Farewell Elbasan! (2/1/16)

Me and Elder Kearon!

This week was really good! We had a mission conference where we heard from Elder Kearon of the 70 and he was amazing. The spirit in the meeting was so strong and it helped my mission so much! They told us to write down a question at the beginning of the meeting and he promised the spirit would answer it and so I did. As he was talking we really werent' talking about the subject of my question, but towards the end of the meeting he answered my question almost as if he knew exactly what it was. It was so awesome! Such an amazing experience. 

Later the week we visited this week we visited this less active who was in the hospital for Appendix surgery. We found out that he would be in the hospital for 12 DAYS for his appendix surgery. It was cool to be able to tell him and my family about my unique story of my appendix bursting during school. I left out the fact that I was only in the hospital for less than a day though...

Me and my 'little brother' Xhoni

The next night we visited some members to take videos of them to send them to their kid that is on a mission because they live too far away from all internet cafes. So that was a really great experience to be able to walk and meet with them but afterwards we had to walk this member that came with us home. She lives on the other side of Elbasan then we had to walk back to our apartment. We ended up walking for almost 2 hours! Luckily it was warm. When I got home I passed out on my bed. It was such a long day!

We had such an amazing Sunday. We had 2 less active families come to church which was just so amazing! And we had a lot of people at church and I really was getting along with the members! Then they most amazing thing happened that night. We met with this guy named Edi, he lived in kind of a sketchy area and he said we couldn't go to his house to have a lesson because his daughters were asleep. So we found places to sit on the sidewalk on the corner of the street in a sketchy area. It was so amazing. Although there were cars driving by and people yelling and stuff the spirit in the lesson was so strong. He was understanding everything that we were teaching, it was amazing to see the huge smile on his face the whole lesson. Towards the end of the lesson his friend walked by and started talking to him for a little bit then gave him a cigarette and left. Edi then told us that he only smokes when he is stressed, then asked what our church thinks about smoking. So we told him how God gave us our bodies, and that they are sacred and he wants us to keep them healthy.. then before we could even finish he ripped up the cigarette and through it on the ground. It was soooooo amazing I wanted to cry! His faith was unbelievable. At the end of the lesson we taught him how to pray so he prayed and said the most simple and beautiful prayer, but at then he stopped talking. So after a while of silence I figured that he forgot how to end a prayer so I was going to tell him to say 'in the name of Jesus Christ Amen' but then I felt like I shouldn't. So we sat there for about a minute in silence and he finally said Amen and we looked up and he had tears in his eyes. The spirit was so incredible I knew it was touching his heart. He wants him and his whole family to be baptized. It was such an amazing experience. The work here in Elbasan is so great!

Farewell Elbasan!

And then later that night I received a call from our mission president and he said that we are going to be 'Emergency Transferred' to a city called Shkodër. I guess a few Elders there had some problems with people there so we are switching them out! Crazy! It is going to be such a different place there. But I am so excited for it! I will leave tomorrow. It will be hard to leave all of these amazing people that I have met here and I hope the other Elders will be able to baptize our friends here in Elbasan. Love you all! Have a great Week! 

Love Elder Farnuërth

Whenever you go insides peoples houses they give you slippers... 9 times out of 10 they are girl slippers