9 February 2015

Dear Family and Friends,

Thank you for the weekly emails that you send me! I really appreciate them and I look forward to them every 

P-day! Wow! It's always awesome (and sometimes a little weird) to hear about everything that's going on back home. It's weird that life is still going on and things are changing back home. Çmenduria!! Yeah, Elder Myers and Motra Vermunt were the ones that ended up going home due to health issues. I'm not sure what issues they had, but health issues like that aren't too common. So don't worry. It's super awesome that Elder Waters is back in Albania. He's being trained in Tirana with Elder Simons. It's interesting because Elder Simons was Elder Waters's companion in the MTC. President Weidmann didn't know that when he made that assignment so that's super cool! Yeah, Valentine's Day gets celebrated here too. I don't know how popular it is though. I haven't seen any advertisement for it. However, the Church is having an activity for that for YSA ages. It sounds like they'll be having a dance at the Durrës chapel. It's a Stake activity, so people will be coming from all over the country to it. It sounds like it'll be a great activity. Yeah, there has been quite a bit of flooding here in Albania. However, in Durrës, we haven't had any issues from that. From what I've heard, it's worst in Southern Albania in places like Fier, Vlorë, and Gjirokastër. As zone leaders, we've been talking to all the missionaries in our zone nightly to know if they're still safe and things are going alright. So we've been talking to people in Durrës, Shkodër, and Elbasan. None of them have seen any issues or have been effected by it. So that's good. We were actually in Elbasan this week for a baptismal interview, and we didn't experience any issues driving or while we were in the city. We saw that the river was kinda' high, but nothing too dangerous.

This week was an awesome week for Elder Roemer and I! We were very blessed this week in our work! We were blessed with finding some really awesome new investigators. We found these two kids last Monday night. We tracted into their house. We've been able to meet with them several times this last week. It's amazing to see how prepared they are! They are understanding very quickly. Both of them love learning about the gospel. Both of them, Sajmir and Xhim, come to our English Course as well. Sajmir has actually said a prayer in front of the English Course twice! No one else in the course is willing to pray except him. They're super awesome, both of them are reading from the Book of Mormon and they love it! It's super awesome to see how the Lord has blessed us with people who are prepared to receive the Gospel. We've been blessed in finding many others as well, mainly from recent converts and the family members of other investigators. This week the Lord has blessed us with being able to meet with people often as well! We've had an awesome week all around! I know that these blessings came, not because we did anything different, but because we are being obedient. In a lot of our meetings we've been talking a lot about consecration in the Lord's Work. I'm not saying that we were being disobedient before, but we've gotten a lot better with the tiny little things. I believe that because Elder Roemer and I are trying to be obedient in all of the tiny, little things the Lord is blessing us abundantly. I know that the Lord loves us all. I know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. I know that when we obey His Word, we are blessed abundantly!!

Thank you for all of the love and support that you give me! Ju dua shumë! Javë të mbarë. Kalofshit bukur!

Me dashuri të madhe,

Elder Watson

On exchange with Elder Matson.  We had a ton of fun!  For lunch we found a place
down near the beach called "Wild West."  The place looked super cool!  It seemed
like a legit wild west themed restaurant; however, the food wasn't up to par.
But, it was worth a shot.

The road coming into Durrës from the dash cam.
(Just kidding, we don't have a dash cam.  But it would be cool, right?)

A random stuff we saw during tracting--half of an old picture of
New York City.  Looking at that picture was super weird.  The
buildings look so foreign and almost fake.