Back to the trio life! On Tuesday, we took off to Tirana to
drop off Elder Gierisch and Prince there. It was really weird saying bye to
them, partly because I knew them both really well and Elder Prince was my
trainer, and partly because that means that we're going to have to figure out
how to run a lot of things here that they formerly took responsibility for.
It’s me, Elder Chingas, and Elder Lesi.
The trip there we didn't run into any problems, which was a
miracle, but on the way back, it took us a bit longer, but still had miracles!
Someone forgot their passport in another car, and he/she (she) remembered right
when we were about to get out of Tirana. Then we had to fill up the car in
Albania, which uses the Leke currency, which we didn't have any of, so we just
figured we could pay via credit card. We filled up all the way, went to pay,
and all of our cards got rejected one by one. They were not taking our Denar,
which we use in Macedonia, but luckily Sister Hassell had Euro, which luckily
they accepted, and we were on our merry little way. So many things could have
gone wrong there that would've held us up for an extra day, but it all worked
out in the end!
In terms of investigators, we absorbed an area since we only
have 3 elders now in the country, so we've been busy trying to get to all of
them. A lot of them are Albanian since Elder Lesi (the Albanian) is with us
now, which makes me feel like I'm back in Durres. We gave a church tour to a
guy named Zoki, who we met during a branch activity playing Frisbee. He was so
happy to find someone else who likes Frisbee, since no one plays in Macedonia.
We found out he likes ping pong also, so we invited him to come, played for a
while (he killed me and Elder Chingas) and then showed him around the church.
We don't get to do those too often since our church is way out there so we have
a hard time getting investigators to come to church, but it was an awesome
thing to finally get to do! He was shocked that there weren't any icons or
candles anywhere in the building, so hopefully he can get over that sometime
soon.
For the zone training this week, it was about living the
higher law, in reference to missionary work. It's easy to be a missionary but
it's hard to always work hard as a missionary. I like it a lot, and it made me
do some serious self-reflection of what I can do to fulfill my calling better!
Sasho hasn't been doing too good health wise. He's got
diabetes, which makes it so his limbs slowly die, and in the long term, fall
off. When Elder Chingas got back, I told him about it, and he asked whether we
gave him a blessing or not. Totally skipped my mind...so on Sunday, I had the
opportunity to give my first blessing in Macedonian! The words just flew right
out of my mouth, it was unreal. Hopefully now he'll be able to start recovering
better!
On Wednesday, the sisters brought some Chinese guys to
Family Home Evening for some ping pong. They're working for a telephone company
here for a few months, and then they head back. They enjoyed it, so they
invited us all over for dinner on Saturday. We got there, and there were plates
on plates of straight from China Chinese food! It was probably the most
delicious thing I've had on my mission so far. I told them I was born in Hong
Kong, and they all started freaking out, it was really funny. They taught us
some Chinese, and then we talked about religion and the Book of Mormon with
them. None of them religious at all, so they had a ton of questions and were
super interested! It was a night that was probably a highlight of my mission, being
with my Chinese brethren.
Elder Rigby
