You Are So Golden! Jesus Loves You!

Elder Clawson and a member who is preparing to serve a mission!

Hello everyone!!

Thats awesome that the Mowers came up!! (Nic Mower is one of Jed's favorite friends that moved to TX about 8 years ago.  He came to visit the Clawson's this week, and is leaving for Spain on a mission in Oct.) So this week was pretty fun.

Last Monday, right after I had gotten done emailing, Elder Foster and I had started walking from our house and we were walking towards the crosswalk and we saw this like 48 year old guy crossing the street and then all of a sudden, this white scooter comes shooting by, clips this guys leg, the guy walking falls right on his back and the dude on the scooter slides out and crashes his scooter!! Then they both just stood up and the driver of the scooter just yells out "Hapi sytë!!" which means 'Open your eyes!!" and they just went their separate ways. It was nuts!! I thought someone was gonna end up dead.

 We have started teaching a girl named Megi in our English course. We'd had a lesson with her before and asked her to start reading the Book of Mormon and she told us at this last lesson that she hadn't had time. We told her the importance of reading it and what not. At the end of the lesson she prayed and "Unë premtoj ta lexoj Librin i Mormonit" which was her telling God that she promised to read the Book of Mormon. I was just rejoicing in my head like "AH!! You are so golden!! Jesus loves you!" So we feel pretty confident about her. Another cool thing is that we met a young man named Zamir and he started taking the lessons in Lushnjë and then he came to Durres for school and he's getting baptized! We've taught him these past two weeks and we are super excited for him. He's awesome.

Nothing super outstanding happened until Friday and Saturday. Friday, I had my first gypsy  problem. Elder Foster and I were walking down on the Vulga to meet a referral and then out of the blue comes this dirty, dark, small gypsy kid. He was like 3 feet tall and he was freaky. Gypsies don't really beg, they just sit there and chant their begs and it sounds like they're putting a spell on you. But anyways, we aren't allowed to give money, so I kept trying to give him a picture of Jesus but he wouldn't take it. Then the stupid kid latched onto my arm with the strength of 10 men!! We could not get him off!! After about 5 minutes of struggling with this kid, a big lady came over and ripped him off my arm and told him to leave. I was seriously freaked out. 

On Saturday, we got shut down by everyone. My first day with no investigator lessons basically. Elder Foster told me it might not be the first because sometimes we just have bad luck. Yesterday we had a lesson with the Pjetri family and their daughters, Nertila and Marieta asked us for blessings because they don't have a priesthood holder in the family. Elder Foster gave the first one and then I gave the other to Nertila. IN ALBANIAN!! I was sweating buckets and I was soaked at the end. But I was able to pull through and gave a somewhat understandable blessing.

So to answer your questions:

Durres is cool. It's large, dirty, and has every variety of human beings imaginable. I've been winked at almost 2,000,000 times by girls in the street and every once in a while you get a guy winking. It's weird. The food is heavenly. No matter what it is. It's just a really great place to be.

My typical day is I wake up, work out and eat until 8, have comp. study until 10, and then we have lessons from 10:30 until 1 which is when we take lunch. We eat lunch, and then we nap. We sleep till about 2:30 and then we have personal study, and then I have my language study. So I don't have an extra hour of language but I have an extra hour of Companion study, which is kinda like a coaching course. We leave the house at 5 and have lessons or find until 9 or 9:30 depending on if we have a lesson or not. Then we go shopping and plan for the next day and then we get ready for bed and hit the sack at 10:30. We're usually super tired at the end of the day, but we always have pillow talk for a few minutes.

Can you tell Jed is a baker.  He has flour running through his veins:)
His first banana bread!  All he had was a cake pan, and it looks great!

 And I made the best banana bread this week. It was in a cake pan because I don't have a bread pan but it was still delish. 

Well I love you all very much and I hope all is well with you!!

Love, Jed

Dear Mom, 

Thanks for telling me about the Mowers coming up. I bet Nic is super excited for Spain. Have fun in Lake Powell this week and listening to Conference. We watch the first two sessions at 6 PM on Saturday and Sunday but that's it. Oh well. I love you and miss you all so much! Have a fun week!

Jed