March 10, 2014

Hi everyone, 

I feel like the Macedonian is picking up. I fasted this past fast Sunday for help in conquering my fears, and I've been a lot more brave when it comes to talking to people. I still wish we spent more time with Macedonians! But I'm here for missionary work, not to learn another language. This past week, for example, we went to visit the investigator who we had the emergency situation with last week, and the elders had to leave at the very beginning of the lesson for some reason, so me and Sister Schofield gave the lesson all by ourselves. So, it was very short. Ha ha. We spent the rest of the time just talking to her and her daughter. She is very supportive and encouraging of us when we try. Later, the investigator's siblings came over and I gave her brother a Book of Mormon before we left. He's Muslim, but he said he'd read it.

The Sister Training Leaders came down for a day to do exchanges with us. Sister Schofield split off with one and I was with the two others, and then at night we all got together for group contacting. It was great since they speak Albanian, they could talk to some people on the Albanian side of town that we wouldn't have been able to communicate with normally. Maybe someday people will be called here to speak that instead of Macedonian. Maybe since we were a bigger group that night, I don't know, but I got a lot of numbers. We called them all last night and are meeting up with two of them in the next few days. 

Then on Friday we left to go to Albania again, and I was wrong, it wasn't for a zone thing, that's going to be later. It was for the creation of the first stake in Albania!!! Me and Sister Schofield drove down with the Andersons this time and stayed in the mission home. We ate some beef stew in the Andrews kitchen while the two senior couples talked, and Sister Schofield said to me, "Everything about missionary work is so random and awkward. Here we are in Albania with four old people we barely know, eating soup." There are a lot of moments we have like that, where if we just look outside ourselves we realize what unique situations we get put into every day.

I really, really love Albania. It is so warm, so bright and sunny, and there's a lot of missionaries! The next day we went on exchanges with two other sisters there, and my temporary companion, Sister Wilding, gave me a crash course in Albanian. I learned a few basic conversational words and phrases.  Albanian sounds really interesting. We ate at an American restaurant which, ironically, was founded in the 40's by an American missionary couple. The money in Albania is lek. We got on a bus several times there, and every time I was sandwiched between strangers and hung on for dear life as it lurched along. Driving there is crazy! "You feel like you're in Mario carts...If you need another lane in Albania, you can make one," was something Elder Barber said to me. Albania is more lively than Macedonia. There's more fruit stands. Many were selling flowers, although that might've been because it was a holiday. People have their clothes hanging out to dry. We saw people selling live chickens, which were lined up along a sidewalk with their feet bound. Sister Schofield said she saw one being dissected in the middle of the street. There were kids by the roads selling rabbits. 

We were escorted to our first lesson by a very skinny, stray dog. I wonder if they have learned that if they follow people they eventually give them food. The lesson was with a woman and her two children. Sister Wilding said they had agreed to teach them English for free if they could also teach them about the gospel. I helped the little boy. It's amazing how well you can communicate even when you don't speak the same language. I was able to help him learn the words just fine. At the end I think his mom asked him to say what he could to me in English, because he turned to me and said, "Hello my name is Skardi I am twelve, I live in Tirana and I like football player. I have one mother, one father, one sister." It was cute. 

We went to a cultural event that night and then went to an Albanian restaurant with the APs, Assistants to the President. Pretty much the same food as Macedonian, meat and bread. It was Women's Day there so there was a big group of women sitting by us, drinking a huge...keg? of beer, singing. (Only it seemed like everybody had one of those keg things and yet kept getting more.) Somebody shot confetti in the air.

The creation of the stake was awesome. All of the Adriatic South missionaries, a member of the Seventy, and many members from all around, including familiar faces from Kosovo and some LDS soldiers who had traveled that day from the US army base in Kosovo. Seeing them made me miss America and regular t-shirt-wearing Americans. A highlight of the meeting was President Ford trying to speak Albanian and then giving a translation of it directly afterwards in English. "I don't even speak Albanian and it's funny to me," Elder Gierisch said to me. At one point during his talk, President Ford read something, asking how it was pronounced. All the Albanians yelled it to him. He repeated it, and it sounded so unlike what they had just said to him, everyone laughed. I took courage from the fact that not too long ago, Albania was where we are now, with only Italian Book of Mormons and a handful of missionaries. In Macedonia we always give people the Book of Mormon in Serbian.

Something I noticed about Albanians I noticed that I wish were true about Macedonians is that they have conversations with you regardless of whether you speak the same language or not. After time I just accepted the fact that they don't take "I don't speak Albanian" for an answer and just nodded understandingly as they spouted off to me. I got kissed by a lot of strangers.

Love,

Sister Riddle