June 4th

Përshëndetje familja!

Well this has been a really busy week for us here in Shkodër, not a whole lot of investigator work, but plenty of stuff to do.

One of the highlights was our district meeting on Wednesday. President and Sister Anderson and the APs came to our district meeting to give us a few trainings focused on family history work. He taught us about the importance of doing family history work and then showed us some new tools and websites that we can use to find people who need their ordinances done. I've gained a huge desire to do family history work here on my mission, so I'm excited to get to do that when I get home.

Other than that, we were able to meet with Pali this week. It wasn't the best lesson and he said he had stopped reading, but we gave him some assignments and hopefully he's been reading since then. He wasn't in church though, so that was disappointing. We did have a first lesson with a guy named Monti though. He is a bus driver who was here for work one day and ended up with some free time when he ran into Elder Perry. So we sat down and had a quick lesson and got to know him. He said that one of his children had passed away due to a seizure so we were able to testify that families can be together forever and that he will have his kid back one day. He seemed to be super touched by that and said he'll read the whole Book of Mormon while he's on breaks at work.

This Sunday we had a special broadcast for the entire Western Europe area where Elder Uchdorf spoke to us with Elder Patrick Kearon and Sister Joy D. Jones. It was a super cool meeting and the members really enjoyed it. One of the common themes was about us preparing to return home to our Heavenly Homes. They all talked about how much they loved the European saints and how much of a blessing it is for us all to be together. This church is so amazing and I'm so glad to be a part of it.

Then after we finished with that we headed off to Lezhe to have a sacrament meeting. Unfortunately we didn't have the technology to see the broadcast there, but church was still great. Both Denis and Danjela came again, Danjela gave the opening prayer and Denis blessed the sacrament. Then Elder Perry gave a great talk about the atonement and I gave a talk about hope. Church there is super special.

Then today we had a fun experience. We went to this restaurant that we love called San Francisco, and as we sat down and started eating our food the owner came over and talked to us for a little while. He talked about how much he loves us and our work, especially our focus on the family. He went on to explain how he makes sure to take plenty of family time and to have uplifting family activities and talked about how blessed he is because of it. And then he bought us a free Coca Cola. He's one of the nicest people I've ever met, and he has an amazing restaurant. So basically, just remember how important families are.

That's about it for me. Congratulations to Mason for graduation, and Happy Birthday to Annaka! Have a great week!

Elder Gardiner