The Spirit Let's You Know What Needs To Be Done

Hello my dear family!

Sharing the Gospel in Durres, Albania.

Well I'm glad you are all enjoying your summer! The heat is killing me here!! It's going to be like 44 C' (That's 111.2' F. so I'm sure hoping that's an exageration!) next week and I'm pretty sure I'm just going to tell Elder Watson to leave me in the sun to die. It's been so ridiculously hot here. And for some dumb reason I've been sweating like a fiend this last week. Elder Stewart and Gray laugh at me all the time for it. I just tell them they're dumb:) 

So this week was pretty neat. We met with Ermal, Elena, and Cimi and his family and we also started our English Class again. English is always pretty fun but it's super stressful because I am not so great at teaching English. Therefore, Elder Watson usually ends up teaching the actual english portion of the lesson and then at the end I lay down the law with a spiritual thought. I've lost a lot of my english abilities.

Cimi's been having some rough times lately. He hasn't been able to find work but we keep praying for him and his family. They had to leave their house this last week and we did a fast for them so that they would be able to find better opportunities with everything. We haven't heard from him since Friday so I don't necessarily know what's going on. We had a lesson with him on Thursday night and we showed him the Restoration film and they loved it! Ersi helped us out with that lesson and he gave some good personal insight. 

This last Monday Ersi actually invited us over for dinner to his house and his mom made us some great food. We taught a lesson with his mom and brother and then we asked if the mom would like to be baptized. She doesn't really have permission from her husband to be baptized but we knew that she wanted to be baptized. But she just said "Kismet", which is another way of saying "no" basically and we left. But yesterday in church Ersi came up to us at and told us that his mom had talked to him earlier that day and told him that she wanted to get baptized soon! She said she was willing to take all of the lessons from the missionaries and that she wanted to be baptized as soon as possible! We were super excited and so was Ersi. He loves his mom and he just wants to see her happy and he knows that the gospel can do that for her. So hopefully that all works out. My district leader, told me that we couldn't baptize her if the dad was against it though, which is for the best, so hopefully we can have a conversation with him that might soften his heart. 

The fruit market.  Looks delish!

Tomatoes!

We met with Elena again this last week too! She has been doing great and we had a lesson on Wednesday and we invited her to be baptized on the 5th of July. (It's the fifth of july!! Feeling independent.) <--Insert Eddie From Ohio song. 

We're super excited for her. There's the possibility that we won't be here for that day but just as long as she progresses and keeps being awesome, everything will be alright.

Ermal has been doing great too. He has a few concerns about the church and what not but he asks lots of questions and I think he's actually starting to see why this is so important. I had to go on a split this week with Elder Acheson to visit a family out in a fshat while Elder Watson and Elder Asler had a lesson with Ermal. They taught about faith and the Plan of Salvation and I guess Ermal was super awesome. He was understanding everything about faith and how we can grow with faith and come to know God through our faith. At the end of the lesson he asked if we could meet at the church after that because we usually hold lessons at the center because that's a place that people know and it's close. But he has a car so he can drive out to the church. 

So on Saturday night we had a lesson with him at the church. He thinks it's the most beautiful place ever. It really is an oasis in a slurry of everything. We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ and he just ate it up. He had lots of questions about repentance and why we should forgive others, and then we talked about baptism and enduring to the end. He agreed to be baptized when he came to a knowledge that what we were teaching him was true. He's a great guy and I'm super stoked for him.

P-day hair cuts for the whole District! Jed loves this.

Also the other night we decided to see if Ndue Pjetri was home. We walked out to their house and only the girls were home so we just asked them for directions to his work. They gave some pretty vague directions and we took off. We walked for about fifteen minutes out into basically the outskirts of nothingness and we hadn't seen his mechanic shop yet. We kept walking and then I felt this incredible prompting to turn around and start walking back. I didn't know if it was me being lazy and giving up or what but I just told Watson that we needed to head back. We walked for maybe 20 meters and then I looked to my left to see this guy sitting in a bar hidden from the view from the road and guess who it was? NDUE PJETRI! We talked to him and asked him how he was doing and how work was going. We set up a time with him when we knew he would be in the house and then we left. But talk about a testimony builder! 

They ate a lot of pizza this week:)  Mom I  don't know if he really did, so don't get too worried!

The Spirit definitely let's you know what needs to be done. I'm so grateful that I didn't just shrug off that prompting and keep walking because we probably wouldn't have been able to meet with him. He's incredibly hard to get a hold of and he's never home. Our prayers were definitely answered. 

I love you all so much and I hope you have a good time in Lake Powell. Keep being safe and have a butt load of fun!!

Love, Jedediah

Dearest Mom,

Thanks for sending the package! I'll probably get it next Wednesday because we'll be having a mission conference before the Fords leave for England! I'm gonna miss them but I'm sure the new mission President and his wife are just as awesome. Thanks for keeping up the blog and stuff. I know it can be time consuming. I love you so much and I think you're awesome!!

Love, Jed