#10 September 16 2013

#10 September 16, 2013
Well hello hello!

Another week has come and gone in the country of Albania! It seems, as usual, like everyone is pretty crazy busy out there still! School out here actually just started today which is pretty crazy, but hopefully that doesn't impact our YM and YW numbers in church and activities. It is good to hear that everyone is doing well though and that Dad made it back from his trip finally!

Alright, so one thing that I have been struggling with this week is that on the first 12 weeks training program, we are inside like all the time and it seems like we have very limited time out there actually finding, teaching and baptizing. But, I guess I need to just take a chill pill and study because that is what the Brethren set up. This week, though we did have a ton of lessons fall through, we brought 3 investigators to District Conference which was great! Lidi and Sokol are a mom and son that we met on the street. Lidi is a teacher which means that work started today and Sokol is probably 27 or so. They are way cool and seem really excited about the Gospel. We actually met the dad on the street randomly too, and though he is way nice, I guess he isn't super interested, but we will still work on that... We also brought Pirro who loves coming to church and that was cool. However, the first half of the meeting I was basically just sitting there praying really hard that all of them could feel the Spirit so my comprehension level was way down. We had an area seventy speak (I don't exactly remember his name, Elder Charles or something like that) and that was way good.

We are starting to get a little better hang of the branch and are doing some work with less actives which will hopefully go up this week. Right now we do a lot of finding, which is just great, but finding is only one of the things that we are supposed to be doing right, so we are really hoping to broaden that spectrum a bit.

Elder Austin has been having stomach problems for the last 3 or 4 months and we have been going over to get tests done a fair bit this week, but on Tuesday he has his last consultation (we hope) and hopefully he can get back to feeling normal again!

I have been thinking a lot about being bold as of late. It is a balancing act that I am trying to learn and implement. I don't want to be overbearing, but I definitely don't want to be swept under the rug everywhere or else no one will know how they can find the road to eternal life. I guess I just really want to be an effective missionary, or else what am I doing in this place that is definitely not America but I obviously am? No way am I willing to settle with doing what will get me back from my mission, or what is considered pretty good. There is so much more that I think could be done. And maybe I just don't understand the limits of missionary work...and I guess quite frankly I am okay with that.

Well, I guess I will talk to you next week! Love you so much Mom, Dad, Alex, Carley, Brigham, and Grant and I will so you in a while probably with an exciting assortment of ties.

Love,
Elder Ostergaard