Elder Parker Stewart in the Adriatic South: New Year's Day Marks One full Year!

Happy New Year everyone.

We had transfer calls on Sunday. Elder Holm and Elder Penrod both got
moved out of Gjakova. Elder Holm went to Elbasan to serve with Elder
Baldwin, and Elder Penrod is in Tirana serving with someone else. We
now have sisters here in Gjakova. We have Sister Boettinger and Sister
Vermunt. It should be a really fun time. The Tooleys are still here so
it will be great. Elder Lesi and Elder Tooley get along great. Elder
Tooley is learning Albanian, and Elder Lesi is learning English so
their conversations are pretty funny.

It got really cold here. We got ton of snow on Saturday night, and we
don't get chinooks here in Gjakova. Everywhere is white. Between the
snow and having the two Canadian sisters up here it feels a lot like
Canada.

Yesterday we had a trainee trainer meeting in Tirana so Elder Lesi and
I drove down to that. I got to drive and it was awesome cruising down
and back from there. Tirana traffic is nuts. The training thing was
really good. Elder Lesi has been working hard on memorizing D and C 4
in English for Pres Weidmann, and he got to say the first 3 verses as
part of the training. That was really cool. President Weidmann is a
very spiritual man, and his training was great he talked about a talk
given called What is a Preach My Gospel Missionary. The stps were. 1.
Understand you serve and represent Jesus Christ 2. Be worthy 3.
Treasure up the words of eternal life 4. Understand that the Holy
Ghost is the ultimate and true teacher 5. Understand teaching is more
important than talking and telling. President Weidmann did a great job
expounding on all of them. I also liked a quote he had. Missionaries
will get along if a. They are both obediant or b. They are both
disobedient. He said if ever there should be contention take a little
while and think because likely there is disobediance involved.

After the training we drove back to Kosovo. We took Sister Zollinger
and her new trainee Sister Riley with us. We had to be in our houses
by dark las night so we had to stay in Prishtina. We stayed with Elder
McGrath and Elder Rasband. It was fun to see them. Elder Rasband is
now serving there in Prishtina with Elder McGrath. We woke up at
midnight to see the fireworks. They were husge. The whole city was
exploding. The downtown must have been nuts.

Well.. thats it for today. Our next p-day is monday so I will be on
the computer again then Today I don't have a ton of time.

Have a great week and take Buddy on some walks.

Love Elder Stewart

ps sorry for not responding to or sending individual emails. The
internet cafes are all shut down so we each have a small amount of
time on the church computer.