February 19

Përshëndetje familja!

Well this has been an interesting week. To get the big news out of the way first, I think I got the flu. I got way sick on Saturday, and I'm mostly better now, but my companion's sick too. But all in all we're doing ok.

In other news Shkodër is really cool. It's really different though, I feel like I'm back at the beginning of my mission language wise. I can pretty much only understand the last half of every sentence, if I'm lucky. Luckily some of my companions have spoken a little bit of gheg for me so I know how it works I just need to work on hearing it. It's kind of funny, every once in a while my companion, who's been serving here for a while now and is Albanian, also doesn't understand people sometimes, so that makes me feel better.

The people here are cool though. We have a bunch of investigators, but they're all super busy, so we're working on being able to meet with all of them. A ton of people said they could meet on Saturday, but then we were sick on Saturday so that didn't happen. But the members here are super great. There are not a lot of active members, but the ones we have are super solid. Unfortunately I wasn't able to meet a lot of them because we were too sick to go to church, but I'm excited to meet more this week.

One cool person here is Eva. She's a nonmember who comes every week just to play the piano for us in Shkodër. She's not interested in learning more about the church, but she's super nice, and I'm sure that if she keeps coming one day she'll find the thing that will help her understand it all and join the church. She's a professional piano player and can easily sight read pretty much all of the hymns.

That's about it for me. Still getting  better, doing my best to not be sick anymore, and try and do missionary work in between. 

I love you all!

Have a great week.

Elder Gardiner

PS. I was so busy last week that I think I forgot to wish you a happy birthday. So, Happy Birthday!!! Elder Schneider and I actually had a little celebration at home on Saturday the 10th, then  I just forgot to write it into my email. I love you!

Regarding companion:  He's from Tirana, his family is in the Tirana 1st ward. We're getting along fine so far. I didn't think we would, but we're doing better than I thought. He has a really strong testimony and he's really committed to mission rules. He's 23 years old. He has a year and 2 or 3 months on the mission, he started 3 months after I got into field, he just didn't have the MTC. He's actually my mission brother. After Elder Mero trained me and went to Gjakova he trained Elder Isufaj for his first six weeks, and then Elder Isufaj was sent to Pogradec.