Elder Austin Gardiner: Adriatic South Mission: March 27th

Përshëndetje familja, ju dua shumë!

So it has been another great week here in Durrës. I'm loving it here and I feel like I'm really starting to settle in.

We're teaching a lot of people and we actually had 7 investigators in church yesterday which was awesome! For most of the week Fation was in Lushnje at the doctor's office so we didn't see him for the first part of the week, but then we had a great lesson at the end of the week. The doctor told him that he has to take a break from learning for a little while because it's stressing him out, which is total garbage, so for now we're just praying, singing hymns, and watching Mormon Messages together and that's a lot of fun. He's super awesome and still on track for his baptism. Then other than that we're still teaching Joni, he came for all of sacrament this time. He doesn't seem to be reading the Book of Mormon between lessons though so we need to work on that with him. It's super easy to see the difference when investigators read or not. Then other than that we have a lot of new investigators. We started teaching the uncle, aunt and cousin of one of the members, but as background they are all muslim, so the member did not tell her family she is baptized. So it's been fun using her in the lessons because she pretends not to know about any of it, but if we pretend to teach her something she expounds on it and helps out.

One day we were looking for someone who Elder Wilson had met that said we could come and teach, but we weren't sure where they lived so we went to a few different buildings and asked if they knew the person we were looking for. So after a few buildings we still hadn't found them, but we knocked on a door and said they didn't know the person that we were looking for, but that his neighbor was a member of our church who had just come back from Italy. So we decided to give it a try, usually when things like that happen they aren't actually Mormon, they're Jehova's Witnesses but people don't know the difference, but no one answered the door so we decided to come back and try another day. So we came back one night and rang the doorbell but no one was there. So we decided to tract the building but the lights weren't working on the upper floor so we came back down to leave just as the person was going inside the house we were trying. So turns out he is a member here! He lives half the year in Italy and half the year here, and he's a super strong member who has been to the temple and has a granddaughter on a mission! So that was a really cool experience for us.

On Saturday we had a ward activity to help fund raise for the youth temple trip in April. There were a few spiritual thoughts and the young men taught the Plan of Salvation, it was really good. Then they had all made cookies that they sold and we all bought.

Then we had a lunch lesson with some members yesterday and it was so amazing. It was a younger couple and also the wife's niece, and the husband has served a mission in England. So we started talking to the other girl and she had a few questions about things she had heard that she didn't understand. So we started explaining and got into the Plan of Salvation. It ended up being an amazing lesson and she seemed to really understand what we were talking about. Then at the end she said that the day before at the youth activity when someone was saying the opening prayer she felt the spirit super strong and she felt so amazing. So we asked her how she felt right then, and she said she felt the same way and that she knew all the things we were saying are the truth. So we told her that we would love to keep teaching her if she wants, which of course she agreed to. So that was pretty amazing.

Then this morning we went to Laç, which is a city north of us, and went to the church. There's a Catholic church up in the mountain that's pretty famous so we decided to go check it out. We went with the sisters from Shkoder too because we had to give them something and that was a lot of fun. The church was really cool, but really different from our churches. It was a nice place but it just doesn't have the same spirit that our churches do. I brought my camera but forgot to check if it had battery, and with my luck it didn't. But luckily Sister Collins came with us and took a few picture for us so I'll send you those.