Scatter Sunshine: Adriatic South: From Tirana.....to MACEDONIA?!

Cfarë?!!!! SI JENI JU? Jam mirë! Thjeshtë do shkoj në Macedoni?!! How are you all doing? I'm just going to go right into the culture shocks.....

Culture Shocks of the Week:

1. I'm 9 months into my mission meaning I'm halfway :(

2. I'M GETTING TRANSFERRED TO MACEDONIA! No I don't speak Macedonian. No I can't read Serbian (the Book of Mormon is in Serbian). This will be so much fun!

3. Before I go to Macedonia, I'm serving in KOSOVO for 10 days while they do my paperwork and wait for another sister to fill my place in Kosovo.

In conclusion: I get to serve in all 3 countries on my mission! WHAT?! I'll be learning a little Macedonian, Serbian, and Gheg (Kosovo's Albanian). I'm so excited! It's a special assignment for one transfer (6 weeks) but honestly I am just so ready to go out and serve the Lord serving the people in Albania, Kosovo, and Macedonia!

So me being transferred means that I sadly had to say goodbye to my family here in Tirana. It was definitely a big family! haha I love all these people here and honestly am just so grateful I had the opportunity to serve them for this last 4 and a half months. Some special moments from this last week was that Liliana is getting baptized!! I am just so excited for all of the people that we are teaching right now and their preparation to make this covenant and receive the blessings of baptism! Hopefully I can hear about it somehow in Macedonia haha

Some other moments from this last week: We have become regulars at a milkshake place we discovered by our home....they've now been giving us free cookies. I don't know how that's helping our health haha but hey, I had a lesson with an older lady who told us ice cream is good for you so I'm going to go with her wisdom :) Also I got to go on an exchange in Shkodër again and honestly I just love that city! Any city that's not Tirana is a quiet city haha and lastly, for my last Sunday, I gave another talk in the other ward and probably said about every prayer in every class possible because of me leaving.....also I have to mention that as I was the organist in the Tirana 1st ward, I may have been playing the wrong song for half of the song in church as everyone was singing a different song. They thought the chorister was confused hahaha luckily it was just one of the Elders directing the song.

As I am now halfway through my mission, I just wanted to share something I have learned. This past 9 months I have learned about how real the love of God is. It is powerful! I have found that if we are feeling down or we feel that God has forgotten about us, it is not that God has forgotten us, we have forgotten Him!

1 Nephi 21:14 But, behold, Zion hath said: The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me—but he will show that he hath not.

15 For can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee, O house of Israel.

16 Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me.

I truly can testify of that as occasionally when I'm feeling down or a little lost, I then think, "Have I turned to the Lord?" It is then when I turn to the Lord in prayer, I feel of that comfort, peace, and love that only comes from Him. We met with a lady this week that approached us saying that she liked my companion's skirt :) We then ended up meeting with her at her home and she shared this message: God has not forgotten me! It is me that does the forgetting. She has such a desire to follow Christ, the Son of God. I just want to testify of the joy that come from following Christ and coming unto Him! That is literally why I am happy! His love becomes so REAL in our lives when we REALLY follow Him! It does require work, action, but it is doing something we've not done before that helps us feel something we've not felt before. That is why we keep learning, keep changing, and keep coming unto Christ. I testify of that in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Have a wonderful week! Until next week when I'll be writing from Kosovo! :)