Week 55 - Lushnje

whipped up a spinach byrek.. just call me nene Rajlli ;) 

and this fam again, they're awesome and soo down-to-earth and humble and teach me so much through their faithful examples every time we go over there..

beautiful Berat!  

Lutjen a e the? (Kenga ime shqiptare e prefaruar..<3)

E dashur familja ime....

hej c'beni, si po kaloni..??

Sounds like you are all doing well, glad to hear. I am also doing great.. lovin' my mission and the work here in Lushnje.. really incredible experiences every single day.... <3

This past week was filled with really cool finding experiences, for example... almost every morning we street contact in front of our church building and pull people in for tours of our church and slip in a lesson and it is an incredibly effective way to find new investigators... usually moms who live in villages and are in-town to do some shopping so within the next couple days we find their house (down dirt roads and past abandoned buildings and bars etc.) and teach them along with their family... it's worked a couple times and it's a miracle every time. Not just the fact that we actually find where they live (Albanians don't have addresses...) but that we're able to teach families! One of those families was baptized last week, and they're doing awesome. <3 And we met an awesome couple with two cute kids who are working towards baptismal dates in the beginning of December.

Anyways.. have a crazy story from last night ha. It was Motra Eliason's 20th bday btw! (In church, after the closing prayer from sacrament meeting, she was asked to stand and the entire congregation sang her "happy birthday", in Albanian ~"shume Urime per ty"~ hah def. a bday to remember?) but it got better! That night we had a lesson with the awesome Jeshili fam (E gave her a bouquet of roses and some cloth that was given to her as a gift...<3 "we don't have much, but what we do have, we share" true dat) and as we pulled into Lushnje after visiting them, sis E mentioned that our phone wasn't in her purse. After checking the backseat we turned around and went to the fshat a 10-15 min. drive away, figuring we'd left it at their house. This was around 8pm by the way, and it is completely dark by 6pm here. So we got to the village and parked and walked down the little dirt road in the pitch black and when we got to their house, the gate was locked! This family's house is connected to the back of someone else's house (w/ a couple barking dogs) btw. By the time my comp. said "there's no way we're hopping the fence" I was already halfway over, so we climbed it, skirts and all, and they were a little surprised to see us again but we explained that our phone was missing and they instantly turned their tiny house upside-down looking for it and calling it, but it was nowhere to be found so we headed back to our car as they kept calling it, and still no sight of our little phone so we prayed. That prayer in and of itself, huddling in the cold and dark in a remote village in the middle of Albania with a helpful and generous recent-convert Albanian couple was such a remarkable experience, but it gets better.. sis E felt like we should go back and check the fork in the road- where we turned the car around earlier. I ran up ahead to scope out the scene and sure enough, there it was, wedged in a clump of bushes, down another little dirt road. Thanks to E calling, it lit up and I was able to see it. Still amazed at what happened, and actually we had a similar experience a couple weeks ago but I forgot to mention it b/c didn't want you to be worried mom ha. ;)

Church is true, so grateful for the wonderful gospel and our inspired leaders who guide and direct the church on earth today, with continual revelation.

Jave te mbare!!

<3 Motra Rajlii

ps got a little package from Eliza and Mom, so unexpected and such a fun surprise, thanks soo much <3 :)

e te festojme.. choc and pb, can't go wrong..

and i made frozen-banana/ berrry "sorbet" to go with it! cake and ice-cream (plant-based, might I add..)

 one of our cool members made us this "village bird"... i dipped white bread in the broth.. be jealous of my dinner appointments, eliza ;)

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From Madi's companion's weekly update:

• I woke up to Motra Rajlli's birthday poster and beautiful chocolate/peanut frosting cake 
• We hiked up a mountain so an investigator would come to church with us
• We made some goofy videos with interpretive dancing to EFY songs 

The night before my birthday, Motra Rajlli asked me a lot of questions about my 19th year that had me reflect on it.  

Today we went to Berat to practice our skit for Thanksgiving and we think it's going to be pretty good!  This week we have interviews with President Weidmann (the mission president), and we want to do a service project in the fields. It's going to be an awesome week!