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.