Manwaring Mission to Albania

Kanine Castle Dear Family and Friends, It is hard to believe that January is over.  Time is flying by. We have been in Albania for over four months! We continue to enjoy our time here. Winter has arrived with a vengeance!  The first few weeks of winter were quite mild, and we were beginning to wonder if we would have much snow this year. Well, a big storm came through three weeks ago, and we now have lots of snow, and even more ice! We’ll talk a little more about that below. For the last Sunday in December, we were both asked to speak in church. We only had 3 days to prepare.  Speaking through a translator is difficult because we have to speak in short phrases and it makes the talk take twice as long, but speaking in Albanian is also difficult because we have to read every word, some of which we don’t really understand, and it is difficult to really express our feelings. One of our Elders in Korçë is very good at translating, but we both decided that we should give our ta...

  Dear Family and Friends, The month of December was very busy and before we knew it the New Year arrived.  We will try to catch up with everything that happened. First, we want to tell you about our trip to the Rome Temple at the end of November. The stake and district sponsored a temple trip for all youth and young single adults in Albania. It was held during the last week in November when Albania celebrates Independence Day and Liberation Day so there were fewer issues with missing school and/or work. We were not planning on going, but just a couple of weeks before the scheduled trip, we were asked to go and help with the food, and also help with the youth from our branch. Another senior missionary couple from Tirana was asked to be in charge of the food and they asked us to help. Three young women and two young men from our branch signed up to go with two young women leaders. Unfortunately, one of the young men got sick just hours before we left, so he was not able to go. ...

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 s...

Dear Family and Friends, Daylight savings time has ended and it is now dark by 4:30 pm each day.  The days are cool and the nights are cold.  It has been raining a lot lately also. The only other permanent family, an older couple, in our apartment building left to spend the winter in Greece this week. However, Korçë is known for its Christmas decorations and there is currently a lot of activity around town setting up lights and Christmas displays.  We are excited to see them when they are turned on. View from the village where me met Ylmer We want to tell you about some more people we have met in Korçë.  Last Monday after we finished some of our responsibilities, we decided to take a walk up to a small village about 2 miles away before it got dark.  We had a delightful walk and greeted several people on our way up the hill.  On the way down, an older gentleman that we had greeted on the way up called out to us. He pointed to Kathy’s eyes and said some thing...