We Are Doing The Work Of God!

Hello my dear beloved family,

I need to start this email by letting you all know that my mission is probably the best thing in the world. I'm not just killing time sitting in Kosovo waiting for something cool to happen. We are doing the work of God and He is guiding our every move if we are humble enough to listen and willing to put forth a little effort. I love being here and I honestly don't want to ever leave this place. These people may be frustrating at times but I still love them with every licking stitch of soul that I have.  They are so ready for the Gospel in their lives and I'm stoked to be one of those giving them the message of the Restored Church of Jesus Christ.

Lot's of baptisms this week.  Great week!

So a lot of stuff happened this week. Tuesday Elder Price and I had to give our very first zone training. It's super weird counseling other missionaries and teaching them when they are so much older than us and we have usually been getting instruction from them. We have a lot of baptismal dates in Kosovë so we decided to do a training on D&C 20:37 ( 37 And again, by way of commandment to the church concerning the manner of baptism—All those who humblethemselves before God, and desire to be baptized, and come forth with broken hearts and contrite spirits, and witness before the church that they have truly repented of all their sins, and are willing to take upon them the name of Jesus Christ, having adetermination to serve him to the end, and truly manifest by their works that they have received of the Spirit of Christ unto the remission of their sins, shall be received by baptism into his church.) which talks about the Lord's Standards for Baptism. We just told them that we needed to always make sure that the people that are progressing towards baptism are following the Lord's Standards instead of our own personal standards. They need to be following the Spirit. 

The next day we had an exchange with the Macedonian missionaries so we drove to Macedonia with the sisters because they do exchanges with the sister missionaries over there while we do ours with the elders.  We sang songs and had a good time until we got to Shkup. Or Skopje is what it's normally called. But we got lost really fast. We didn't know where we were going and Elder Price was driving and he was flipping out and so was I and we drove around for about an hour and then we saw a Burger King so we decided to stop and unstressify ourselves and we were starving anyways. We finally found where we needed to go and we had a great exchange. I went with Elder Prince who is super great and he is a great missionary. I also know how to say several things in Macedonian now. On our way home we got stopped and checked at the border and they went through all of our stuff. Crazy!

Headed to Macedonia.  It was quite the adventure!

Finding investigators in Macedonia.

Lunch!

We drove home and started doing our own work that night and then we get a phone call. It's Elder Watson and he is stuck with Elder Roberts at a little town called Ferizaj becasue the buses stopped for some reason and they had no way to get home. They could call the senior couple and go home but they would have gotten home super late and so we decided that we would just go out and drive out there and pick them up. We made the 45 minute drive out there and picked them up and then we came back home. Pretty long day.

Friday. We had to go pay our power bill for the last two months as they had threatened to turn our power off. (I didn't know anything about this because I just got here. Kinda.) After we took care of that we had to go take our beautiful Opel Corsa to the service place because one of our headlights had gone out and we didn't want to get in trouble. We went throughout the rest of the day and then at night we had to spend the night at the church so that we could heat up the baptismal font.

So we spent the night at the church and woke up at 2 to start the heaters and then at 4 to start working the water system and then again at 6 to start filling the actual font. 

Sleeping over at the church to tend to the filling of the font.

Almost full.

4 of our investigators were baptized this Saturday and I was able to watch Elder Watson baptize his first investigator as well. Talk about a proud father moment!

This weekend was definitely one of the happiest moments of my life. A family of 3, and a young man named Suad were all baptized and made a covenant with their Heavenly Father. They are one step closer to being with Him. I haven't seen someone get baptized for a really long time and it just makes me feel so happy inside.

They were all confirmed on Sunday morning and that was fantastic. Another awesome thing was that all of the ordinances were done by members of the branch. We have a really young branch and we wanted the priesthood holders to exercise the power that they have. Super awesome.

During lunch yesterday we all put our hands up in the air and we all said "Touch Down Jesus!" It's from a song. 

How about that parking job.  Jed claims he did it, but I'm skeptical.

That's all I got this week but I also had some great investigator lessons with our other investigators that are doing great. I love being with Elder Price and I love being in Kosovë.

I love you all! Have a good week!

Love, Jed

Dearest Mother, 

Once again I did not receive an email from my family members. But that's okay. I hope everything is going well and I want you to know that I love you! (Don't worry!  He got a letter or two or three eventually this morning.)

Love, The White Indian Man