Elder Parker Stewart in the Adriatic South: Lots of Potential in Gjakova

This week we have had some great lessons. Although many people do not
accept our message there are a ton of great people here in Gjakova.
This week proved that. We have the opportunity to tract a lot here,
and we meet a lot of different kind of people. My favourite tracting
lesson this week was when we tracted into our Barber and his wife.
When he opened the door we were so surprised, and it was an awkward
exchange at first, but he invited us in, and we sat down and started
talking. His wife then walked in, and I was super surprised when I saw
her. We talked to her in the road twice last week.. to say she gave us
a cold shoulder in the road would be an understatement. She made it
very clear that our work was pointless, and that she wanted nothing to
so with it. After that she learned I was from Canada and did the same
thing again in English because she lived in England. So when she
walked into the room we were pretty surprised. We started talking with
them, and it was awesome. They are great people. She realized we were
normal people, and it was great. They were really funny, super open.
They let us pray. They listened. They had great thoughts. We talked a
ton about them, and their family. She thought we were great. We left
them with a Book of Mormon and some pamphlets. We will see where that
goes!

We had some very cool experiences. We have found an awesome man. He
isn't "Progressing" yet because he hasn't said yes to baptism, but he
has been reading and praying. We had a lesson with him one night, and
right before the lesson we ran into one of the members. We had had a
lesson with him a few nights before, and he was really mad at us
afterwards because we explained the hard truth to him. We explained to
him what he had to do to get the M. Priesthood, and he was not happy
with us. Anyway, when we ran into him in the street he came and
literally begged us for forgiveness. Of course we weren't mad at him.
he then went on to ask us about hid friend. It turns out the cool guy
that we were about to meet with was his friend.. so he helped us with
the lesson. After the lesson on the Restoration we were walking out
the door of the church, and the member told us to wait just a second
so he could sill out a tithing form. Of course his friend asked about
it, and then saw him paying his tithing. The investigator came to
church for his second time, and paid tithing!! We haven't even taught
tithing yet. He has now paid more tithing than a lot of the members.
We are going to invite him to baptism again in our nest lesson.

On another day we had three lessons in a row fall through. We walked
out into the stairwell to pray and to reevaluate the day because
everything was falling through. About a minute later a man and his
wife who we had tracted into a few nights before came walking up the
stairs. He said, "Hey do you have time that we can meet right now?" It
was just what we needed. He was awesome. He is a catholic man, and we
have now had two lessons with him. We talked a lot about baptism last
time. Elder Lesi was also baptised as a baby so he was really able to
relate. Although he has not committed to baptism he is well on his
way. Our good friend Eugen didn't come to church this week, but he is
still on to be baptised on March 7.

The sisters have a lady who will be baptised this week. That is very
exciting! I did the interview yesterday and she passed. She has been
an investigator for about 2 and a half months.

I like our English class a lot now. I guess it just took some warming
up to them. We have had an awesome time together. While I still miss
my beginners class I love this one now too.

Our District is really fun. The sisters are really cool, and the
Tooleys are great. Today for P-day we played phase 10 with everyone
and had a really fun time.

I have to keep it really short today because I have my monthly
District leader training in Prishtina tonight and we have to get
driving. Sorry for not sending out individual letters to everyone!
Have an awesome week. Good luck all basketballers! Take Buddy on lots of
walks!! Hannah, I loved the pic of you sleeping on the floor with
Buddy! I'm very happy to hear that cousin Carolyn survived her surgery!

Thanks for the support. Love Elder Stewart