Elder Tyler Allgaier's Mission Blog: I Am Currently Lacking A Creative Title

Hey Fam-Fam -

Spencer, congratulations on the perfect season! I am excited to hear how your play-off season goes. Maybe win states for me? Urbana needs it.

It was a pretty good week but I won't be able to remember much of it because I forgot my journal at home. We just barely got home from a day long trip to Pejë and I forgot to grab it on my way out this morning. So, I will do my best to recollect everything based on pictures.

As a Gjakovë branch, we have started doing family nights here at the church, which is basically another way for us to encourage all the families to spend time with each other. We try and watch some kind of movie and have treats. It's not too spectacular yet, but it has only been a week. As soon as we get the ping-pong table here we can have game nights and things like that (yes, we are actually getting one).

Along with family nights, English class has officially started! The turn out has been pretty good so far (about 20 kids each day) and we hope to have more come. We teach the beginners the alphabet and simple phrases, the medium class more phrases and how to have simple conversation, and the advanced class we just talk with them and help them fix any mistakes that they make and help them focus on their accent. Its a lot of fun and it is a great way for us to get to know the community and make friends. Last week we had one of the students give a prayer at the end and he was Muslim. He gave a prayer in Arabic and it was so cool.

About half of the kids for English class

Church yesterday was interesting to say the least. Everything was going fine until aright after sacrament meeting. A little 2 year old boy (who ALWAYS causes problems) happened to lock himself in the bathroom. We couldn't use the key from the outside because he had locked the key from the inside. We tried for about 15 minutes to get the door open, but it wouldn't budge. Finally his dad told us all to just leave and go back to classes. So we did. About 5 minutes later I went back to check on the boy and his dad, but I found the door open and no one was there. Turns out, his dad knocked the door in and broke the frame. Awesome. I thought it was pretty funny and everyone made it out alive.

The 2 year old (his mom calls him The Problem)

A little boy locked himself in the bathroom

I get to help out in nursery

Today we took a trip to a city named "Pejë". Its about an hour outside of Gjakovë and we went there with the Zone Leaders, the sister missionaries, the senior couple missionaries (all from Prishtinë) and our little Gjakovë district. We visited a secured Greek (I think he meant Serbian) Orthodox Monastery that was protected by the K-4 (Italian police I think). We had to show our passports to get in. The reason it is so protected is because of the war between the Serbians and the Kosovars. If it wasn't protected, the Kosovars would go in and clean house. Sad, but true. Anyway, this place was so serene and peaceful and absolutely gorgeous. It was a nice break from the dirty city of Gjakovë.