Farewell old companions and welcome my new ones!
Things are really starting to pick up here. Last night we
got a call from our mission president, who said that I was joining Elder Chingas
and Elder Krajnc's companionship, which I though was weird because they had
already been together for 3 months, and Elder Prince and Gierisch have already
served together for about 6 months. Then he talked to Elder Prince, and it
turned out that after 15 months in Macedonia, he's getting transferred to
Albania, which is a totally different language. Then Elder Gierisch talked to
President, and found out he's going to Kosovo. Both were very surprised to say
the least. No missionary that has been called to Macedonia has ever been taken
out. It will be the first real transfer we have here, instead of just always
staying in Skopje. They leave tomorrow, which means in 1 1/2 weeks, Macedonia
has gone from 5 companionships to 2, with Elder Barber and Sister Schofield
gone as well.
It was sad to see those two go home. They were some awesome,
kind missionaries, but I know they're happy to be with their families! Elder
Barber took off early in the week, while Sister Schofield was heading out on
Friday. Her parents were some fun people to be around while they were here!
They took us out to eat many times, which were my first member dinners while
I've been here! I never thought I would get any of those. On Friday, they went
to the airport, only to find out that their destination was snowed in, so they
got to stay a few extra days. Now they are currently stuck in Istanbul, so they
have been having all sorts of problems.
We were supposed to get our half-way training at 6 weeks in
the field, but since were so far away, that didn't happen. President Weidmann
finally was able to come down here this past week with his assistants, wife and
daughter. He gave us a pretty good training. Then the next day, I went on an
exchange with Elder Lenderman, one of the assistants. That guy is a hard
worker. We were definitely blessed on our day together. He only knows Albanian,
and it seemed that every person we talked to that morning was an Albanian, so
that was awesome! Except then I couldn't speak with anyone...there was one guy
that knew Macedonian, Albanian, and English whom we talked to for about 10
minutes, constantly switching from all 3 languages, which was pretty funny.
We were going home one night, when we ran into Phillip and
his girlfriend, Ana. We found out that she's really interested, and that she's
read quite a bit of the Book of Mormon, but neither of them can understand it
very well since it's in Serbian. That gave us a new hope for Phillip. That
night with Elder Lenderman, we tried to meet up with them, but only Phillip
showed. Usually he just talks through the whole lesson about all this random
stuff, but we actually managed to keep it pretty focused the whole time. Then
we ended, went outside, and found Ana! We talked to her for a good bit and had
a prayer with her, which ended up really awesome!
We might be getting a building soon. The Nelsons are looking
around for a big house we can use. Right now the only good one it far away,
which would make it hard for some members investigators to get to. But it's
better than the hotel!
Elder Rigby
