April 9

Përshëndetje familja!

Well this has been another great week. But unfortunately I do not have a whole lot of time. So here's a short run down on the week.

Pali is doing well. He's a super cool kid. We met with him on Saturday and had a great lesson about the gospel of Jesus Christ. He said the prayer at the end of the lesson and it was a super amazing prayer. He's definitely been practicing at home.

I had an exchange with Elder Harris who is serving as the Zone Leader here in Tirana right now and it was super fun. He served here in Shkoder before going to Tirana so we met with some of the people he knew and it was fun seeing how excited they were to see him. He's one of my best friends here in the mission so it was great getting to talk and work with him. He's a super hard worker and he loves being a missionary. While with him we had a few great lessons in Lezhe and it seemed like we would have a ton of investigators actually come to church. But they didn't. So what do you do. It was a good week anyway.

We had zone conference this week and it was super powerful. They talked a lot about conference and the things we all learned from that. One thing that stuck out to me is how important it is for us to sustain and pray for our leaders. I have a very strong testimony that if we love and believe in our leaders that they can receive guidance for us and will know how to serve us. Then most of the rest of the conference was about love and how we all need to love everyone more. It was awesome.

The members here are still super amazing. A few highlights, Amadeo loves watching conference with us and is super converted. Vellai Çermeli gave an amazing testimony about Christ in testimony meeting, I hope everyone was listening because I really felt the spirit as he talked. President Zefi is the coolest, I talked to him about apricot trees (fun fact, the word for apricot changes from southern to northern Albania, Kajsi in south and Zerdili in the north) and gardening while he helped us street contact one day and he's invited us to come work with him on his orchard (he has a ton of apricot trees) out by Lezhe some time at the end of the month.

On Sunday the senior couple from Elbasan came to church in Lezhe and because they were the only ones who came we had church in English and that was fun. I got to bless the sacrament in English and then bear my testimony in English, which I haven't done in years now.

I'm doing great and I'm still getting along great with Elder Isufaj. The mission is awesome!

I love you all! Have a great week!

Love Elder Gardiner