha ha funny story. So at the Christmas party, there was this kid there whose name is Hermës and nobody like knew who he was, but he was just acting like a member and he is way awesome and stuff. He came Sunday too and finally one of the other elders was like, “Who are your parents?” trying to like find out who’s kid he was. We found out that he’s not even baptized! He’s not a member! He is just a friend of another boy in the branch. So we sat him down yesterday after church for like 10 minutes and talked about the temple because he wanted to learn about it. So the other elders got set up with some good future lessons in the presence of a member! Ha ha he rocks.

So yeah that’s pretty much all I can think of for this week! Oh, those words. I actually wrote one of those wrong. Its e gëzofsh which means may it make you happy. And “të dua shumë” means I love you a lot! =)

Sorry about the no pictures thing. We kinda did e-mail spontaneously so we didn’t have time to go back to the house to get my stuff. Next week!

I love you, mom!

-Elder Swenson

“The elect hear my voice and harden not their hearts.”

Hello Mom!

Ha ha I love how the first thing you wrote was, “So what is Bible bashing?” That was pretty funny. I can’t believe you’ve never heard of that! Bible bashing is when you just like debate about the scriptures and stuff. Like, “Well this scripture says. . . .” “Oh yeah! Well this scripture says this. . . .” And so on and so forth. So there ya go. That really doesn’t happen a lot in Albania, but it does sometimes. I am a horrible bible basher because I don’t have enough scriptural knowledge to compete, but I guess it’s a good thing not to be a bible basher. Fighting isn’t really what the Lord is going for. Besides, “The elect hear my voice and harden not their hearts.” (Some scripture reference that I can’t remember.) Another interesting thing. Today we went to eat at this place called the Stephens Center. It’s owned by an American I guess and it has something to do with some church organization. Anyway, there’s a bookstore attached onto it and I saw something interesting in there: a pamphlet called “Ç’është Mormonizmi?” (What is Mormonism?) I couldn’t help but read the first page and see some good old false conclusions about us. Oh yeah. Love it.
ANYWAY!

Okay well, I don’t really know what to write for this week. We seriously were blessed. We taught 11 lessons this week compared to like 6 or whatever last week. We met our “other lessons” goal which was really cool and we found 4 new investigators! Although pretty much all of those have already fallen through, but that’s okay. Really we have one that is really good right now. His name is Danieli. I don’t know if I’ve told you about him before, but he was the one that bore his testimony in fast and testimony meeting two weeks ago. Well this week, he couldn’t come to first hour, but I told him to come for second hour and he came! He participated too which was cool. Tonight we’re actually going to be talking with him and committing him to baptism. I am kinda nervous, but really excited for it. I don’t know if he really knows if it’s true yet, though. But this will let him know that we really want him to pray about it to see if it is the right thing to do. He has read a little and he has prayed, but just not specifically to know about the truth. But I have faith that he will receive an answer to his prayers.

That’s basically all the exciting news I can think of right now! Christmas here is weird. I didn’t want to embrace the Christmas season because it was making me sad that I wasn’t at home (and it still does sometimes) but our branch has been preparing for the Christmas party tomorrow and I realized how much I really love the Christmas season. I’ve started singing Christmas songs to myself in the road and tracting and stuff and now I’m kinda regretting the un-embracing of the Christmas season. It’s a great time of year and we always learn a lot. In church on Sunday, one of the sisters in the branch gave a talk about the birth of Christ. She was so excited to give it, she had a smile on her face the whole time. But the thing that touched me was that it was so simple, but so heartfelt. She just said what she knew and like was so excited about Jesus and I don’t know, it was just really awesome for me. She also had the cutest little boy I have ever seen.

Anyway, I will talk to you on Friday!!! =) Let’s just have fun on the phone okay? No crying!! ;)

Love you, mom!
-Elder Swenson

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

Our Area is Way Confusing

Hey mom!

How are ya? It’s great to hear from you again! I’m excited to talk to you guys in like 2 and a half weeks! Elder Hixson is doing better, but we actually just had an emergency transfer and he had to go to Elbasan so my new companion is Elder Jones. He has a lot of time in the country and is going home in January with the next group. This has been pretty stressful actually because of my lack of knowledge of the branch and the area. Our area is way confusing with lots of little windy roads all over the place and I’m just not quite oriented yet. And I don’t know hardly any of our members. We were actually tracting a couple nights ago and we get to this door and I start talking about how we teach people how they can have more happiness and he’s just like, “Well come in!” It was kinda weird and we were like, “Well can we talk about this book and our message?” He was like, “We’ll find time.” So we go in and sit down and start doing some muhabet (conversation). This whole time, his wife is over making byrek at their table. I asked them what their religious background was and what religion they were with right now and he’s like, “Well she’s with you!” A lot of people here just think we’re catholic or orthodox and so I figured he thought we were one of those two and so I didn’t believe him, but then she was like, “Yeah I’m Sister Sulaj.” She has been a member for 11 years!! I had like never even seen her. She is at church every week and so I kinda felt like an idiot not recognizing one of the freaking members. It was a little bit frustrating. But anyway so you can imagine it’s a little bit frustrating not knowing anything about the area and being a co-senior companion with somebody. Please pray for me. I’ve definitely been feeling pretty humble lately and I know I have to rely on the Lord. I definitely need his help.

Tell Grandpa Gëzuar Ditëlindjen (Happy Birthday) from me! He’s still goin’ strong at 86. That is incredible. I hope he has a great birthday. Ha ha man I love Grandpa. And that’s great to hear that Grandma is doing so well. Ha ha when you told me that she showed you she can walk without a cane, it reminded me of President Hinckley. =) But I’m glad she’s following the rules a little better than he did. ;) It sounds like you guys are helping them out a ton and I’m sure they really appreciate that.

Well mom, thanks for the e-mail. I love you lots! I hope you have a great week. Don’t get too stressed out!

-Elder Swenson