I love missionary work! (9/25/17)

Cute picture of the couple we will be baptizing this week! 

Man this week was awesome. So we have been teaching someone named Virgjina and Kostandin, they are awesome! They are an older couple that have huge faith in Christ. So they have been coming to church for a while and kind of have had some problems and some questions but like this week... Everything just made a huge turn for the better! So my comp and I were really just praying that they would soften their heart about baptism and would accept that this is the true church and all that stuff.. That was like the focus of most of our prayers.. So we had a lesson with them about the Priesthood and about temples.. It was amazing! We taught about temple marriage and families being sealed for all eternity and both of their faces just lit up! Neither of them had heard anything like it before, and they thought that it was the most beautiful thing ever. We also explained the work for the dead that happened in the temple and they both talked about their parents and asked if it was possible to do the work for them and we of course said yes! It as so awesome! Ever since then they have really started to take everything a lot more serious.. And now they are going to be baptized this weekend! I gave them a picture of my brother and his wife, Zac and Makail, at the temple on their wedding day. They said that they are going to frame it to remind them of their new goal of going to the temple one day to be sealed together! I definitely have a testimony of the divine help that we as missionaries get in our work. During our prayer in the lesson Kostandin shared that he saw a room full of people that look familiar to him. I imagine all of his ancestors, waiting outside of the baptism font, waiting for him to go to the temple to get baptized for them! I love missionary work! 

Loving the beach weather! Starting to cool down!!

We are also meeting with this other family, named Drita, Kosta, and Sebastian. Drita is the mom, Kosta the son, and Sebastian the grandson! Meeting with them has really really humbled me.. They live in a really humble home with only tiny room.. They have their beds and kitchen and a tv crammed in that one room. Yet they have so much faith in Christ and have a desire to follow them!! It reminds me of the Zoramites in Alma 32 who were humbled because of how poor they are. I hope that I can be humble all of my life without have to be made humble through poorness or anything like that.. I hope that I can always just choose to be humble and to follow Christ my whole life! Lessons with them are going great though.. He has read over a hundred pages of the Book of Mormon in less that a week which is amazing! And all three of them came to church :) Super excited for them!! 

Mine and my companions shoes compared to an Albanian shoe..... 

Another thing I hope to never take for granted is going to the temple. I feel like this week I talked about the temple with a lot of people.. And I never realized how lucky I am to live in a place where I can be surrounded by temples!! None of the members in Pogradec have ever been to the temple.. So it is their great dream to be able to go there! Unfortunately, until the Rome Temple gets finished, their closest temple is in Switzerland. It is really hard to get the money to go there so it is just really hard for them all to go to the temple.. I will never take it for granted! I was talking to some members and they asked me how close was the temple to my house and I told them 15 minutes and they said that that is literally a dream! They would give anything to live 15 minutes away from the temple. Don't ever take the temple for granted! I feel like that is a big reason why I got called to a mission that doesn't have a temple so that I will realized how lucky I am to live close to the temple. My invitation to everyone reading this is to go to the temple this week!! Love you all! 

Elder Farnworth