It's pretty crazy with everything
that's going on here right now, we had to stay inside yesterday because of the
protest (about 50,000 people we heard). The other protests throughout the week
have been getting around 10,000 people. The protesters said they would stay
camped in front of the government buildings (many are in tents) until the prime
minister (in office for 9 years) and his cabinet quit. Tonight the political
party in power, VMRO, is launching their response protest at 6, so we have to
go in when that starts. Hopefully, things will remain peaceful.
In the separate shooting event,
Sasho's house actually got shot at in Kumanovo, and he had to go 2 days without
eating or drinking and couldn't go outside at all. Kumanovo is up by the border
with Kosovo and Serbia. We heard from a couple members in our ward the armed
group planned on doing much more, but the police were successful in stopping
them early in the attack, even though 8 lost their lives and 37 were injured.
The gov't is checking everybody coming across the border from Kosovo to see if
they have any terrorist connections. That’s where the ethnic Albanian
rebels came from and lived.
I don't know what the deal has been, but the people seemed
much, much nicer this week. We managed to get quite a few numbers from people
with some of them becoming some new investigators for us! It came in pretty
good timing too, because our investigator pool has been shrinking the past few
weeks.
We met with Sasho this week, and he's been opening up a lot
with us. He told us about how life has been a lot tougher the past year, but
even though it hasn't gotten easier since he's met us, he feels like it's been
a lot easier to deal with, and that he's a lot happier. I don't know how it is
for other missionaries, but it was one of the coolest moments of my mission
being in that lesson with him. I know that through Jesus Christ, we do get
extra strength to do things we normally can't do. God has helped me out more
times than I can even imagine in my life, and I love being able to see it more
and more on my mission.
Sunday we went to church, then we had to spend the rest of
the day inside because of a protest going on. There should be a few more
happening this week, so it looks like we might see some repeats of that this
week!
Elder Rigby
