22 June 2015

Dear Family and Friends,

Thank you very much for the emails that you send me each week! I really appreciate them and look forward to reading them! Dad, Happy Father's Day! I hope you had a really great day! Thank you for all that you have done, and for everything you do, to take care of us! Thank you a ton! I love you! Wow, you guys spent a lot of time travelling around this last weekend! Sound like things are still keeping you busy, even during the summer. Dad, that's awesome that you were able to work in Psych into your talk. That's crazy to hear about everything that's been going on in Cambridge. I was looking on lds.org a few weeks ago at the ward directory and I don't recognize a whole lot of names in there. So I'm sure that the Church and the city will be completely different when I get back!

Things are going a little slow here in Gjakova. It seems that missionary work just tends to slow down at this time of the year. It's weird, but after a while, you can start to see trends in the rate of missionary work. So Elder Baker and I have been doing a lot of contacting this week. The Muslim holiday of Ramadan has also started this last week, so people are a lot less inclined to speak with us; however, we're still staying strong. We're looking at ways to remain hopeful and effective during this more difficult time of year. This upcoming week we have a Mission Conference in Elbasan in Albania, so we'll get to spend a lot of time travelling, but I'm always happy when we'll have meetings like that. They are very spiritual. This last week in Gjakova was a little interesting. So Elder Baker has been serving as the Branch President here in Gjakova, however, he will be leaving next week, so about on Thursday, President Weidmann came up to Kosovo to meet with him and to talk about the Branch and things like that. After that meeting, President Weidmann asked to meet with me. So we started off talking about missionary work, and the district. Then he extended the calling to me as Branch President of Gjakova. I was kinda' surprised, but also at the same time I could kinda' see it coming. So this last Sunday, President Weidmann reorganized the branch here. Needless to say, I've spent a lot of time studying from the Church Handbooks to know what the heck I'm doing. Even though this calling is something new and foreign to me, I know that the Lord qualifies those whom He calls. I've been thinking a lot about 1 Nephi 3:7 where Nephi shows his faith in the Lord by knowing that the Lord wouldn't give him something impossible to do. I also know that the Lord will help me to serve in this calling. I am humbled to have this opportunity to serve in this calling. I know that it will be a good experience for me to develop the Christlike attributes of love, patience, and humility. I'm grateful that the Lord has trusted me with a calling such as this. I know that the Lord will never lead His people astray, so I know that the Lord will help me out in the things that I don't know how to do.

Thank you for all of the love and support that you give to me! I couldn't do any of this without you! Ju du fort. Javë të mbarë. Kaloni mirë. Zoti ju bekoftë. U nglifhsi shnosh!

Me dashuri,

President Watson (jk I'm still Elder Watson)

Here in Kosovo, there are a TON of t-shirts that don't make any sense!!!
I saw this shirt and was determined to buy it.  Elder Baker thought it was
pretty funny, so he bought one, too.  We also bought a couple other shirts
that are really funny like these.

Today for P-day, all of the Kosovo missionaries went to a place called
Valbona.  It's a matural park in Northern Albania.  It was really pretty
there, so we had fun just going around and exploring.