The center of Skopje
is finally open!!! It actually happened last week, and this is huge! It has
been closed long before I got here, for like a year total. They took out all
the tile that was there and now put in blindingly white tile. It's impossible
to keep your eyes open while you walk across it. They also installed a ground
level fountain that is pretty sweet. Now they are always blasting classical
music that the fountains move in sync with, like a small version of the dancing
Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas.
The Zone Leaders came down this week, I was with Elder
Rasband. We went to the Albanian side of town, since he can't speak Macedonian,
and walked through some neighborhoods, talking to the families on the streets.
It was fairly unsuccessful until we were almost back, and we saw some kids
doing flips and stuff in a small park. We stopped and started talking to them,
and apparently, they are the Skopje parkour group of Skopje called “Urban
Monsters.” They were pretty cool guys, and we talked for a while, and they
ended up giving us their numbers! Pretty cool find.
The next day, the exchange was still going on, and we were
contacting on the boulevard. A guy comes up to us saying "That book is not
a testament of Jesus Christ" referring to the Book of Mormon. I recognized
him pretty quick as a guy who gave the other guy some trouble, so I just told
him this was pointless and for him to please go away. After a few minutes, he
finally started walking away. Suddenly, he turned around and started flicking
his fingers like he was flicking dust at us and yelled "IN THE NAME OF
JESUS, I REBUKE YOU." The guy did that like 5 times, giving Elder Rasband
and I a good laugh. I can officially say I've been rebuked by JC on my mission!
We had a branch activity this week. We were going to go
hiking, but we changed it last minute to card games because it was raining
hard. All the members took the rain as it being cancelled I guess, because only
Prend showed up. We played UNO first with him, and then he taught us an
Albanian card game that was pretty fun. Usually Prend is a lot like a nice
grandfather, very gentle to everybody, but during that game, he talked so much
trash to me. Every time I would play a card, he would say "Фала!"
which means thanks!, and then destroy me on whatever I just played. It was
definitely the hardest I laughed all that week.
For things coming up this week, Sister Riddle leaves for
home on Wednesday, we have mission conference the same day, and it's my
birthday tomorrow! Sister Riddle is going to be missed a lot, she's the master
of the language here. She's got the accent down hard so everybody here always
thinks she's native.
Have a great week! Elder Rigby
