Baptism This Week!!

Hello my beloved family in America, 

A baptism this week!!  This is the first picture we've seen of Jed's investigator.  He says it's bad luck to take pictures of them before they're baptized.  Handsome group of men!

Yes, this week was full of love and great things. 

Monday was good because we were able to meet with Nezir and get a Priesthood lesson review because he was kinda iffy on who could baptize him. He was blown away when he found out that I had the priesthood and could do it.  He was excited to hear that he would be able to get the Priesthood shortly after his baptism so hopefully everything goes well with that. 

Tuesday was full of all kinds of wonders and such. We had a fantastic district meeting given to us by Elder Stewart and that was a good spiritual boost to my life. After wards Elder Jorgensen and I walked about 30 minutes to the place that we had the car accident so that we could meet the guy and talk to him about all of the specifics so that we could get our car fixed. Anyways after that we had our english course which went well. There was a new bunch of guys that came in that were like 20 ish years old and they were all in college and wanting to know english. There's also this 14 year old girl that thinks she knows the entire language who always asks me if I have a girlfriend. 

 

After the english section we were going to have our spiritual thought and Elder Jorgensen looked at all the guys and said, "If you guys don't want to stay you can leave." And so they all stood up and left, along with almost the entire course!! Fortunately some of them stayed and listened to my FANTASTIC spiritual thought on God's love for all of us. So yeah I wasn't super happy with the disappearance of those other people though. We then had a lesson with Ajdin who is doing awesome! He is progressing super well and he may very well make his baptism date! He reads whenever he has time and loves learning and he has made tons of awesome friends in the branch so we're happy for him. 

Wednesday was the day that we had interviews with President Weidmann! 

He came in and we had our interview and it was awesome! He is such a good guy. He just sits ya down and asks ya how life is going, how the investigators are, what they need, what can we do better, and then he checks our planners. I've been keeping a super good planner this transfer and he said he was super impressed with how I had it set up so that made my day. Then we just talked about how we could progress the work in my area and then we talked about the zone and stuff. It was super good to have that interview with him because Elder Jorgensen and I have been super frustrated with stuff and with little errands that we need to do that have been taking our attention away from our area. After our interviews Elder Jorgensen and myself went to a turkish restaurant and got some somun me suxhuk which is like a calzone loaded with cheese and sausage. Super good stuff. Love it!

Futbol with the members and other missionaries.

Later that night we had a personal english course kinda thing with two boys named Artur and Adhurim. And yes that Artur has no "H". So they come to our normal english course but they are super interested in the gospel so we had like 30 minuts of english and then 30 minutes of gospel and they ate it up. When we were talking about Joseph Smith we were showing them pictures and they were leaned over trying to look up close and asking questions and they loved it. Good kids. After that we had a lesson with Nezir but we had invited President Weidmann to come and help us out with it. Betim (a member  also wanted to help and so did our recent convert Suad! So we decided to just do a lesson with all 6 of us and we taught a review of the Restoration and it was great! 

The next day I was in Peja with Elder Baker on an exchange. We worked there and found for most of the day but we were able to find them a new investigator and he was in love with Americans. He just kept telling us how much he respected us and how much he loved what we did for Kosovo during the war. We had a good lesson with him on the Restoration and he was pretty interested. He is Catholic originally so it's good to be working with a Christian. The day was good and I actually had the opportunity to teach a lesson with the other elders in Peja as well. We went to a recent converts home and I went with Elder Morava who is from Albania, and Elder Baker went with Elder Simons and they taught a young man named Sahiti, and Elder Morava and I taught this lady named Dashuria. She is deaf and can't talk. We just sat there and wrote on a piece of paper some questions and answers and then she would circle the answer and then we would say some stuff in sign language. Sister Curtis had shown me some stuff in sign language before she left and so I was able to use some of that in the lesson which was super awesome. It was definitely a humbling thing to see someone learning about the gospel in such a different way. 

Elder Clawson filling the portable font.  

The next day I came home and we had a meeting with all of the district leaders and presented the zone goals for them. Then we went out to lunch. Later that day we met with this guy named Agim who hasn't been progressing and such and we were planning on dropping him but we had a member come to his lesson and his presence kinda made Agim listen and think a bit more. The member shared testimony of the divinity of Jesus Christ and gave a story from the Bible that tied into the lesson. It was super good and we know that Agim felt the Spirit so we'll see how he acts on that. 

That night Nezir came to the church and we explained what would be happening the next day and we tried on some baptism suits. He was very happy. 

Saturday. That morning we started heating up the water for the font and then we went and played soccer with some investigators and members. We returned and started filling the font. At 6 o'clock that night, everyone came and Nezir came all ready for his baptism! We had a good service and Sister Zollinger talked on baptism and gave a great talk, and then a member, gave the other one on the Holy Ghost. Then we had the actual baptism and I got to baptize Nezir! It was so great!! He was super excited and happy and loved every second of it. We had refreshments afterwards and then everyone left. We walked home and slept well that night. 

Yesterday, Elder Jorgensen confirmed Nezir and Ajdin was able to come to church and see all that stuff which was good for him and all the LDS soldiers from the base were able to come and join us as well. In the hour after that we were able to give Suad the Aaronic Priesthood!! It was great to see that. He is a good guy. 

So all in all I have learned a lot this week. I noticed a couple nights ago that something was nagging at me and I talked with Elder Jorgensen about it and I kinda realized that I haven't been the nicest person towards others. Saying snide comments and making little jokes here and there and I realized that I wasn't necessarily showing love the way I should have. So this week I'm going to work on that a lot more. I also remembered a quote from Chaplin that says "Only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural." and that kinda made me think that if everyone is loved by God then there is no reason to hate. We are all the Children of God and He loves us more than we can realize. I also was able to study about the first and greatest commandment which just kinda solidified that knowledge. 

I love working here in Kosovo! This week we get to go to Durrës for a little mission conference and I'm excited to kinda go back for a bit. I love you guys and I hope you all have a great week!

Love, Jed

Dearest Mother, 

I love getting your emails! Thanks for sending them. It looks like everyone has changed so much since I left! I'm gonna hate coming home because it's not gonna be anything like it was! I'm gonna come home to a whole different family!! So you guys ripped out the gardens and stuff? How'd that go? Well I hope you guys have fun this week. Hopefully you guys can get some more skiing in! 

Love you so much!
Jedediah