Last Tuesday (April 19) Motra Hansi invited us over to her apartment for dinner. Now understand Motra Hansi doesn't speak English and the Albanians and missionaries even have a hard time understanding her Shqip (shcheep) which is what you call the Albanian language. We arrived at her Communist built apartment and in her small living room she had a table set with plates of sweet bread for each of us, two plates of cookies, a dish of candy, and a small glass of juice (which as soon as it was emptied, she would fill again). This was dinner!! Of course, she had her photo album to look at which were of her many trips to the temple in Germany. One picture was with Earl and Nyla Banner. Others were of all the missionaries that have been in her life. She has been a member for 16 years and is so very faithful. Her husband is not, but he is totally supportive of her membership and always allows her to bring any members to their home. Very unusual for Albania. She is just as funny as they come and always completes her sentences with "amen". From the very first day in church, we have kind of bonded so it was fun to be in her home.
The young missionaries are very good to us. They take time to walk us places we don't know how to get to, and, as I said before, every Friday we are allowed to have a district lunch together. Yesterday we went to a Chinese restaurant which was really good (not the Mandarin, but good and certainly much cheaper). Now that we are finding our way around a little better, we will be able to branch out to new places. Every time we have a problem or need a translation, we call the missionaries and they talk to the person we are trying to talk to in Shqip. We just pass the phone back and forth while the missionaries translate what was said. It works well. We haven't been able to get our internet to work for a couple of days, so the girl downstairs who handles this, asked in her limited English if it worked and between us, the missionaries and her, we had a technician here in an hour. He not only fixed the computer, but he fixed the TV so we have English channels. I have died and gone to heaven. The other night Glen and I were watching a National Geographic show of sorts in French. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do!!!
We had an activity last night with the YA's up at the lake in Tirana. A short walk of two miles carrying all the food. Two of the young men helped us carry it. It was fun, we played volleyball, bad mitten, soccer (football) and frisbee. Then without tables and chairs, we fixed big sandwiches for dinner. I had a talk with the girls who weren't playing sports and asked them what their interests were that we could do together. It was a good night. Then we loaded up and walked back home. With walking to the restaurant for lunch and the lake, Glen and I walked about 5 or 6 miles yesterday. We were tired last night. Today we have our first experience in driving. Every fourth Sunday, we are on a speaking tour where we go to the different branches to speak in Sacrament meeting. Tomorrow we speak in Shkoder. They have maybe between 5 to 10 active members in their branch. Pres. Neil said we were to borrow the AP's car when we went places like this, so we have their car and are going to drive up there. If Glen can just find his way out of the city, we will be fine.
Good things are happening, we had the Asplunds here from Frankfurt and were very supportive of us needing a bigger place. It just has to be presented to the powers that be in Germany and who knows what will happen. But we will forge ahead and hopefully with our YA Committee, find ways to meet the needs of all of them. Last night was certainly a step in the right direction getting away from our small Center. We even had four investigators there which was great. We know this is the Lords' work and He will help us accomplish all we need to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment