Humanitarian Aid for Shkodër

We had unseasonably warm weather at the end of December and first weeks of January, lots of rainfall, and unusually high tides. Those three things precipitated an early snowmelt, the necessary release of huge amounts of water from dams, and vast flooding in the delta areas surrounding the city of Shkodër. Many farm villages had to be evacuated, the national highway was under water in low places, and only vehicles with high clearance could get through to the city. Our four missionaries in Shkodër were safe on high ground, but as a precaution we asked them to purchase a few days of food and water, and make an evacuation plan if necessary. We gave them permission to watch the news in cafes or on the internet to check on the danger. They said that city life seemed normal and they saw no signs of all the emergency activity to the south.

Our Humanitarian Aid couple, Elder and Sister Snow, arranged for the Church to donate 19 tons of food worth $20,000 to the Albanian division of the Red Cross. The flooding has ruined farmland, killed animals, and damaged homes. The water in some of the low-lying places may take months to fully recede. The Red Cross wishes to supply food for 2200 people for six months, but so far has received donations for only about three months of aid. They were extremely grateful for the church's generous donation.


Today we took 10 of our Tirana missionaries to a factory to load a truck with bags of flour and pasta. It turned out that they were not needed to load the truck, but we were treated to a tour of their modern facility and watched macaroni being processed and packaged. The Red Cross warehouse was just outside of the main part of town, so we drove there and waited for the truck to arrive. On the way, some police stopped the truck and demanded the tax registration papers, which Elder Snow had not sent with the truck. The drivers were able to talk the police into letting them go, and the truck finally arrived at the warehouse where we had been waiting for an hour. The missionaries unloaded one truckload of 50 kilo bags of flour and boxes of pasta. Then the truck had to return to the city to pick up oil, sugar, beans, and rice.

The food suppliers wanted to be paid in cash so the office elders took the church's $20,000 check to the bank to exchange. The bank gave them the entire amount in 500 lek bills which are approximately equivalent to our $5.00 bills! Apparently the elders should have gone to the main office instead of a branch. So Elder Snow had to count out the payments with all those small bills!

When the second truck arrived, it didn't include the rice, so after unloading the beans, sugar, and oil, six of the missionaries returned home with us to be able to meet their lesson appointments, and we left the office elders and assistants behind to wait for the last truckload. It was a much longer day than we had anticipated, but everyone was pleased to be a part of this wonderful humanitarian effort.




This is Elder Snow and Marty with Artur Katuçi, Secretary of the Albanian Red Cross. At a later time we will go to his office in Tirana for a formal meeting and official pictures with some Albanian political figures.

In other news, we had lunch Monday with David Colton, Birkena Kasmi and her husband Admir. Birkena is with the Albanian Justice Dept. and is working on the religious freedom legislation that we hope will make us a "religion" instead of the "cult" as we are now classified. Admir is personal legal counsel to Prime Minister Berisha. Also attending was Rasim Hasanaj, Minister of the Cult Committee. We discussed the pending legislation and how it might affect religion in the country. The legislators are wrestling with the definition of religion, so it has been delayed for many months. All three of these people were in Provo this last October to attend the BYU International Law and Religion Symposium. Birkena and Admir were personally hosted by David Colton and his wife, so they were happy to meet again. David is working on a name change for us. Since being in the country, the church has been registered as Fondacioni Liahona (Liahona Foundation), but soon we will be listed officially as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!

Also, and sadly, we said a premature goodbye to Elder Daniel Turley who received a medical release and went home to Utah on Jan. 20 to see doctors and be treated for back problems and a hernia. He was a wonderful missionary and streamlined our office procedures when he served in the mission office for six months. We shall miss him but know he will be a blessing to the church wherever he serves.

It's a New Year!

I imagine other cities around the world have amazing fireworks for the new year, but Tirana is one amazing city for grass roots pyrotechnics displays! Everyone seems to get in the act, firing off hand-held rockets from balconies, rooftops, and streets. The display warmed up for several hours before midnight, and so the missionaries had to be safe in their apt. at dark, which is before 4 PM. We invited the office elders, who live in the apt. upstairs from us, to join us for snacks and Wii games leading up to the display, and then Marty and the two elders climbed a ladder into the attic, and out an opening onto the roof. I stayed below, racing between two different apartments to catch different views. The big display went on for 20-30 minutes, and then gradually faded away over the next couple of hours. Firecrackers continued through the night interrupting our sleep. For several nights afterwards there were small displays, probably from firework markdowns. Marty caught these pictures using a tripod and timed exposures. They're pretty, but hardly come close to accurately portraying the chaotic, cacophonous spectacle!
As we are a small mission of only 40 missionaries, we have "BIG" transfers every three months, rather than every six weeks as most missions have. That means we lose missionaries who have served 18 months or 2 years, and, usually the same day, welcome in a new group. The departing missionaries come into the mission home on a Tuesday to have interviews with Marty, a testimony meeting in our apt., an open house where members are invited to come say their goodbyes, and finally, dinner and bed for a short rest. We get up at 2 AM in order to load the vans with all the luggage and get to the airport by 3 AM. Planes leave at 5 AM for various destinations. This year we had one elder leaving for Hong Kong where his parents are currently living, and a sister depart to her home in England, so we made three trips to the airport that day. Whew!

Pictured below are the four wonderful sisters who left us after serving for 18 months, 15 actually in Albania. They spent almost 3 months in the MTC learning the language. L. to R.: Joy Kennedy (England), Rachael Seaman, Melissa Waldron, Melissa Boyer, USA.
The group of departing missionaries, absent Elders Hamilton and Kushlan, who left at the end of Dec., and whose pictures are in my last entry, L. to R. below: John Anderl, Patrick Jones, Joy Kennedy, Melissa Waldron, Rachael Seaman, Melissa Boyer, Ian Esplin, Paul Garn, and Ty Bullough. This group was one of our larger groups. We have had groups as small as two missionaries. Balancing young people through all the missions of the world must be a daunting task!
The arriving missionaries usually pass the departing ones in the Vienna airport, which is fun for both groups, but this year the arriving missionaries' itinerary was changed to one day later, so we welcomed them on Thursday. That gave me a chance to catch up with the laundry a bit, and prepare for Thursday and Friday meals. We have a small mission home (apt.), so we put the elders to bed in the office downstairs, on foam pads, and the sisters either in our apt. on the floor and one guest bed, or in the vacant couples' apt. upstairs. I supply clean sheets, pillows, towels, etc. for them, and for lack of laundromats in Tirana, end up doing all that washing myself. I've finally gotten smart, and through their instructor at the MTC, advise the incoming missionaries to pack their clean sheets on the top in their luggage, so they use their own bedding, and I just supply each a clean towel. Even so, between the nine departing and eight incoming's linens, that's a lot of laundry!
Here are our jet-lagged, but ready and willing, new missionaries, l to r: John Riley Smith, Ryan Wallentine, Kelsey Hall, James Moyes, Stephanie Peatross, Adam Castro-Guzman (from France), Katherine Yourstone, and Joshua Anderson. They are standing in front of the Monument to the Martyrs in a park that overlooks Tirana. We take them here on their first morning in the country because this is the spot where, in 1993, Elder Dallin H. Oaks dedicated Albania for the preaching of the gospel. After a prayer, hymn, and reading of the dedicatory prayer, we give them a chance to go off alone and ponder their upcoming mission and consecrate their time to help bring to pass the blessings promised in the prayer. We will return here with them at the end of their mission.

We have just passed the halfway point of our three-year mission and celebrated by having dinner at the Rogner Hotel.