The road goes ever on and on... The work goes on and on, too! It takes a lot of mining to find the gems.
Reni is a good soul who's been investigating for a while now. He's been taught all the lessons and then some. He doesn't come to church that often but we continue to meet with him. He's learning English so he likes to watch church videos with us.
Kozeta has been meeting us only about twice a month, and we haven't had a chance to turn her over to the sisters yet. She has lots of great questions and seems to have great potential. She hasn't been to church yet because she drives down to Durres every weekend to visit her parents.
Hallit is a great guy, speaks English pretty well. We have good discussions with him.
Agrone seems to be our most promising prospect right now. He was being taught a few months ago, then dropped off the radar. All of a sudden he showed up recently! He's been having trouble finding work, but he hasn't smoked or drunk (drank?) for 3 months, and he seems like he really wants to change. We're excited for him.
There was one man named Gazmend. He was referred to us by his friend who served a mission in Italy. He was golden! He seemed to accept everything we taught him with an open mind and also seemed to have a real desire to be baptized. But about 2 weeks ago he completely disappeared. We can't get a hold of him at all. I guess in cases like that all you can do is hope for the best and move on. You can't agonize over the past if you know you did all you could, and I know we did, so... Yeah, I hope he gets back in touch.
Other than those, we have Hermes, a 12-year old boy that I do believe will be in an area 70 someday. When we meet with him for retention lessons, we have him teach us principles. His knowledge of the scriptures is immensely more impressive than mine was at that age.
On Sundays, the attendance at the branch is about 45 people. That's about average for all the branches in Albania. My first Sunday in the country I was asked to give my testimony, and to my knowledge I gave a decent one with hopefully not too much false doctrine in it. Last Sunday I sealed the oil for a blessing, reading the words off a card. It was a good experience, might be awhile before I feel comfortable giving a full blessing in Albanian, though.
Uhh... God be with you all the time! Especially until we meet again!
(bonus points to my nerd friends who get the allusion of the post title)
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