2013 January 21 email

Hey, family, what's going on?  Things are going good here.

So, dad, you're traveling a lot again, eh?  Didn't we move to Virginia in the beginning so that you didn't have to travel as much as you did with American Express?

Dang, congrats on the snowstorm.  I wish I had a big snowstorm here, I miss snow.  Too bad Fier is on the coast and is too warm for snow.  Pretty much all of the areas in Albania don't really get snow.  I'll have to be transferred to Kosovo if I want to experience snow, but transfers won't happen till the end of March, and it'll probably be too warm by then.  Oh well, next year maybe.

So, anyway, something good happened last week that I would like to share.  I finally finished the Book of the Mormon for the first time!  It was awesome!  It was Wednesday I think, that morning during personal study I read to Ether 5, and I realized how close I was, so I just made a push that night after we went in from working.  So, yeah, I can finally say I have read the Book of Mormon sincerely all the way through.  Yeah, so now I am reading it in Albanian, I am in 2nd Nephi through most of the Isaiah chapters, which gave me a bit of a headache.  If you thought understanding Isaiah in English was hard, try Albanian.

So, mom, yeah, there aren't any sister missionaries in Fier or Elbasan right now.  There are two in Tirana, two in Durres, two in Vlore, and during this last transfer the first two sisters have been put into Kosovo.  But apparently by June there's supposed to be 14 sisters in our mission, so I would assume that just about every area in Albania would have a sister companionship by then.  We'll see.

Yeah, if appointments fall through we street contact or tract, which isn't very successful because Fier itself is so small that everyone knows who we are and what we do.  President has established 3 standards of excellence for every companionship.  Every week, every companionship should have at least 20 lessons (with investigators and with inactive members, lessons with active members don't count), half of you investigator lessons being with members present, and we need to get at least 3 new investigators every week.  That's tough.  Definitely reach-able, but tough.   I try my hardest to get 20 lessons every week, but it's hard, we only got 14 last week.

Ok, dad:

1)  Dad, we do get a vegetable in there a couple times a week.  Don't worry, you'll get a picture of what I eat today.

This totally goes against our family rule of:

Don't eat anything bigger than your head!

2)  Albanians love soccer (meaning Scott hasn't played basketball for awhile)

3) kot means worthless

Jake, keep doing work.

Andrea, broken ankles build character. (it was a slight sprain.)

Ok, this last week.  I think I can honestly say that I am now fluent in Albanian.  Not to be proud or anything, but people here have been very impressed with my speaking, which always is good, so yeah.  My understanding here is doing just fine, I think I realize now that people have different accents so I won't be able to understand everything all the time, but yeah sometimes people have originally thought I am albanian, so that's a good feeling I guess.

Anyway, yeah, so you might notice that I am writing this email a little bit later than usual.  That's because our district went to the city of Berat today for p-day.  I'm gonna send you pictures right after I finish this.

Anyway, this is all I got for this week.  Everyone take care, and have a good week!

Ju dua,

Elder Palmer