Sorry to disappoint, but I sadly don't have as many stories as last week. I figure I won't share EVERYthing either, since I'll be calling home in 4 days and I'm gonna need something to talk about. A lot is just the usual, but there's one awesome story I'll share.
A week or so ago at church someone handed us an email that had been sent to people in the ward. Apparantely a family had just moved here from Albania that was baptized two weeks ago. They don't speak English either, other than "Good Morning", and "thank you." They saw they lived close to us, which they do, but it's even better. There's been this family in our complex from Albania that we've known for awhile and we've been trying to teach them, but the parents don't speak English super well and it was really hard to convey everything to them. (I actually never really met them, but the Sisters before us did) Their 14 year old son Andy speaks good English & Albanian, so we figured we'd have them come and teach with us. Turns out the new member family is cousins with them and they actually live in the apartment above us. We stopped by to visit and invite them to church and got to talk with them for awhile with Andy translating everything. Kinda felt like I was in Costa Rica again except I didn't even know ANY words. Andy ended up coming with the member dad (Artur) to church (mostly to translate for him, but he didn't). One of the Elders convinced him to go with the Young Men and the Teachers quorum ended up giving him a first lesson during their class. He loves it and already knows it's true. We invited Andy's dad Mustafa too, and he says he doesn't want to learn about the church because he drinks and smokes and has done it his whole life and doesn't want to give it up. Artur says he's work on him with the Book of Mormon. They're the best and you can tell, especially with Artur, that his testimony is so strong, even though I only know what he says through a translator. Artur and his wife Albana have a 4yr old daughter named Arleda who is the cutest girl ever. She always talks non stop to us and doesn't realize we have no idea what she's saying. I'm getting pretty good at reading body language so I can fake it for awhile.
We've gone over there a few times and they're our best friends now. There's also 2 other families that they're related to that live in the complex and we know them all. Sunday night they invited us over for dinner to experience real Albanian food. All of the families came over. It was crazy and totally a cultural experience. We didn't go over until 8:00 at night and we weren't really hungry. The table was full of salads and one by one Mustafa kept bringing out plates of meat and throwing it on our plates without asking. We were wondering how we'd even eat the first slab of meat (I got lamb), and then we got a chicken breast, a steak, and a slab of roast beef. Each very big pieces, and they filled up an entire plate. We then had to fill up another plate with each of the salads so we could try them all, so we sat there with 2 heaping plates of food infront of us. Sister Clove and I just stared at it all wondering if they really expected us to eat all of that. I even asked Andy that was the idea. Even their 4 year old daughter had the same amount and was just going at it. We did the best we could, but hardly made a dent and it was time to go home. We didn't know what to do, and we ended up covering our plates with tin foil and taking them home. We weren't quite sure if that was un-kosher for them, but we had no choice. It was really good, but still haven't eaten it. It's too intimidating.
Anyway, they're the coolest people ever. I'll keep you updated. We also had our Missionary Fireside for the youth in our ward. Everyone was supposed to bring a friend, and we had a really good turnout. There was about 35 kids, and 10 or so nonmenbers. Elder Steel did most of the talking, about how to be your best self. He's a funny kid. That was a big project and it's crazy that we actually pulled it off. It was good for the youth to get to experience sharing the gospel to some extent.
I think that's it for now. I hope you're all doing well. Thanks for your
letters and support.
Lots of love,
Sister Ruthie Salisbury
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