We embarked to Albania to go to Mission Conference on Monday
afternoon. We were a little bummed; we had to give up a part of P day. But it
was so worth it. That was easily my favorite conference/meeting/training I've
had on my mission so far. We were pleasured with President Kearon, President of
the European Mission. As zone leaders and sister training leaders, we waited in
a separate room and got to have a small training by him when he arrived in the
building with Pres and Sister Weidmann. Honestly, if I had two words to
describe him, it would be relaxed and entertaining. He just told us that we
shouldn't worry as much, just work harder. When we went back to the big
conference room, he shared the same message. The main thing I got from the
meeting is how important listening to the people here is. I haven't been too
good at that, partly because of the Macedonian people's love of talking your
ear off.
Mission Leadership Conference was also fantastic as usual,
and President Kearon was there as well. We present and talk about each zone in
each one, about 5 minutes per zone. When we were talking about our zone, something
that really impressed me was that Pres Kearon knew the number in sacrament for
Skopje off the top of his head. That guy is such a smart person. And I gotta
say, it was pretty cool being able to present numbers for two countries in
front of the president of Europe.
We were driving back with the sister training leaders, and
we realized we needed to call President about something. We decided to wait
until we got to Kosovo, so that we weren't roaming. We used the STL's phone,
and after the number rang a couple times, an old man answered, and no matter
what I said, he just replied "Ku" (Where in Albanian). It was super
weird, so then I hung up and tried again. President Weidmann answered, but then
it cut off before he could finish saying hello. I tried a third time, and it
was the same Ku guy that answered! Literally no matter what I said to him in my
super broken Albanian, he replied "Kuuuuuuu". It gave us all a pretty
good laugh.
Well, I've got less than 6 months left of my mission now.
With how fast these last 6 months have gone, I feel like I'm really going to be
home before I know it. TIME IS FLYING. I'm excited yet not excited for it at
the same time.
Elder Rigby
