Monday, July 10, 2017

July 10th

Përshëndetje familja!

Well I don't have a lot of time to email this week, but it's been a great week here in Durrës.
So for a quick update on our investigators. Kristi is doing great. He's understanding everything we teach so well and he applies everything to something that he had already learned before. He's so smart and he's studied a ton of different religions. It's cool because for a lot of things we teach him it's something that exists in a different religion, but we're the only one that has the whole truth. We had a lesson about Joseph Smith where we watched the movie about his life, then at the end we were able to testify about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and the Spirit was there so strong, then after that he said that he feels like he has received enough of a spiritual witness that he could testify about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon too now. He also wants to teach people in Italy about these things now too.

Fatjon is in Tirana for now just visiting his cousin, so we haven't been able to meet. But he did call us and talk for a little bit so at least we were able to keep contact.

We've met with a ton of members this week, it was great. The members here make great food, and they give us soo much, I've eaten way too much this week! With us being gone for a week all the members decided that they needed to have us over, so that's been great because that's helped Elder Ellsworth to get to know them a little better and they've given us a lot of advice for what we can do to improve the work, and we've had some powerful lessons with them too. Now we have even more appointments for this week.

We also were able to meet with Andre again this week. He's here with his wife and baby daughter as refugees from Crimea. We had a cool experience with him too, right now he's applying to renew his permit to stay in Albania but he was having a lot of problems with it. For some reason they just kept delaying and not accepting parts of his application. So we met with him and said a prayer together to help him, then the next day he called us and said that the first step of his residency permit just got approved! Now he has to go to Greece to go to the embassy to work on it more, and he was so happy that he invited us to go with him, which we unfortunately had to decline, for obvious reasons. But that was a really cool testimony for the power of prayer.

Another cool experience, we were at this one pasta place that we go to a lot and pretty much every time we go we run into other foreigners. So this time we went and at the table next to us there was a guy with super long black hair who didn't speak Albanian. So we got talking to him and turns out he's here as a freelance photographer, he's living in Australia, his parents are French and Iranian and he's grown up in a bunch of different countries throughout the middle east. So he's a super interesting guy and he ended up asking if we have a church here, so we told him where the church is and he said he would love to come. Then Sunday came and sure enough he came, we had someone translate for him and he stayed for all three hours.

Then today we went up to Shkodër and played some ping pong and pool with Elder Collins, Elder Mero, and Elder Harris. We had a ton of fun and it was great getting to hang out with Elder Mero for a bit. Then we went out to lunch with all the Shkodër missionaries. It was a super fun P-day trip but it took a long time to get there and back. I took a couple pictures with me and Elder Mero, but I don't have time to send those this week. 

So all in all we've had a great week here. I love you all and hope you have a fantastic week!
Mirupafshim
Elder Gardiner

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