Elder Chingas and I taught our last Advanced English Course
for this session. At first we were just having conversations, but they said
they wanted to write essays instead! So we started giving them a lot more timed
essays and quizzes, and we gave them a really hard final at the end. I would
have got maybe a 70% on it. They were pretty mad about their 50% scores
regardless though!
On Wednesday we traveled down to Tirana for mission conference.
And we of course stopped by KFC on the way back. All the people in Europe have
been going crazy over the Euro Cup for soccer. When we stayed the night in Pristina
a few weeks ago, Albania was playing, and all the people were making so much
noise the whole game. So at the mall where we got the KFC, they had a massive
screen set up showing Portugal and Hungary play.
THE BIG 20. The day
of mission conference was my 20th BIRTHDAY. I woke up feeling like a whole new
person that day :) I think more people told me happy birthday that day than all
the other birthdays in my life put together. President and Sister Weidmann
always recognize birthdays, and since my birthday was on that day, I got called
up first and everyone sang happy birthday to just me, and then again with all
the other nearby birthdays! All the Macedonia Elders were going in style with
some bedazzled ties that someone gave us as gifts. I also gave my dying
testimony along with 16 other missionaries. There's only 6 missionaries coming
in, so we're going to be shrinking a lot as a mission, being under 50
missionaries total! During those testimonies we all talked about all that we've
learned from the mission. I don't think there will ever be another time of such
accelerated learning in my life as I have had in the mission. It is and has
been a memory I will treasure forever.
President and Sister Weidmann came down for the weekend to
Skopje after. They came to our district meeting on Saturday, which ended up
being about double the time as usual with all the help and feedback from the
Weidmanns. But it was still a good meeting! We invited them to come out to
lunch with us after, and they decided for it. We got to the Ramstore Mall
cafeteria, and SURPRISE! We saw another big ol' screen. This time it was showing
the Switzerland Poland soccer game. And the Weidmanns are from Switzerland! It
was the coincidence of coincidences. Sister Weidmann is usually a very calm and
elegant person, but she was not for that lunch, going absolutely crazy about
the game! It was hilarious. President Weidmann was trying to set a good example
for us, sitting with his back towards the game and trying to ignore it.
1 Month left exactly.
Elder Rigby
