2012 October 29 email

Hello, my friends!  How are you?  That is what cuns (teenage boys) say to us as we're street contacting.  They say all 20 English words that they know and they leave thinking they really got us.

Anyway, how's it going?  Yesterday I had lunch with the previous senior couple (the Prestons), and they actually told me about Hurricane Sandy, so I hope you guys are all good, that would kinda stink if I came home to no family, so stay safe.  (No problems at all from the storm.)

Yeah, that video of Elbasan is pretty accurate.  Elder Knight and I have been wanting to try the bumpercars and the other rides around that area for a while.  (Video linked on this blog)

Dangit, I forgot to ask the Boydells about if they have a blog, I will do that tomorrow during district meeting.  I don't think any of the other elders have blogs though, they just do email.

English class is alright.  We do 45 minutes of English, and 15 minutes of a spiritual thought.  Usually the spiritual thought goes ok, but Elder Knight and I teach the beginner class.  This week we will have class Tuesday but not Thursday because we're actually switching buildings this week, and I'll talk about that later.

(What do you do at church?  Is there a primary?)  Yeah there's a primary program, but the missionaries don't really do anything with that, our prime focus as missionaries is activating the priesthood, because we the missionaries are pretty much the priesthood here.

(The Hobbit movie is coming out soon.  Andrea and I are reading it-did you ever read it?)  Nope, never read the Hobbit.  I read the first book, and the first half of the second.  It's ok, the movies are good enough for me.  In fact, I heard the Hobbit is now split into 3 parts.  Is that true?  Life of Pi, eh?  Hopefully that will be good.

(Do Albanians celebrate Halloween or Thanksgiving?)  I think they do celebrate Halloween, but no trick-or-treating.  And no they don't celebrate Thanksgiving, but the whole mission is going to Tirana on Thanksgiving, so that'll be good, I can meet the missionaries not in Elbasan, Tirana or Vlore.

(Has the weather started to get cooler?  Have you bought any warm clothes yet?)  Yeah, it's gotten cooler.  In fact, I have been told that Elbasan is the coldest and hottest area in the mission in winter and summer.  But it won't start getting brutally cold until December apparently, but now it's nice and cool.  Yeah, I've been looking for stuff, but I haven't really seen anything yet.

We had 53 people come to church yesterday, so that was good, 15 more than last week.

Andrea, sorry that your feet hurt, but what do you do, eh?

(Jake wrote him "nothing happened this week.")  Jake, stop lying to me.

Eric, tell Sang I love him too.  Tell him I got a picture holding a bear, and I'll send the picture soon, but now the jokes can finally end.

Ok Dad, your questions:

1:  Daily schedule:  Up at 6:30, shower and workout till 8,  comp. study till 10, proselyte till 12, lunch till 2, yeah we have two hours of lunch, personal and language study till 4, then proselyte the rest of the day.  I think since like January apparently the church instigated a new training program, and that includes a longer comp. study, and what we do is talk about different aspects of missionary work and how to apply them.  It's good, but man are we inside a lot, I almost feel bad for Elder Knight.

2:  Well, I think the education setup is the same as America, Elementary, Middle and High School, and some of the kids I have talked with seem really smart, so yeah.  They do have universities, and I think the University of New York has a study abroad in Albania.  That's really all I know as far as education here.

3:  So yeah like I said it's getting colder here.  As far as clothing I still have that fat jacket I got at the missionary mall, wore that thing for the first time Saturday.

Well, as far as sports go, best of luck to the Cards tonight.  SF Giants won again, eh?  The Jazz led the NBA in 3pt.%?  I know it's preseason, but still.  Glad BYU finally won.  Is Georgia Tech any good, or did we just beat another scrub?

Ok, so last week was pretty cool.  We we're visiting a member one night, and he happened to have his son and his wife, and also his niece over when we came.  We had a really good discussion with them about the Gospel.  They asked us good questions.  We were gonna visit them again this week, but they were up in Tirana this week, so we'll get them this week.  We have another, a girl named Armanda, who accepted getting baptized but not to a date.  We also have Eni, an older woman who, after 3 visits, has said that we are like her sons already.  When we went in her house, she had the Libri i Mormonit open.

So, this week is gonna be a big week.  As I said, we are moving to a new building that will become our YSA building, and we need to be out of the old one by Wednesday, so tomorrow we are going to be moving out for a good chunk of the day. The new building is gonna be awesome though, it looks really good.

Alright, well I don't think I have anything else I need to talk about this week.  Have a good week, enjoy time off from school.  Jake, do you remember when we missed a whole week of school because of Hurricane Isabel? (We missed two days for Sandy).   That was awesome.  Alright, see ya next week!

Ju dua!

Elder Palmer