We are thankful

Dear Family and Friends,

To start with, we would like to tell you more about some of the friends we have made here.

Ylmer, our 80-year-old friend, has met twice with the missionaries. He says he is a Muslim, but he doesn’t believe in God.  He lived through the communist times here in Albania, when belief in God was forbidden.  He is pretty stubborn about it, but his niece’s 11-year-old daughter has participated in those discussions and she wants to learn more. Her mother said she would talk to her husband about that.  We will just have to see where this goes. Kathy is devasted and has shed many tears for her friend. Ylmer won’t even consider life after death. He is so sad and angry about losing his wife six years ago, that he won’t even consider that there is a God. He said his wife is gone and buried and he will never see her again. If we truly believed this life was the end, there would be no purpose for anything!

Kamela, the lady who collects the money at the produce shop, accepted our invitation to dinner. We knew she had 3 children and we invited them to bring their whole family, so we were expecting 5 people.  In addition, we invited the elders so they could translate for us and also get to know them. The family, the elders, and us make 9 people, and we only had 8 chairs. We went to the store to purchase another folding chair, but while we were there, Kathy felt like we should get two so we had an even 10. Our kitchen table seats 6 comfortably.  Seating 8 isn’t too bad, but 9 was really pushing it. When the family arrived, we discovered they took our invitation of “the whole family” literally and brought Kamela’s father and sister along. Her husband had to work, though, so there was only 1 extra person, but since Kathy had bought an extra folding chair, we were OK.

We had a wonderful evening with this family! The produce shop is a family business, so everyone is involved. They are planning on starting a farm next spring, so they can raise some of what they sell in their shop. Kamela’s father doesn’t drink, smoke, or even drink coffee! They love to play games and he volunteers a lot at the school helping to build or fix things for them. 

After dinner we taught them how to play Qwixx and we had fun with that. Kathy told them about her piano lessons, and their three girls are very excited to take lessons.  Sometime during the evening, we also discovered that they are related to the 2nd counselor in the branch presidency. Such a small world.  We are excited to get to know them better. FYI, buying a folding chair here was quite the adventure. We have only found them in one store; they are not made like in the USA, they are cheaply made, and not as stable—and they are expensive.

Last week we got our first water bill. We had to go to the post office to pay the water bill.  We waited in line and then handed the lady at the counter the bill. She looked it up on the computer and then told us that the account was 4 months behind. (Apparently our landlord hadn’t been keeping up with his water bill…) We tried to explain that we had had only been here one month and only wanted to pay for the last month, but it was difficult.  The woman raised her voice and told us we needed to pay more; we had no problem understanding that she wanted us to pay the full amount. The longer the woman talked, the louder she became. Then a young man who spoke English, came into the building and asked us what was the problem. We told him, and he immediately believed us! He stepped up and explained what we wanted to the counter lady, so we were able to pay for the one month. He asked if we’d seen some different places and we told him we hadn’t seen any of them, because we’d only been here for one month. Even though he helped us and had taken our side, he hadn’t realized we were telling the truth about only being here for one month.

Afterwards, we thanked this young man and talked with him for a while.  His name is Enea and he is 26 years old. He asked us where we were from and what we were doing here. We explained that we were missionaries and then Kathy mentioned that she teaches piano lessons for free.  His eyes lit up and he said he would really like to learn to read music.  He said he plays the piano by ear, but would like to learn to read the notes.  In fact, he said he had been praying for a couple of months for help in learning to read music!  We traded contact information and said we would get back with him to set up a time. This is Kathy writing now- it is the strangest thing, I never start a conversation about teaching free piano lessons, and frankly, I couldn’t believe that those words just popped out of my mouth!

The first piano lesson was very interesting.  Enea is basically a professional musician.  He plays the keyboard at restaurants and also for his church. He reminded us a lot of the way Nathan plays, because he can just hear a song and make it sound amazing.  His repertoire of songs is incredible.  He plays a lot of different types of music.  He just has to hear it and then he can play it. His English is very good, so it was really fun to teach him a lesson. He wanted to do a lesson every single day and I had to tell him that he will need to study and practice the notes. He doesn’t know the technical or written parts of music- like rests, dynamics, counting, octaves or anything; but he has an insatiable thirst for learning so he should pick it up pretty fast. He said he loved our church building and he could feel the light...

We took our first little trip to a small village called Pustec about 30 minutes from Korçë on the bank of Lake Prespa.  Lake Prespa is on the border between Albania, North Macedonia, and Greece, so we were able to look across the lake to two different countries. It appeared that tourism was a big part of the town’s economy, and since it is now getting colder, there wasn’t much going on. We saw a lot of older women walking in town and it made us feel like we had gone way back in time to a small village in Greece. The little old ladies are hunched and wear black dresses, or black shirts and skirts, and black scarves on their heads. Some trucks are skinny and old, and have ONE tire in the middle on the front of the truck but two normal tires on the back. Our day “trip” wasn’t a grand adventure—we were only gone for 2 hours, but it was fun to get out a bit and see some more of the beautiful countryside and culture here.

There are some older women who dress like that here in Korçë, and trucks like that as well. In fact, when we walk to the back of our neighborhood, we can see how things used to be. The buildings are super old, some are crumbling, there are bunkers that were cement bomb shelters and with the cobblestone streets, it looks like the old European war movies. Then we walk up a couple of streets, everything is nicer and really cared for—even though some places are just as old. 

Shopping takes a lot longer because you can’t buy everything from one store. If you need meat, you go to the meat market, and each market sells either beef or pork or chicken but not all three. Fruits and vegetables are always and only sold at the fresh markets and they are open every single day. If you want bread, you go to a bakery, but all of those don’t sell items like baklava or pastries—you have to go to a different bakery for that. If you need anything electrical, you have to go to a different little specialty store. If you need hats and gloves, you go to a different market. Each family has their own place, and sells their own special items. We were talking about what would happen if a Walmart would come here, and we know that it would destroy the way of life here. Most tiny shops and markets would be ruined. Yes, there would be jobs for some people, but not enough to compensate for the loss of everyone. People work so hard here. Many people work 10-12 hours every single day – 7 days a week. It is a hard life and they accept that.

There is a senior couple here, the Ellsworth’s, that are humanitarian missionaries. They completed a project for an orphanage and had a little money left over.  They decided that it would be nice to purchase some fleece and have the missionaries make some blankets for them as a service project. The only problem was that they couldn’t find any fleece.  Another senior couple in Tirana tried several different stores there with no luck.  They were desperate and we offered to check out the stores here even though we are in a very tiny city compared to Tirana which is the capital. It was difficult—Google Translate doesn’t always work well, and no one speaks English, but Kathy asked and even checked the inventory very carefully in two tiny shops. At the last tiny shop in town, the man called his supplier and gave the phone to Kathy. The supplier said he did have polar fleece. Due to the way the shop owner orders and sells material, we were not able to buy the material directly from him, but the Ellsworth’s were able to purchase a roll of fleece directly from the supplier who is actually based in Tirana at a really good price. 

The following week, we were asked to purchase some blankets for a new sister missionary in Pogradec, so we purchased them from the shop owner to thank him for his efforts to help us.  He doesn’t speak much English and we don’t speak much Albanian, so every time we went to his shop he would say “Google Translate!” when we walked through the door. Every time we visit a shop, it is an adventure just trying to let the people know what we are looking for. Every now and then someone will speak a little English, but not very often. Google Translate is not always correct with Albanian translations, but it’s the best we have and we use it a lot! This man at the blanket shop told us that we were his friends. We have taken him treats and thank you notes a couple of times. We sure love these Albanian people!

Our adventure with food continues, but we are starting to find some of the things we have been searching for.  The other day we went into a new meat market that advertises “farm to market” meat, and we discovered that along with beef and even some pork, (the first shop to sell both), they also sell butter – salted butter!  They sell it in big balls wrapped up in plastic wrap, but it actually tastes good.  Since then we have realized that it isn’t pure butter because it feels a little greasier than regular butter, but it tastes good, even plain on bread.

The other day we were in the produce shop and noticed a package of what looked like stuffed green chiles.  They told us it was stuffed with cottage cheese, but they do not sell cottage cheese here.  One man said we should cook it in olive oil, but Kamela told us it was already cooked.  We decided to give it a try.  We’re not sure what kind of cheese it was stuffed with, but it was not cottage cheese.  Also, the chiles were not chilis, but some sort of bland peppers that were pickled.  It is sufficient to say we won’t be buying any more of those… The beauty of trying different foods here is that it is safe, it is very cheap, and we always share a meal—except Byrek from our favorite place- those are 80 cents and it is a whole meal. 

Around Halloween, we had a mission conference in Elbasan, near Tirana. Kathy decided she would take the opportunity to make chocolate-caramel apples for all of the senior couples in the mission, as well as all of the young missionaries in our district. The elders here in Korçë had a mostly-empty bottle of Karo syrup (we squeezed 1/2 cup out of it) from one of the Senior couples who already went home (their kids brought it to them when they visited from the US) and we were able to find some corn syrup at a specialty market called Neranxi. That corn syrup wasn’t exactly like Karo syrup, but Kathy was able to use it for the caramel. Kathy had brought some almond bark, and Ghirardelli candy melts from the USA with her so she used that along with some chopped up chocolate bars from here for the chocolate. They didn’t have the wooden apple dowels, but we found some wooden chop sticks to use for the handles. Fortunately, green apples are abundantly available here.  They were a lot of work, but they turned out great and everyone loved them.

All of the senior couples were asked to decorate a pumpkin for table decorations at the mission conference.  We bought a small pumpkin, painted it white, and decorated it with stick-on sparkle gems.  It turned out really pretty!

Speaking of pumpkins, we are not able to buy canned pumpkin here, but we can buy fresh pumpkins, at least now while they are in season.  We have purchased a few pumpkins to cook and freeze so Kathy can make pumpkin cookies, cakes, and pancakes. Our freezer is very tiny, so we had to decide what is most important to go in our freezer.

We hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving holiday. Instead of getting together with our family this year, we invited our mission district (3 sisters and 4 elders) to join us for Thanksgiving dinner. This time we borrowed an extra table from the church and were just barely able to squeeze the two tables in our living room at a diagonal. (As a side note, Alan is pretty proud of the fact that he was able to tell the man at the tablecloth shop how long each tablecloth needed to be and then understand what they cost – all in Albanian and without using Google Translate!) Alan is SUPER AMAZING with numbers in Shqip!

Since we couldn’t find any turkey, Kathy fixed stuffed pork tenderloin, mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, fresh fruit mixed with yogurt and whipped cream, homemade rolls, pumpkin pie, apple pie, banana cream pie, and Oreo cheesecake squares.  Keep in mind that we have a very small kitchen with a very tiny oven, which can fit only a 9X13” size, (Kathy calls it her Barbi oven) so trying to cook all of the food was a very challenging task.  Kathy here—I didn’t realize that I couldn’t put two 9X13 pans in at the same time to heat up a couple of dishes that had been made the night before. With a normal oven, you can put one pan on a top rack and one on the bottom rack and rotate them half-way through, but this oven just loses heat. In the end we started eating almost 40 minutes late, and the meat was served just before dessert, but everyone loved it, and we all ate too much.

We had the opportunity to go with a group of youth and YSA from all over Albania to the Rome Temple at the end of November. We were asked to go along to help with the food.  That was an amazing experience.  We will send out a separate update about that.

We appreciate the replies and comments many of you leave about our blog.  For some reason, Kathy is not able to login to the blog properly to reply to your comments.  We will continue to work on that, but in the meantime, please forgive us if we don’t respond.

We will end with this quote, “Thankfully, we walk this path together, calling out encouragement along the way. As we share our personal experience with Christ, we will strengthen personal devotion.” – Emily Belle Freeman

We love and miss you all so much!

Elder and Sister Manwaring