Glory To The Lord, It Is Good!

Elder Clawson contacting in Vlore, Albania

April 20, 2015 email

Dearest Family of 6,

This week was very successful, full of love, laughter, and fun stuff.

 

To start it all off we met with a lot of our recent converts and tried to help them out with their questions and such. One of our converts is Brother Gentjan Zgëna and he is AWESOME!! He is definitely one of the best people that I have met on my mission. He was baptized in the middle of March and he is just a little ball of joy. He works as a roaming salesman with little odds and ends and every day we see him we ask him how work is going and he just smiles and says "Lavdi Zoti, mirë." Which translates to "Glory to the Lord, it's good." and he just has the best outlook on life. He is super willing to help us out with any lesson we have or anything like that. This last week we taught him the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity and he is so solid!

 

He was having some troubles this last week and so we gave him Doctrine and Covenants 121 to read because I had actually read it that morning for personal study and he read and then called us later in the day telling us how it had changed his life. That's it for Genti. He's great.

We also met with our çun friend, Valerio. He is making progress in his reading capabilities and he is starting to actually pick up what the Book of Mormon is teaching which is good. He brought a friend named Mateu with him the other day and he loved reading with us. I'm actually starting to like Valerio. At first I was a bit skeptical about him but he is showing promise so I like him now. He just chaps my lips sometimes when he takes 5 billion years to read the word "jashtëzakonisht". But I cut him some slack because I'm trying to be Christlike. 

Studying his guts out!

Filip is the man. We taught him about temples this last week and the Priesthood again just so he could kinda get implanted in his brain. The temples topic was a little rough because I don't remember much about the temple and I don't know what I need to say. But it was all good and he really wants to go to the temple! HOT DOG! We also had a lesson with him on Saturday night to kinda talk with him about smoking because he hasn't been making the progress that has been needed and we can't drop him because he is SO close to being perfect. We read Ether 12:27 with him and talked about the weaknesses that God gives all of us so that we can rely on him more fully.  It was a super good lesson and we set up some expectations with smoking that have already helped him a bunch. He is such a good guy and I just love him to death. 

This week we found a new investigator named Bujar. He came to church with us yesterday and we just sat and listened to the talks and loved church. Before the meeting started we were just chatting and what not and then he brought up baptism and I just mentioned how we are baptized to become members of our church and such and he said "I really want to get baptized." So needless to say we talked with him after the meeting and we are helping him out to figure out a date. He enjoyed church a lot and it was especially good because we had Ward Conference yesterday which made things even better.

By the way, today as I was walking down the road, a boy about 16 years old and 6'2 kicked me right in the butt and ran off down the road. I don't know why or who he was but Elder Dahl and Befus saw it so they can testify of the idiocy that goes on in this country at times.

Our other investigator Emiljano has been good too. We taught him the Word of Wisdom earlier in the week and it was great. He totally felt the Spirit and we invited him to be baptized on a specific date but he just wants to read the whole Book of Mormon first. He's actually pretty close so I'm okay with it for now but hopefully he understands why baptism is so darn important! 

I love his tag!

Those are about all of the highlights this week. But I love being here in Vlore. The people are great, the members are awesome, and I'm just loving life. The church is true and God loves us and wants to bless us 24/7. I love being on my mission and speaking Albanian and all the other crazy stuff that comes with it. 

I hope you all have a good week and stay safe. Tell Jake and Seth to make big jumps upon the track. That's how they can get better! I love you all!

Love, Jedi

New fancy suit to come home in.  They're pretty cheap in Albania!

Dearest Mother, 

Well Mom, I love you. Thank you for writing all these emails for me. Tell Seth way to go on the sacrament and on his talk. I'm excited to hang out with all of the kids. It'll be good times. So did all the snow melt pretty fast then? Hopefully the snow will be better next year. I got the suit and it is AMAZING!! I don't know if you wanted me to get both shoes or just one pair so I haven't gotten either of them yet. I don't have enough for both for now. But you would be so proud of how my missionary shoes look. They are massacred. Well I hope you have a great week and tell everyone I love them. Loves!

Love, Jedediah