No, I'm not being transferred to Kosovo (thank goodness, I am not ready to try to understand that Dialect), but we get to go to Kosovo for Zone Conference on Thursday! We are super excited!
Every day this week, we had at least one person cancel. It was crazy! We should have had about 19 lessons this week, and only got 12. We have done a lot of street contacting this week, because no one can meet right now. We also have no progressing investigators, since are last one got baptized this week! Hopefully this week we will meet more people who want to hear about the church!
On Tuesday, we met with Mimoza, an investigator. Every time we tried to meet with her last week, she was either asleep, or not at the house. We finally met with her this week, and you could tell her thoughts about the church had changed. We had her on a baptismal date, but were planning on moving it, since we hadn't met with her all last week. On Tuesday, we asked her what her thoughts were on baptism, and she said "kismet." Never a good sign. Kismet basically means "if God makes me do it, I will" and is a polite way of saying no. So she doesn't have a desire to be baptized anymore.
So the other day, we got a call from a lady that wanted to meet with us. Her number was already in our phone from the missionaries before us, but we had never heard from her before. The name in the phone was "Sabi Bus JW," Which isn't her name. We were super confused what that meant. We couldn't meet with her when she called, because we had another lesson at our center, and couldn't meet where they wanted to meet. The next day, Sister Cheshire realized what the JW stood for...Jehovah's Witnesses...So basically, they wanted to meet with us so they could talk about their religion, not to hear about ours. The next afternoon, she tried to call us, but we didn't answer, knowing that we didn't want to meet with them. She called again, and again, and again....I think she called around 5 times in a row. We decided that we weren't setting a good example by ignoring their call, so we called them back. They said they were at Selvia, a tree by our center (everyone in Tirana knows this tree. It is the weirdest thing!). We were close to Selvia, so we told them we would go over there. They wanted to share a scripture with us, and we agreed that we would listen to them, if we could share a scripture afterwards. As soon as we met with them, it was obvious that they just wanted to prove that our religion was wrong. They shared a few scriptures, and we listened, being respectful. As soon as they started talking, I felt completely different. I felt sick, and like there was a rock in my chest. I can't explain how I felt, it just didn't feel right. The Spirit wasn't with us when they were speaking, but we tried to be respectful still. Sister Cheshire would agree with them when they said something that we believed in too. At one point, they started talking about something that they believed, and it was something that we didn't believe in. Sister Cheshire told them that we respected them, but believed something different. When she said this, one of the ladies tried to prove her wrong, saying, "well then how can you explain this scripture in the bible?" Sister Cheshire explained that what she read wasn't in our bible, that we believed something different. Then, both of the women started talking to her, and basically verbally cornering her. I didn't like where this was going, so I interrupted both of the ladies, and said, "Like she said, we respect you, but believe something different." After that, they started to share something else from their Bible. After a little bit longer, sister Cheshire said that we had to go home, because it was getting late. We still had about 30 minutes before we needed to start heading home, but we knew we needed to stop the conversation. After we said goodbye, we knew that we needed to do something to get the Spirit back. We went to our center and said a prayer. As soon as we started praying, the bad feeling seemed to melt away, and we could feel the Holy Ghost with us again. We both were happy again, and were able to continue with the Lord's work.
Every night for daily planning, one person shares a scripture and the other shares their testimony of how they saw the hand of the Lord that day. The day of the JW experience, Sister Cheshire opened to a random scripture in the Book of Mormon. She had opened up to Alma 8:14-15. It was perfect for the experience we had just had!
On Saturday, Markeliana (Kela) got baptized!! She got up to share her testimony afterwards, and you could tell how happy she was. She said she didn't have words to explain just how happy she was and how she felt. I was so happy for her, and it was great to see her so happy!!
Random fact about Albania: addresses don't exist! No one knows their address, which makes finding houses really difficult for us! We had a lesson planned with an inactive family, and called to ask where they lived. She said she lived at Frescu. We figured frescu was a street, so we took a bus that way, and then got off to find frescu. We asked a man for directions, and he said that the restaurant was up the road. This restaurant was huge! So we found that, called the lady again, and she told us where to go from there. That is how it always is here, when you are trying to find someone's house. they tell you what they live by, and then you just guess. It is always a fun experience when we visit people for the first time!
I think that's about it for this week. Have a fantastic week!! I love and miss you guys!
Love,
Motra Bennett
No comments:
Post a Comment