WOW another week

This week was good, went by really fast! I think every week gets a little faster. We taught the word of wisdom to the family and we were explaining, that you cant smoke. The husband smokes so much, but right when we told him that he would have to stop before he got baptized he got all his cigarettes and lighter and stuff and threw them out the window. Haha it was so funny everyone in the house was clapping and cheering. He is really so ready for the gospel and has so much faith.

Okay we went to look for a less active family and we asked a women in the neighborhood where it said she lived, (random fact: Albanians don't have addresses) pretty soon the whole neighborhood was looking for this family with us. Everyone was pointing us places, we didn't end up finding her, but we found some other people who want us to come back, so that's good!

We locked ourselves out of our apartment so that was an experience. Luckily the landlord is really nice so right when we called her, she got the key for us, so it actually turned out fine.

We are teaching this cute couple and they come to every activity and are so interested its incredible. It was so unreal though, in our second lesson we invited them to read and pray about the book of mormon to see if it's true and they were like "oh yeah we already did that and we know it's true" aw made me so happy and it is so true! So grateful for the book of mormon.

The language is good it's getting a lot easier to understand people, but still takes a lot of focus when I am listening to them. My brain feels fried by the end of the conversation. I am so grateful to be here! Such an amazing place! Love all of you, hope your week is amazing!

Love you, sister butters

Here's my apartment:

Madi's Bed is this one on the left side of this picture.

Earth Shaking Events

Okay soo two really exciting things happened this week! The first we had a baptism! Aw it was so incredible, he is so awesome and has been working a few weeks to stop smoking and finally did it, so it was such a miracle. The spirit was so strong and you could just feel the power in that room. Such an amazing experience to see someone get baptized.

The second thing that happened was an EARTHQUAKE!! We were sitting in our house and everything started to shake. I have never been in a earthquake before so at first I was kind of nervous, but I have always wanted to experience an earthquake and it was so crazy. Just the whole building is shaking it's the weirdest feeling ever. Luckily it wasn't that big, just a little shake for probably 10 seconds. After everyone was outside there houses talking about it.

Other than that we worked on a farm, and it was a lot easier than last time we just picked flowers. They dry the flowers and then make dye and medicine with it. So we picked flowers for a while and that was fun.

So thought for this week is don't ever forget your potential in Heavenly Father's eyes. If you ever get discouraged just remember how much you mean to him. Love you all so much, and I am so grateful to have so many amazing people in my life.

Love, sister Butters 

Extra Pictures!!

Crepe picture from 7/22

3 months

Almost been out for three months, crazy how time is on a mission, it's really speeding up!

On monday the cutest thing happened, there is this member family who has barely anything and the branch president had the elders go and buy food for them and we took it over to them and it was the sweetest moment ever! Aw it made me so happy they were so happy. Some people here have barely anything, its so unreal to see that all they need is the gospel and they are so full of joy in their harder circumstances.

We got kicked out of a restaurant this week. I guess the owner does not like missionaries. So he said something to us, not like I could really understand it, but you can tell by the way he was talking he wanted us out of there and he was not about to serve us. Haha it was kind of awkward, but like that's what missions are about right? Got to have some rejection!

Aw we are teaching this sweet lady, seriously she's like a little angel, aw I love her! We taught her how to pray and it is crazy to realize how amazing prayer is! It's something I totally take for granted because I have known it all my life. When she understood that she could say whatever she wants and she can talk to God at any time in her life, her face lit up with so much joy and it made me so happy. Aww we really all are children of God and he is just waiting to talk to us. So grateful for that! So fun to be able to teach people about all the amazing things that are just so common to me.

Albania is great the people are great! Hope everything is going incredible! Love you all very much, make this week the best!

Love you all,
Sister Butters

Another Week

Okay, another week in beautiful Albania, understanding is slowly improving, I mostly just agree to the things people are saying to me and it has work pretty well. Until I agree to something I shouldn't have, but so far it has only happened once and I made it okay. They grill corn here and so many people are selling it on the streets and it is so good. It is kind of like popcorn, it is way good.

So we have this one investigator and he believes everything, but he says he won't get baptized until he sees a vision. We read Alma 32 with him, really good chapter and somehow he related everything to why he should receive a vision. So didn't go as planned we will see what he decides. Also during it his wife kept bringing us so many random foods. She brought us a bowl of jam, so actually its normal to just eat jam here. She just kept bringing more and more random little things. It was so sweet.

We teach english twice a week and luckily I teach the advance class, so I can talk in english. A very big plus. It also helps me learn more Albanian.

We hiked to the top of this one mountain and it is really pretty it overlooks all of Korçë. The city here is so cool, because it is not very big and that makes it nice because everything is really close.

Everyone here is seriously so loving and so amazing. They don't care who you are, they just love you no matter what. I love that and I am learning so much from them, I am truly so blessed to be here! Aw love you all very much!

Love, Sister Butters

 

Eating with Bears

I made it to Albania! It is so beautiful here, oh my gosh, it is incredible. the first day we got here we went street contacting and everyone is so nice, it also helps that I don't understand what they are saying most the time so, when they are rejecting us I have no clue. Our first night we went to dinner with our mission president and they had bears there! It was a very exciting dinner.

My trainer is Sister Bringhurst, she is incredible, she is from Highland! I can't believe we are from the same city and it took us both coming to Albania to meet. Albania is incredible, the people are so amazing.

The second day we went contacting and this sweet old lady invited us into her house and gave us a bowl of jam with a spoon and I thought maybe they just eat jam in Albania, so not questioning it, I ate an entire bowl of only jam. Then like 5 minutes later she gets up and goes and gets bread, after I had finished the whole bowl of jam. It was so funny. Comforting to know though, that they don't just eat jam. Speaking of food, the food here is sooo good, grateful for that. On Friday, we helped a man in the branch with his farming, very clear I have never farmed before that.It was really fun though, to learn the ways of farming.

Sunday they had me bare my testimony in church, it was scary, but it went good. Aw the members here are amazing. They really dedicate their lives to this gospel and Jesus Christ and it is so cool to see. Many of them walk from really far just to get to church, also many of them are the only ones in their family apart of the church. It is really humbling to see how much the gospel means to them. it is unreal here. I am so grateful to be here.

Love all of you so much! thank you for all the emails! Have an amazing week.

Note from Kari: So this is Sister Mann and Elder Cerepi. We actually met Elder Cerepi the very day we dropped Madi off at the MTC. He was going to the MTC from Albania learning Bulgarian to serve in Bulgaria. It was such a coincidence. As we were taking pics at the Provo Temple a senior couple (Sister Virginia Winegar) walked by and said, "where is your missionary going?" Madi answered, the Adriatic South Mission. The senior couple explained that they had just returned from their mission over there, told Madi how awesome her mission president and his wife are, and then told us that this young man was from Albania and they were dropping him off at the MTC. It was pretty neat. Out of all the missionaries going in, all the different drop off times and all the different missions, we would meet them. We didn't meet very many others that day, so we thought of it more as a tender mercy.

Sister Butters travels to Albania!

These sister missionaries from #194 are on their way!
Sent at 5:52am from the front runner train in Salt Lake City. Thanks to Bryan Gygi!

Here are her flight plans!

Then we got a great message from her mission president's wife the next day: