25 May 2015

Dear Family and Friends,

It sounds like you had quite the eventful week! Wow, Rachel has been going to a lot of reward parties lately! It seems like she goes to one every week! That's awesome to hear that she's doing so well in school. Keep it up Rachel! Woah, did David Letterman really retire or is he going to pull a Jay Leno and come back after a couple months? Haha. I guess it's a good and a bad thing that you've been getting so much rain. It's good that you're getting that rain for the crops, but I guess it could be pretty annoying with all of the projects that you have going on. Woah, Monday is Memorial Day? I did not know at all. It's crazy how fast time is going by! Dad, I hope everything is going well with planning the encampment, and I hope everything goes well with repairing the light {a solar light that needs to have the base welded back on}. That's kinda' nice that Wes, Phil, {his brothers} and Grandpa are living in, relatively, the same area. That's awesome that the Curtis's {a senior couple from the Princeton Ward} got their mission call to St. Louis. And that's really weird that Josh (Braman from the Princeton Ward} will be getting home soon. Time is moving really fast! Things are going well here in Gjakova, it's different than in Durrës, but it's still good. The branch here is really small. The last couple weeks we've had about 16 people in church. There are about 40 baptized members here in Gjakova, but there are a lot of less active members, so that's why not many people come to church regularly. Besides the missionaries, there are maybe one or two active Priesthood members. The branch is really small here, but with time it will grow. I haven't noticed a lot of jasmine growing around here. Then again, I am in the city most of the time and there aren't many growing things in the middle of the city. However, I haven't really been looking for jasmine. But I'll keep my eyes open for them and I'll let you know if I notice it.

So this week was a little bit of a slower week for Elder Baker and I. We have been hunting for a house for Elder Lesi and Elder Asler and we spent a lot of time doing that. We've also had a lot of jobs to do at the church this last week. So we didn't have a lot of lessons that we taught, but we were busy all of the time. This last week there was a Kosovo District Fireside in Prishtina, so we got to go to Prishtina and hear a special presentation. We heard from Brother and Sister Givens. They are authors and they have written many books on the topic of religion. They came to Prishtina from England and talked about the Restoration of the Gospel. It was an amazing talk! The Spirit was so strong in that little Prishtina chapel. It was such a wonderful experience. I'm sure that the members from Gjakova, that went, were uplifted because of it. It was also awesome to go to Prishtina, because I got to see all of the members from Prishtina again! It was awesome to see them doing well and still strong in the Gospel! It was a really awesome night all around. Because of the lateness of the fireside, we stayed with some other missionaries overnight and then we traveled back in the morning. We stayed with the zone leaders, Elder Temple and Elder Rasband. It was really fun to see them as well.

This week my testimony of the Restoration of the Gospel was strengthened. I guess because we had the fireside and talked about the Restoration, that caused me to think about it a bit more this last week. It is just so amazing that our Heavenly Father loves us so much to give us all of the amazing things that He has given us. I'm very grateful that the Lord has given us the Book of Mormon, so that we can know if the Restoration really happened or not. Over the course of my mission, my testimony of the Book of Mormon has been strengthened so much that I can't even imagine going one day without reading from its pages. I love that book so much, and I know that it truly is the word of God revealed to us in these last days!

Sorry, I don't have more time to write today, but I'm doing well and things are going great here in Gjakova! Thank you for your thoughts and prayers! Ju dua shumë! Kaloni mirë! U nglifshi shnosh!

Tung!

Elder Watson