Friday, April 27, 2012
Departure Delay...
Earlier this week, Sam fell in the shower and landed in the hospital for a few days. He has several severely broken ribs, and rib, shoulder, and lung bruising. He is now home on heavy pain meds and is looking at a six week or longer recovery. So the mission departure is on hold for a month or two. When they get the bill of good health form the doctor, they will continue with the original mission plans. For now Sam has to learn how to be a good patient. And Marilyn will be a nurse with patience. Send them your prayers! Reminds me of their farewell talks two weeks ago. "Lessons to be learned from health challenges" and "Mountains to climb" that build testimony.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Living in Albania...what you need to know!
Janet Tanner Updike knows Jay Porter, who works at the embassy in Albania. The e-mails that follow are a correspondence between Janet, Jay and Marilyn, introducing them to each other and giving great information about living in Albania.
Greetings, Jay and Marilyn
Allow me to introduce you two:Jay, Marilyn Jones is my sister-in-law. She and her husband, Sam, have been called to serve their mission in Albania. They go into the MTC on April 30 and will leave one week later. They both will be learning Albanian and will be wonderful missionaries. They are from Logan area and have 10 (is that right, Marilyn?) children and I've no idea how many grandchildren. They have a small farm and Sam taught high school. Marilyn is the glue that keeps the extended Tanner family together. They've been temple workers in the Logan Temple for the past 5 years. They're very fun, humble, down-to-earth, hardworking, get-it-done, awesome people! I'm assuming you'll likely be in the same branch or ward or stake or whatever the church organization is there, so I thought I'd give you the heads up that they're on their way! Marilyn, I mentioned Jay in our conversation today, but here's a little more. Jay's been a family friend for a decade or so and is one of the brightest, most caring, "together" guys I know. He's still a legend with HELP International and continues to guide us on critical issues. Every one of my children love Jay and have great "Jay stories." :-) He's a real "people person" and a fabulous cook. Oh, you have that in common! He has a darling family--cute redheads, sounds familiar, right?Also, on a side note, I spoke with Matthew Giles (also formerly with HELP, Jay knows him) today and he mentioned that he has a couple of friends in Albania that he met while they were students at BYU. He's trying to find their contact info. Who knows if or when that could be helpful. Since they're LDS, Jay may even know them. I just don't remember their names right now.Anyhow, it's nice to chat with both of you. Hope you're well! I'll let you continue the conversation.....Love and best wishes to both of you!
From: Janet
Dear Marilyn (a.k.a. Motra Jones),
How wonderful to hear that we are going to be receiving a new senior missionary couple here in Albania! We need you! (I know that probably concerns you - I remember my wife and I being a little apprehensive about how enthusiastic the mission president and some of the members were when they learned a new American family was moving into the ward.) Janet has given you a pretty thorough introduction, but I'll just add that my wife and I have been in Albania since July 2011 and will be here until July 2013 working for the U.S. Embassy in Tirana.
Do you know what your assignment will be? We have a couple, the Prestons, that are leaving shortly that have been our CES missionaries. If that's what you'll be doing, you'll have lots of opportunities to work with the youth of Albania, and the youth of the church here are the best part. Overall, you are in for a great adventure here with the church. In Tirana there are four branches, all of them fairly small. You likely will not be in our branch with us - there is already a couple assigned to our branch, a sweet couple from England that are here on a humanitarian mission. Nevertheless, we see all the missionaries fairly often and we know most of the couple missionaries serving in the mission. That will change now that the mission includes two new countries that are just being opened to the gospel - we likely won't have a chance to meet the couples assigned there, but as long as you're in Tirana and if you're learning Albanian, we'll likely get to know you pretty well!
All of the branches are full of very new members. In our branch we have three children that we've been told are some of the first children born in the church. Most of the members have not been to the temple because it is so far away (Germany), and they lack the understanding of how the church is supposed to be organized and operate. Erin, my wife, is a counselor in the Primary Presidency. Our first Sunday she took our two girls to Primary along with about four other children. The Primary President came in, dropped off a 2-liter of Coca-Cola and a pile of Spider-Man coloring pages and then headed for Relief Society! So my wife has been teaching the Primary and the Primary President all about things like Sharing Time and Singing Time and the annual Primary Program.
I am the branch clerk and keep busy trying to help the Branch President organize our records. Albania is not yet connected to the church's electronic database, so all of our record keeping, including weekly donation reports on tithing have to be filled out by hand and then I bring them home and email them to the Area Offices in Frankfurt, Germany. This last year I discovered that my Branch President, a sweet man with a strong testimony, had no idea what tithing settlement was. We discovered this in January after the Area Offices contacted us and informed us we were a month late in our reports!! Needless to say, we work closely with the full time missionaries to teach the members and help them along. Unfortunately, the Church Handbooks have not been translated into Albanian yet. Fortunately, the members are wonderful and we have enjoyed being in our branch.Life in Albania will be a daily adventure for you and your husband. Albania is full of beautiful landscapes, seascapes, and you'll travel around the country quite a bit. The villages are quaint and the people very humble. On the other hand, traffic in Tirana will probably test your patience (and your heart) and 50+ years of communist rule has made for situations that you simply have to stop questioning and merely accept regardless of how illogical or inconvenient they are.
On the practical side, we'd love to help answer any questions you may have about life here. I'm sure President and Sister Ford will be/have been in touch with you along with some of the other missionaries. We absolutely adore President and Sister Ford. You will love serving with them - they are young and have a lot of energy and stalwart testimonies of the gospel. The Albanians are lucky to have them here!
We're looking forward to meeting you! Enjoy the MTC and we'll see you on the other side of the world!
Sincerely, Jay Porter
Dear Marilyn,
The winters here are not nearly as harsh as they can be in Utah. Tirana rarely gets any snow, and if it does snow, it never sticks or stays for more than a few hours. The mountains around Tirana are snow capped during the winter though, and the rest of the country can get a lot. In fact, this year they had a national emergency because the snow fall was so excessive it started collapsing buildings, homes, and schools. Some towns got cut off from the rest of the country because the roads were impassable, and it snowed over three meters in some areas in less than a week! All that time Tirana never got more than some rain showers. That being said, it does get very cold here, and it will drop below freezing often during the winter. You need lots of good warm clothing because a lot of the buildings and homes are not heated. Our church is not heated (well) during the winter and our kids never take off their winter coats, scarves, etc., even during Sacrament meeting and Primary. We usually defrost in our car after the meetings! The buildings are all solid concrete and tile, so they are wonderful little ice chests in the winter. It isn't usually too bad if you have good winter clothes. The American families (there are three of us in our branch that work with the Embassy) finally outfitted the nursery with a heater and a fan because it was too cold for the toddlers, and in the summer we have the opposite problem. Most of the homes here are outfitted with some kind of space heaters, but central heat is rare and expensive. Plus, during winter the stress on the electrical grid means ocassionally the electricity goes out, which leaves you without any options beyond your wool leggings and winter coat! Again, when it gets too cold, it's a nice time to go for a drive in your warm car or find a nice cafe and sip some hot chocolate or herbal tea. Tirana gets fairly wet during the winter, but all in all, we didn't find the winter here excessive. With warm clothing it is fine, and this year the city really started decorating for Christmas which was a lot of fun. Right now and for the past two-three weeks we've had beautiful spring weather. It's a perfect 65-75 degrees outside and clear skies. My wife planted tulips and daffodils last year and we're enjoying them now. It gets a little cool in the evenings, but is very refreshing. Tirana is a great walking city - and I walk whenever I can. Don't worry too much about the language. If you are outside Tirana it gets a little harder, but inside Tirana you will discover that there are so many members and people that speak English. When my wife and I go out, even the waiters at the restaurants speak English. All the kids are learning it in school, and they speak it very well! I have never been anywhere here where I could not find someone who could help me communicate. I went through about 10 months of language traininng before I arrived, and I do fairly well, but even so, about 90% of my work and day is conducted in English. You'll pick up some useful phrases and you can study and pick it up better than you think, but in the end, if you never learned a word of Albanian you could get along pretty well here. The hardest part will be meeting members you'd LIKE to have a stronger relationship with that DON'T speak English, and that will be frustrating. But as far as doing your work here it won't prove overly challenging. One of the things we're looking forward to is the seasonal produce. When we lived in Central America we had lots of tropical fruit, but in Albania we have a lot of Mediterranean produce that is really spectacular! Over the course of the summer we'll get peaches, figs, cherries (they are delicious!!), plums, and berries. This winter we really enjoyed their citrus including oranges, lemons, and other fruit like persimmons and a TON of pomegranates. Right now blood oranges and strawberries are in season and we're freezing a lot of the strawberries to last us for the next few months. There are little produce markets all over the city, and the fruits and vegetables all seem to be very fresh. For the most part, it is very seasonal. Some things like potatos, onions, leeks, peppers, tomatoes, oranges, and apples we see year round now because they have begun importing them. Bananas are everywhere too and very affordable, although they are a little disappointing after coming from a tropical country, but we've gotten over it. At the major grocery stores there is also a lot of imported fruit like pineapples, avocados, and coconuts but we generally avoid them because they aren't really great and they are very expensive. If you enjoy cooking you will become rather creative and adept at substitutions. There are a few ingredients you won't find here. Brown sugar is not sold, although one grocery store imports something they call brown sugar but it is a little more like coarse and unrefined sugar, it isn't really soft or brown. Extracts like vanilla extract I have never seen but we brought a lot with us. If you want chocolate chips you'll have to chop up a chocolate bar. Whole wheat flour can be found, but it is a little elusive. Peanut butter is sold but you pay for it, and check the expiration date because it can sit on the shelf for a while. On the other hand, we skip the margarine here and go straight for the French butter they sell - it is DELICIOUS! If you like feta cheese and olives your head will spin at the varieties. Olive oil can be bought by the gallon and it is incredibly flavorful. Bakeries sell very good loaves of bread for about 40 cents a loaf. The yogurt (especially the Greek style) is rich and creamy, and if you enjoy lamb, you'll find it on the menu at lots of restaurants here. We have had a lot of fun making things from scratch that we would have otherwise just picked up in a jar, bottle, or mix in the U.S. Our neighbors decided to corn their own beef this year so we could have corned beef for St. Patrick's Day. It was delicious! I've experimented with my own bbq sauces using local ingredients - it's turned out pretty darn well! And I had a brother from church build me a smoker so I could smoke my own meat for authentic American bbq! That was a chore trying to explain to him in my broken Albanian what a smoker was supposed to look like, and finding all the parts and pieces, but he got it done and last year for Thanksgiving we had a beautiful and juicy smoked turkey. I think you really will enjoy Albania. It will make you grateful for silly things you never thought you'd miss, but it will also open your eyes to a whole new pioneer experience in the church and a lovely culture with sweet, humble, people. The countryside is beautiful - I don't think you'll miss the mountains. Tirana is surrounded by them. The members will love you, and you will really love the missionaries here. They are a very tight group of people.
From: Jay Porter
Greetings, Jay and Marilyn
Allow me to introduce you two:Jay, Marilyn Jones is my sister-in-law. She and her husband, Sam, have been called to serve their mission in Albania. They go into the MTC on April 30 and will leave one week later. They both will be learning Albanian and will be wonderful missionaries. They are from Logan area and have 10 (is that right, Marilyn?) children and I've no idea how many grandchildren. They have a small farm and Sam taught high school. Marilyn is the glue that keeps the extended Tanner family together. They've been temple workers in the Logan Temple for the past 5 years. They're very fun, humble, down-to-earth, hardworking, get-it-done, awesome people! I'm assuming you'll likely be in the same branch or ward or stake or whatever the church organization is there, so I thought I'd give you the heads up that they're on their way! Marilyn, I mentioned Jay in our conversation today, but here's a little more. Jay's been a family friend for a decade or so and is one of the brightest, most caring, "together" guys I know. He's still a legend with HELP International and continues to guide us on critical issues. Every one of my children love Jay and have great "Jay stories." :-) He's a real "people person" and a fabulous cook. Oh, you have that in common! He has a darling family--cute redheads, sounds familiar, right?Also, on a side note, I spoke with Matthew Giles (also formerly with HELP, Jay knows him) today and he mentioned that he has a couple of friends in Albania that he met while they were students at BYU. He's trying to find their contact info. Who knows if or when that could be helpful. Since they're LDS, Jay may even know them. I just don't remember their names right now.Anyhow, it's nice to chat with both of you. Hope you're well! I'll let you continue the conversation.....Love and best wishes to both of you!
From: Janet
Dear Marilyn (a.k.a. Motra Jones),
How wonderful to hear that we are going to be receiving a new senior missionary couple here in Albania! We need you! (I know that probably concerns you - I remember my wife and I being a little apprehensive about how enthusiastic the mission president and some of the members were when they learned a new American family was moving into the ward.) Janet has given you a pretty thorough introduction, but I'll just add that my wife and I have been in Albania since July 2011 and will be here until July 2013 working for the U.S. Embassy in Tirana.
Do you know what your assignment will be? We have a couple, the Prestons, that are leaving shortly that have been our CES missionaries. If that's what you'll be doing, you'll have lots of opportunities to work with the youth of Albania, and the youth of the church here are the best part. Overall, you are in for a great adventure here with the church. In Tirana there are four branches, all of them fairly small. You likely will not be in our branch with us - there is already a couple assigned to our branch, a sweet couple from England that are here on a humanitarian mission. Nevertheless, we see all the missionaries fairly often and we know most of the couple missionaries serving in the mission. That will change now that the mission includes two new countries that are just being opened to the gospel - we likely won't have a chance to meet the couples assigned there, but as long as you're in Tirana and if you're learning Albanian, we'll likely get to know you pretty well!
All of the branches are full of very new members. In our branch we have three children that we've been told are some of the first children born in the church. Most of the members have not been to the temple because it is so far away (Germany), and they lack the understanding of how the church is supposed to be organized and operate. Erin, my wife, is a counselor in the Primary Presidency. Our first Sunday she took our two girls to Primary along with about four other children. The Primary President came in, dropped off a 2-liter of Coca-Cola and a pile of Spider-Man coloring pages and then headed for Relief Society! So my wife has been teaching the Primary and the Primary President all about things like Sharing Time and Singing Time and the annual Primary Program.
I am the branch clerk and keep busy trying to help the Branch President organize our records. Albania is not yet connected to the church's electronic database, so all of our record keeping, including weekly donation reports on tithing have to be filled out by hand and then I bring them home and email them to the Area Offices in Frankfurt, Germany. This last year I discovered that my Branch President, a sweet man with a strong testimony, had no idea what tithing settlement was. We discovered this in January after the Area Offices contacted us and informed us we were a month late in our reports!! Needless to say, we work closely with the full time missionaries to teach the members and help them along. Unfortunately, the Church Handbooks have not been translated into Albanian yet. Fortunately, the members are wonderful and we have enjoyed being in our branch.Life in Albania will be a daily adventure for you and your husband. Albania is full of beautiful landscapes, seascapes, and you'll travel around the country quite a bit. The villages are quaint and the people very humble. On the other hand, traffic in Tirana will probably test your patience (and your heart) and 50+ years of communist rule has made for situations that you simply have to stop questioning and merely accept regardless of how illogical or inconvenient they are.
On the practical side, we'd love to help answer any questions you may have about life here. I'm sure President and Sister Ford will be/have been in touch with you along with some of the other missionaries. We absolutely adore President and Sister Ford. You will love serving with them - they are young and have a lot of energy and stalwart testimonies of the gospel. The Albanians are lucky to have them here!
We're looking forward to meeting you! Enjoy the MTC and we'll see you on the other side of the world!
Sincerely, Jay Porter
Dear Marilyn,
The winters here are not nearly as harsh as they can be in Utah. Tirana rarely gets any snow, and if it does snow, it never sticks or stays for more than a few hours. The mountains around Tirana are snow capped during the winter though, and the rest of the country can get a lot. In fact, this year they had a national emergency because the snow fall was so excessive it started collapsing buildings, homes, and schools. Some towns got cut off from the rest of the country because the roads were impassable, and it snowed over three meters in some areas in less than a week! All that time Tirana never got more than some rain showers. That being said, it does get very cold here, and it will drop below freezing often during the winter. You need lots of good warm clothing because a lot of the buildings and homes are not heated. Our church is not heated (well) during the winter and our kids never take off their winter coats, scarves, etc., even during Sacrament meeting and Primary. We usually defrost in our car after the meetings! The buildings are all solid concrete and tile, so they are wonderful little ice chests in the winter. It isn't usually too bad if you have good winter clothes. The American families (there are three of us in our branch that work with the Embassy) finally outfitted the nursery with a heater and a fan because it was too cold for the toddlers, and in the summer we have the opposite problem. Most of the homes here are outfitted with some kind of space heaters, but central heat is rare and expensive. Plus, during winter the stress on the electrical grid means ocassionally the electricity goes out, which leaves you without any options beyond your wool leggings and winter coat! Again, when it gets too cold, it's a nice time to go for a drive in your warm car or find a nice cafe and sip some hot chocolate or herbal tea. Tirana gets fairly wet during the winter, but all in all, we didn't find the winter here excessive. With warm clothing it is fine, and this year the city really started decorating for Christmas which was a lot of fun. Right now and for the past two-three weeks we've had beautiful spring weather. It's a perfect 65-75 degrees outside and clear skies. My wife planted tulips and daffodils last year and we're enjoying them now. It gets a little cool in the evenings, but is very refreshing. Tirana is a great walking city - and I walk whenever I can. Don't worry too much about the language. If you are outside Tirana it gets a little harder, but inside Tirana you will discover that there are so many members and people that speak English. When my wife and I go out, even the waiters at the restaurants speak English. All the kids are learning it in school, and they speak it very well! I have never been anywhere here where I could not find someone who could help me communicate. I went through about 10 months of language traininng before I arrived, and I do fairly well, but even so, about 90% of my work and day is conducted in English. You'll pick up some useful phrases and you can study and pick it up better than you think, but in the end, if you never learned a word of Albanian you could get along pretty well here. The hardest part will be meeting members you'd LIKE to have a stronger relationship with that DON'T speak English, and that will be frustrating. But as far as doing your work here it won't prove overly challenging. One of the things we're looking forward to is the seasonal produce. When we lived in Central America we had lots of tropical fruit, but in Albania we have a lot of Mediterranean produce that is really spectacular! Over the course of the summer we'll get peaches, figs, cherries (they are delicious!!), plums, and berries. This winter we really enjoyed their citrus including oranges, lemons, and other fruit like persimmons and a TON of pomegranates. Right now blood oranges and strawberries are in season and we're freezing a lot of the strawberries to last us for the next few months. There are little produce markets all over the city, and the fruits and vegetables all seem to be very fresh. For the most part, it is very seasonal. Some things like potatos, onions, leeks, peppers, tomatoes, oranges, and apples we see year round now because they have begun importing them. Bananas are everywhere too and very affordable, although they are a little disappointing after coming from a tropical country, but we've gotten over it. At the major grocery stores there is also a lot of imported fruit like pineapples, avocados, and coconuts but we generally avoid them because they aren't really great and they are very expensive. If you enjoy cooking you will become rather creative and adept at substitutions. There are a few ingredients you won't find here. Brown sugar is not sold, although one grocery store imports something they call brown sugar but it is a little more like coarse and unrefined sugar, it isn't really soft or brown. Extracts like vanilla extract I have never seen but we brought a lot with us. If you want chocolate chips you'll have to chop up a chocolate bar. Whole wheat flour can be found, but it is a little elusive. Peanut butter is sold but you pay for it, and check the expiration date because it can sit on the shelf for a while. On the other hand, we skip the margarine here and go straight for the French butter they sell - it is DELICIOUS! If you like feta cheese and olives your head will spin at the varieties. Olive oil can be bought by the gallon and it is incredibly flavorful. Bakeries sell very good loaves of bread for about 40 cents a loaf. The yogurt (especially the Greek style) is rich and creamy, and if you enjoy lamb, you'll find it on the menu at lots of restaurants here. We have had a lot of fun making things from scratch that we would have otherwise just picked up in a jar, bottle, or mix in the U.S. Our neighbors decided to corn their own beef this year so we could have corned beef for St. Patrick's Day. It was delicious! I've experimented with my own bbq sauces using local ingredients - it's turned out pretty darn well! And I had a brother from church build me a smoker so I could smoke my own meat for authentic American bbq! That was a chore trying to explain to him in my broken Albanian what a smoker was supposed to look like, and finding all the parts and pieces, but he got it done and last year for Thanksgiving we had a beautiful and juicy smoked turkey. I think you really will enjoy Albania. It will make you grateful for silly things you never thought you'd miss, but it will also open your eyes to a whole new pioneer experience in the church and a lovely culture with sweet, humble, people. The countryside is beautiful - I don't think you'll miss the mountains. Tirana is surrounded by them. The members will love you, and you will really love the missionaries here. They are a very tight group of people.
From: Jay Porter
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