It's been another fun week here in Vlorë.
To start out with some fun news, we'll be having a baptism here on Saturday! The other Elders have been working with a less active, part member family and they've started coming back to church! The youngest kid was too young to get baptized when the others did, but now that they're active again he wants to get baptized too. So hopefully we can get some members and investigators to that!
Other than that, we had a good lesson with our investigators Ana and Meli. We taught the plan of salvation and the gospel of Jesus Christ and talked about how we can get to the Celestial Kingdom. They understand the plan really well and they said they really want to go there and are working to do everything they need so they can get that. They didn't accept a specific date to be baptized, but they said they want to and are planning on doing it, they just aren't ready yet. They have a ton of potential and are reading from the Book of Mormon too!
We're also working with a super cool part member family. The daughter, Tejsi, was baptized about two years ago but the parents and her brother aren't baptized. We ran into them on the road and said they want us to come over and do lessons with them. So we had a good lesson with them, they want us to teach Tejsi a little bit of English every time we come over and then have a gospel lesson. It was fun because they had us teach her how to pray in English, and she did a great job! Now they want us to come over more often. The dad even brought both of the kids to church this week too!
Last week on P-day we planned a lesson with Amarildo and he ended up bringing his friend Luçiano too. Luçiano is a member and he usually comes to church but he and his family have been a little less active recently. He's a really cool kid, but I'd never really gotten to know him. So we ended up having a really good lesson with them about Christ where we all shared our favorite stories from his life. Then after the lesson we only had a little bit of time left before it was time to go back home so we decided to stay and talk with them for the rest of our time. He's in a music high school for cello, which he's played since 1st grade, and he loves orchestra and jazz music and video games. So from of my time in band and jazz band, plus having Mason as a bass player in orchestra and jazz, and the fact that I've played a lot of video games we had a lot to talk about, and now we've become super good friends. So now because of that he's come to more activities, and we've been able to talk about the gospel a lot more with him! It's simple little miracles like that that really make missionary work fun. Those two have also been fellowshipping Jani too, so bonus!
Jani has been helping us in a few lessons this week and he's been super excited to do missionary work. He helped us in our lesson with Ana and Meli and again in our lesson with Kristi and he did great. He has a ton of desire to serve a mission and I'm sure he'll do a great job. Our lesson with Kristi was great. We were originally planning on just talking about callings, because she just got called as the gospel principles teacher, but I felt like we needed to ask her to share her favorite scripture from the Book of Mormon. So she opened up to 3 Nephi 9:18 which is where Christ says "I am the light and the life of the world. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end." So we had an amazing conversation about how no matter where we are and what we do Christ is a part of us. He created us and we all will go back to him. And then she shared how much her life has changed because of the Book of Mormon and prayer, and how she's trying to help all of her friends to get that too!
Another fun experience, today we went and had lunch with Amarildo. We decided that we would go to a restaurant that's farther away because we had time, and we ended up randomly running into two members from America. They served in Austria like 25 years ago when Albania got opened and Albania got put as part of their mission. They were super excited to hear how much the church here has grown from when they were on their missions.
All in all, it was a great week, and this week we have general conference! Usually we walk it a week after it happens in America so that they can get all the translations done, but this time they're doing it all live. They tried it last conference and it didn't work, but hopefully they've got it all figured out this time!
That's about it for me, love you all! Have a great week! Mirupafshim, Zoti ju bekoftë!
Elder Gardiner
Elder Murray, and Amarildo, we got some tennis rackets to play tennis with some members this week!
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