December 27, 2010

Is it only two days after Christmas? It feels like a century!
How is my family since we last talked? I hope good. I hope everyone is enjoying all their Christmas presents and new things and candy. We have SO MUCH candy - we got candy bars, each apiece, from three of the old people we deliver lunches to. And everything delicious and yummy from Mom and Dad! homemade cookies and raspberry and orange sticks and chocolate covered cherries and cinnamon bears and candy canes! I realized when I got the candy canes that I haven't had one all Christmas season! That's another thing they don't do here in Croatia, I guess. And we bought nuts, pistachios and cashews etc. for some holiday spirit - oh, AND we got chocolate from one of our English students. And from zone meeting. And probably more from somewhere else. And the presents! I appreciate the clothes I got, and Sister Dillender liked her sweater that Mom sent her, it does fit and it looks really nice, and my stuff is REALLY cute! Thank you! And I liked the scarf, did you make it Mom? Or someone else? And we did a little gift exchange with the Elders, I got this wood puzzle thing. And we got scarfs from zone meeting. AND at zone meeting we did a white elephant exchange with the sisters - we picked things from our sisters' closet (hideous things that people have left behind) and swapped them up. It was really funny. And we got foot stuff from Amelia. And... there's more. But my brain doesn't work anymore!
It was nice to talk with all of you and hear your voices! Glad that everyone's Christmas was so great.
Yesterday was good - we had church of course and that's about it that's interesting.
And today we're going to Uglijan! That's an island close by, I went to it a couple times right when I got here, Sister Dillender still hasn't been yet and there's a new Elder here, who I actually served with my first transfer, so even though we heard it's supposed to snow we're going! We did hear that, but it's actually really sunny outside. The weathermen weren't right this time.
It's weird not having anything to say! I can't think of much.
Last pday we went to a couple of China shops to buy our exchanges gifts and I had Sister Dillender and I was looking at some keychains. And I asked how much one of them was. And the man said 10 kuna. And I was just standing there thinking, should I get it? Should I get a different one? Would she like it? And he said, you can buy it for 5 kuna. And i said ok! So I bartered for the first time without even saying anything! That was funny. On wednesday we had young women's and made sugar cookies and listened to Christmas music. That was fun. They actually played the Josh Groban CD, I thought of that when Mom said she listened to it for some Christmas spirit. Oh and I also thought it was funny that Nyah wanted and got a electric helicopter, because one of the Elders got two of them! Actually one for him and one for his companion, and they brought it to the church and flied them all day long. I tried it out and it was actually pretty hard! Well, inside our small church was harder than it would be outside of course. And on Christmas we had a really good dinner - turkey breasts and mashed potatoes and green beans. Simple and yummy. We didn't eat the trix Christmas morning because we had a french toast extravaganza! But we're looking forward to eating that, probably tomorrow. This morning we had our weekly pday eggs extravaganza!
So that's all I have to say I think! Everyone have a great week! Love you tons!
Sister Laws
Oh, and Mom, I didn't get a letter from you at zone meeting :/ I already told president in my weekly letter to him that you said you wrote one so to check out if it came to the right place and it was just missed. But if you would like to resend it straight to me that would work, too! Love you!

PICTURES!!
The first one is from Wednesday, we went by the sea for lunch! It was REALLY pretty!
Christmas Eve, we walked around the old city section (poluotok) and took pictures of all the decorations and everything.

On Christmas morning!

On Christmas morning, we propped our cameras up on the couch and put them on timer!

December 20. 2010

MERRY CHRISTMAS CHARLIE BROWN!
Do not worry, there has been no watching of movies here, but we did hear our landlord upstairs the other night watching Home Alone! We could just hear the music for it.
IT'S CHRISTMAS IN ZADAR!
Why?
Well, on Friday we had our last English class of the transfer, and some of our students surprised us by giving us GIFTS! Yay! One lady gave us a scarf (mine is a light pink) with puffy balls on the ends and gloves, and a Christmas gigantic muffin to share with the Elders, and one guy brought us a box of chocolates, and another lady, who we started to teach a little bit, gave us each a picture that her cousin drew of a famous place here in Zadar, AND a book of the Psalms in Croatian, which is SO nice and awesome. And THEN it started TO SNOW!!!!!! WE GOT SNOW!!!!! It was SO SO much fun! This whole winter, whenever we ask, people have told us that Zadar doesn't get snow, and then on Wednesday one of the Spanish students told us that it was supposed to snow on Friday and we all thought, Sure. It won't. And it didn't all day, and someone told us it was snowing in Sibenik, which is about an hour and a half away, but we still didn't think it would and then we were reviewing everything we had taught in English with our students and Sister Dillender saw the snow start outside and said "snijeg pada!" and we all got excited and it didn't come down very hard during the class and everyone left and then while we were waiting for the Spanish students to come me and Sister Dillender sat by the big window around a space heater and sang Christmas songs with all the lights out except for the Christmas tree lights in the background and it started falling harder and then little neighborhood kids came waddling out in all their winter clothes and threw snowballs at each other... and THEN, since none of the Spanish students came to class, we got to walk home in it, and we were all bundled up because we thought it would rain, at least, so I was wearing boots and winter coat, and we dropped everything off at home and went outside and took pictures! And made snowballs and tried to hit a trashcan with them, and walked around in it. So PICTURES are on the way for sure and it was SO MUCH FUN.
That was Friday. And on Saturday we had our branch Christmas party. We had a really nice dinner and we made gingerbread houses out of these wafer thingies, and some less-active and non-members came so there were lots of people, really fun, and on Sunday we had our Christmas program for sacrament meeting! The story of the Christmas program: I knew I would have to pick out the music because I'm the piano player here. So I did that. But until Saturday morning we didn't have ANYTHING for the actually speaking parts. So we went early before the activity and met the Elders at the church, and we showed them the scriptures that we had picked out that morning in companionship study, and there was just no thinking happening at all, so we didn't get anything written, had the Christmas party, so Sunday MORNING I woke up early and WROTE our Christmas program. It wasn't a final edition, it was scribbled out and there were arrows all over and not everything is translated. Go to church early, the Elders are there, we ask, Do we need to re-write this or is it legible enough?? I'm making copies of songs that I need so I don't have to juggle four different books, because I had to take songs from the semi-easy edition, the real edition, the easy edition, and the Croatian primary book, and getting a member who knows English really well to help me with translating a couple parts and we haven't divvied out the parts or anything until the meeting is starting late, no one is playing prelude music, I sit down and realize, that I haven't practiced these songs that I learned in the last week for 24 HOURS, so I'm like, oh this will be interesting... AND IT WAS GOOD! The members like to sing, I used some of the piano music that Mom sent me for a couple of short musical numbers, which, during one of them one of the papers kept falling so I was looking at it upside down trying to play it for a second until one of the Elders straightened it and it fell again, but I was past that part by that point, and we had scriptures and thoughts and it WAS legible, so we survived! Christmas program, check.
So what else did I do this week? I got elbowed in the face during frisbee, no split skin no stitches and NO visible bruise yay, we are doing 12 days of Christmas for the Elders. So far we've given them 1 chocolate candy bar, 2 packs of gum, 3 bags of popcorn, 4 oranges, 5 lollipops, 6 beunos (that's a candy-bar type thing here) and 7 chicken nuggets, we thought we could do the first half serious and nice and the second half things like 8 pez and 11 teaspoons of chocolino (a baby-food here that everyone eats, not just babies). So that should be fun. We've just been leaving everything on their porch, but last night we doorbell ditched because we didn't want their chicken nuggets left out all night. It was fun to doorbell ditch again! Its been a while. One day we had to eat lunch at the church because the power in our house was out (they were doing some kind of work on it, so they had to cut the power, which meant no heater, which meant freezing) so we ordered pizza and watched some of the churches Christmas films, that are really short (Mr. Krueger's Christmas, Nora's Christmas) so I guess there has been film-watching. But those are mission-appropriate. That was fun. And another night there was some REALLY loud thunder and bright lightning, it woke us up, but it was over by the time we woke up for the day. It was right above us and the thunder was RIGHT after the lightning, it was crazy. Oh, and I saw the coolest thing last night! The moon was glowing and around the glow was a rainbow! That's the first time I've seen that, Sister Dillender said she's seen it before, but it was so cool! And yesterday we went over to a member's house for lunch, it was yummy. soup, pototoes, and turkey. good stuff.
AND THAT WAS MY WHOLE WEEK.
This week: we have zone conference, so we'll be in Zagreb on Thursday for some fun Christmas times, on Christmas Eve we're going caroling to some of our old people that we carry lunches to, on Christmas I'll be hearing from you all! We're doing a gift exchange between us and the Elders and we've managed to keep it a secret who we have! So we'll have to do that sometime. It will be a GREAT week. Oh, and Mom you never said there was a package coming straight to me, but no it hasn't come yet. Thank you! I hope it's great. Oh, and I don't know what I put in your phone but it's "dobar dan" instead of dobro, they both mean good but it just has to match up with gender, since dan is a masculine word. I'm glad to hear that everything is going alright with Grandma. Hope everyone has a great Christmas and lots of fun with the little kids crawling and running around, and gets good presents and enjoys good company, and good health!
LOVE YOU ALL! čujemo se!
Keshia

And I forgot to tell you, I read Esther this morning in the old testament. It was a good book. I like the part where the King asks Haman (??I can't remember his name, he's the bad guy) what should I do for the man I want to honor? And he thinks to himself "Who would the king want to honor more than myself!" and tells him to do this big elaborate thing and it's not even for him! So funny.
And I randomly flipped open to somewhere in 1 kings, I think. It's a story about a king wanting the farm of somebody, and when the guy says no, the King goes home and lays on his bed and won't eat or get dressed or anything, basically he's pouting, and the queen comes and says don't be a baby, I'll get you the land. And she has the owner killed and the king goes to get the land and then ELIJAH the tishbite comes and the king says "so my enemy has found me" and Elijah says, "yes, I have" and then curses him for doing what he did! the actual story is better, of course, because I'm major paraphrasing it.
And I read a really good talk in an Ensign, by Elder Bednar called "Quick to Observe" (December 06 Ensign) he talks about the spiritual gift of being quick to observe, and also the gift of discernment. And how the gift of discernment has four parts: recognizing hidden error and evil in others, recognizing when we have that in ourselves (like the influences of a bad spirit) recognizing the good in others and bringing it out, and recognizing the good in ourselves! I thought the recognizing the good part was nice, because whenever I think about the gift of discernment (which is not often) I think about the bad part. It was a good article.
And I read Joel, and I liked Joel 3 : 10. You'll have to read it to find out what it says!
SRETAN BOŽIĆ! LOVE YOU!

I almost forgot about pictures!
The first one was Sister Dillender's idea. She wanted to send pictures home for everybody for Christmas, but didn't want to spend too much money, so she made the Sretan Božić sign and we took pictures by the sea last p-day! It was a really nice sunny day, but super cold, too!



Next, in the snow!


And finally our snowman! It's from the snow on our porch, which wasn't very much.


SRETAN BOŽIĆ
Have a merry and white Christmas!
These are pictures from around Zadar!
I hope I haven't sent them before :)

Pictures

This is hard to see because a couple p-days ago we went to these "caves" we heard about from some other missionaries. I don't know what purpose this place served in it's time, but it reminded me a little bit of a bomb bunker, because they were man-made and way abandoned. And CREEPY. We got one room in and SPLIT out of there pretty fast, I stepped in a pile of poo while we were in there and it looked like bums used to live there (we hope that they didn't still live there) and we joked about finding a dead body or catching leprosy while we were there. Don't worry, we really left really really fast. And no one would have messed with us because Elder Bachynski is seven feet tall. So we were safe. And it was creepy. :) That's Elder Rhodes and Sister Dillender in the picture.

This one with me and the cake is a funny story because one of the ladies from our last english class is coming again this transfer, and Sister Nelson told her that her birthday was the 16th of November and she said, That's my birthday too! And so Sister Nelson got transferred away, lala, and the lady brought cake for us! For Sister Nelson's birthday! Even though she's not here! So we got to eat her birthday cake. It was really good.

Thanksgiving pictures!
One of my plate of food before, and then me with it AFTER.


Our Pies!

This last picture is from this morning on our way to Internet! The Pope on his donkey-pulled wagon!

December 13, 2010

Hi family!
First off, thanks for all the information on the holidays that could have been the pope in the wagon, I'm betting on St. Nicholas Day just because of where we are, but I didn't remember to ask anyone about it! Maybe I'll remember this week. It was fun to read all the info on holidays, it's fun to learn about!

Second off, recipe for rolls:
2 C warm water
2 Tbl yeast
7 C sifted flour
1/2 C sugar
2 tsp salt
4 Tbl shortening
2 eggs

Dissolve yeast in water, add 3 1/2 C flour, 1/4 C sugar and 1 ts salt into water and yeast. Stir well. In a separate bowl use a beater to mix 4 Tbl shortening and eggs. Add that to the water and flour mixture, then add 3 1/2 C flour, 1/4 C sugar and 1 tsp salt. Let raise 2 hours. Make balls and put into greased pan, let raise another 2 hours. Bake 10-20 minutes at 425 degrees Fahrenheit and baste with butter!
If it's wrong, that might be because I wrote it down in my planner and my abbreviations are a little confusing. But I'm pretty sure that's right.

Third off, THANK YOU FOR THE PICTURES!! I got so many this week from Amelia and Kelsey. It was so fun to see how big Tylie is and how cute Kelsey's whole family is.

Fourth off, HAPPY BIRTHDAY JUSTIN. This isn't in order of importance, Justin, so sorry you're number 4 on the list.

Fifth: this week was GREAT. We got three new investigators! That's a really good week, since we haven't had any new investigators in a while! Yay! All three are women and all three are really great. Hopefully we get some Christmas miracles!
Also, we had interviews with President on Tuesday, so he came down from Slovenia to Zadar. It was really nice and FUN to see him and have a conversation! Just because it's been awhile since we've had any meetings and haven't been to Zagreb! But we have zone conference next week. Anyway, it was a good day. He's a really inspired leader!
It's been mostly rainy and FREEZING, but today is sunny. It has gotten really cold, I've worn my winter coat almost every day for the last week and a half and I'm so glad I brought it! I was started to think that I would never use it! It can be annoying, with the rain, because it might be sunny in the morning, but the weather changes so fast here, a couple times this week we got caught somewhere without an umbrella! Because it didn't look like rain when we left, but a storm rolled in, luckily we borrowed an umbrella from an investigator one day, and the other day we borrowed one from the church.
We're making plans for Christmas! Which means that we're juggling ideas like "go to mass" with "take pictures of all the decorations all over town," and it will be really fun when we actually get to it! On Saturday for young womens we decorated the church and it was really fun, we put up a Christmas tree and made paper snowflakes and listened to Christmas music. And this Saturday we're going to have a Christmas Activity, which means dinner and fun at the church with the members. And then Sunday is our Christmas program during Sacrament meeting, which means we need to plan and prepare for BOTH of those things. Ha ha, which means that I need to learn all the Christmas hymns! And all that jazz. So it's going to be a busy couple of weeks. Which is GREAT.

This morning I started to read a talk by... a guy from the Presiding Bishopbric, can't remember his name, from the general conference Ensign and so far it is SO good! It's on faith and he was saying "Choose Faith" it actually might be called that, I can't remember. And I'm also reading in the Book of Mormon about when Christ came to the Americas and that's really good. The Book of Mormon is AWESOME.

I'm glad that everyone has been traveling safely (Amelia) and future travelers (Jesse and family and Mom) I hope everything goes well for Mom (in SD, with your Mom) and I'm happy to hear everyone is happy and well! Do something nice for somebody else this week!
LOVE
Sister Laws

oh, and for Christmas calls, Dad you'll have to call me at 8 or 9 Christmas morning, your time, so tell me which one would work better for you next week!

December 06, 2010

Hi family!
On the way here today we saw the FUNNIEST thing! There was a donkey pulling a wagon, and there was a guy dressed up as a Pope in the back handing out candy to people, and there was a devil behind him who was like, whacking people with this whip thing after they got candy, well, older people, not kids, it was the most bizarre thing. We have no idea what it was for, or if it's an annual thing or just some weirdos doing it, and then we're walking behind it and the wagon stopped. And the devil was out doing something, and then the wagon started again and the Pope fell out of the wagon and nearly landed on his back, he saved himself somehow, but it was so funny, and then he got back in and the devil got back on behind him, and the wagon started, and the Pope almost fell out again, and he would have but the devil guy caught him. It was the most random thing ever! It was so funny. We'll figure out what it was all about and write next week. Maybe the members know what it was. So funny.
So I'm happy to hear everyone had a good week! One of the funnest things here is everyone is putting up Christmas decorations, like the mall and on the streetlights and everywhere. It's so fun! Sister Dillender said, and I agree, that with Croatia being predominately Catholic, at least they do Christmas! And it seems like they do it big, based on all the decorations that are going up, so I'm excited for that. Thanks for sending my Christmas package, if it gets to the mission home before Christmas then I'll for sure get it, because we have a zone conference in Zagreb on the 23rd! It should be really fun to see everyone so close to Christmas! And I think we're doing a white elephant gift exchange, so that will be fun, too.
Last p-day we walked out to a new mall that opened. It was pretty lame. Most of it was clothes and most of those weren't mission-appropriate, so it's not like we could go shopping, and we didn't take money with us just so we WOULDN'T buy anything. But I got a cool toys catalog that doubles as a advent calendar, so that's been fun.
On Tuesday we had a lesson set up with an inactive member and we decided to take a bus, because it's a little far, so I rode an in-city bus for the first time in Zadar! We've done trams in Zagreb, but I haven't done buses here yet. I got SO car sick and then I started to hyperventilate and then I was freaking out that I couldn't stop feeling sick or stop hyperventilating, even though I was trying really hard to focus on my breathing! And then the member cancelled so the whole thing was a flop, but it was cool to experience it. Next time I'll sit closer to the front or something. Also on Tuesday we went trakting, and we looked at the last name on the doors, because people have their last names on a plaque on their door in apartment buildings, and we looked it up in the dictionary to see if it meant anything, and if it did we tried to come up with something to say that went along with it. There were a lot of names that don't mean anything but the few that do were fun to try. And luckily none of those people answered, because we had last names like "Marinović" and the closest word is "marinirati" which means to marinate. So we thought we could say something like, "We're like meat, and when we soak up the gospel then we're better" and "kovać" which means "blacksmith" so we thought "we're all like metal, and God is the blacksmith..." Like I said, it's a good thing none of those people answered the door!
On Wednesday it was raining SO SO hard! The street we always walk down had a ton of puddles and there was one street with a big dip that was flooded, people were driving on the sidewalk to get by. And for English class we taught (and learned) a bunch of Christmas-related words like "magarec" means donkey, and "jasle" -- manger. It was really fun. One of the students is an older lady, and we were asking how to say Christmas tree in Croatian and she thought we were asking what it WAS. And one of the other students said, "do you have that in your church?" And she was like, "No, they don't have it" and I said, "Yes we do! Yeah! Christmas tree!!" I thought it was funny, sometimes they think that we're so different that we wouldn't even have a Christmas tree, or celebrate Christmas, but we're not! We're almost normal people. Haha, just kidding, that's a joke the Elders told us. They said they were on a lesson and one of them said, "We're almost normal people" and his companion was like, "we ARE normal!" So we ARE. We're just a bunch of normal people here.
Nothing special on Thursday.
On Friday during English class we were teaching traveling words, like airport and passport, and I wrote "backage" on the board instead of "baggage" and I didn't notice for 5 minutes! And then I was looking at it and was like, that looks wrong... oh! dumb! It's weird the mistakes I make nowadays. It was really funny. And also on Friday Sister Dillender and I started writing secret notes in cyrillics! They aren't secret of course, but we're having fun re-learning cyrillics! We both learned in the MTC, but haven't used it since. So that's fun.
Saturday nothing exciting. And Sunday we had a kinda crazy church day, because one of the members was asking why we were going to sing a Christmas carol during sacrament meeting, she didn't know if it was appropriate and made a little bit of a big deal about it, but I was like, we've got to sing that because I only learn how to play so many songs in a week! I can't just whip out a different one! But I didn't have to say that because it rolled over pretty fast. I was thinking, What could be wrong with singing "Oh come all ye faithful"?? But it all turned out. And we're going to have a Christmas program the Sunday before Christmas! I'm so excited! That basically means that we, as missionaries, need to plan something that I, as the piano player, can work with. And we only have 6 Christmas hymns translated into Croatian, so we'll see what we can throw together! It's going to be so great!

It was great to hear from everyone this week! I'm happy to hear that Mom and Dad had fun being "seven swans a swimming" and that Kelsey doesn't need the doctors to put her kids' shoulders back into place, that sounds a little gruesome. Oh, and thanks Kelsey for sharing the words of "Be Still My Soul" That's one of my favorite hymns, too! My favorite line is "Be Still my Soul, The waves and winds still know his voice who ruled them while he dwelt below" because God is really in control of everything that happens, even when our lives are crazy, we don't need to worry because he's in control of the winds and waves and those are a lot bigger and more out of control than we are! It makes more sense in my head than on paper anyway. Mom requested the rolls recipe that we used for Thanksgiving, I will be happy to share next week! I hope I remember to bring it.

Thanks for all the love, support, and news! Love you all!
Sister Laws


I'm sending lots of pictures because I meant to a couple weeks ago and didn't have my camera cord with me!

The one with me and the cake is a funny story because one of the ladies from our last english class is coming again this transfer, and Sister Nelson told her that her birthday was the 16th of November and she said, That's my birthday too! And so Sister Nelson got transferred away, lala, and the lady brought cake for us! For Sister Nelson's birthday! Even though she's not here! So we got to eat her birthday cake. It was really good.

And then the other one is hard to see because a couple p-days ago we went to these "caves" we heard about from some other missionaries. I don't know what purpose this place served in it's time, but it reminded me a little bit of a bomb bunker, because they were man-made and way abandoned. And CREEPY. We got one room in and SPLIT out of there pretty fast, I stepped in a pile of poo while we were in there and it looked like bums used to live there (we hope that they didn't still live there) and we joked about finding a dead body or catching leprosy while we were there. Don't worry, we really left really really fast. And no one would have messed with us because Elder Bachynski is seven feet tall. So we were safe. And it was creepy. :) That's Elder Rhodes and Sister Dillender in the picture.

Thanksgiving pictures! One of my plate of food before, and then me with it AFTER, our pies, and lastly my Thanksgiving Thankful Plate!

And the last picture is from this morning on our way to Internet! The Pope on his donkey-pulled wagon!


Hi parentals!
Our President said that we won't be using skype this time.
And my number is, in its completeness, country code and all, 011 385 91 444 8096

That being said we still haven't decided if we're calling you or you're calling us, or when.
Actually, I think you'll have to call me. Does that work and can we still be on a conference call? Because I'm pretty sure that I can't call everybody like Michael did that one year. So would it work?
Let me know what you think is best. Other than that I have no updates for calling. I'll let you know next week!

I really liked your e-mails this week, I thought Mom's was especially funny. What with the 7 swans a swimming and the aliens being possessed, and for some reason I thought the story of Michael with the stocking was REALLY funny. I'm good with my old stocking, so you don't need to buy me one. It's "grown-up" enough for me! Thanks for asking! And thanks for sending my package, I'm so excited to see what I got! Just like any other Christmas! Oh, and that recipe Mom sent looks like it would be good, too, thanks. I think we'll try it out!

Have a great week!
Lots and lots of lots of love!
Keshia

November 29, 2010

Hi family!
I had a really good week.
Monday, last p-day, nothing exciting.
Tuesday, one of the old ladies at our service place touched Sister Dillender's hand with her own after she told us that she had herpes on that hand so it's always cold now. So we've been joking about Sister Dillender having herpes all week.
Wednesday, the most exciting thing was we started making food for Thanksgiving!
Thursday, THANKSGIVING! We made FOUR PIES: cheese-cake-ish one, cherry, apple, and chocolate pudding. They were all good except for the cheese-cake one - we forgot we had the oven on broiler so the top got baked all weird and it ended up looking like some kind of egg dish thing. And we made the crusts for all of them, too, because Croatia doesn't do pies so that was hard, no wonder people say that pastry is hard to work with, it IS. And Croatia also doesn't do pie pans, so we found one pie pan at the church (from Frontier Pies, so it was obviously from America) we made the apple pie in a bread pan and the cherry pie in a glass dish that was luckily really deep because I forgot to measure out the cherries and put both jars into the recipe, which all in all turned out really yummy. And then the cheese-cake pie was in one of the Elder's skillet (if I remember what a skillet pan is) pans! With a metal handle, so we didn't have to worry about it melting. Which also worked fine. And then we got to the Church and found ANOTHER pie pan in the cupboard that we had missed. So that was funny. And Thursday morning we walked the pies all the way to the church and when we got there we realized we forgot the keys AND the phone, so we couldn't call the Elders to let us in, so we had to leave the pies on the back porch and walk all the way back home and to the church again, which worked out because there was more we could take early. We had turkey, we looked for ham but couldn't find any that looked normal, and none of the whole turkeys (which are all quite small here in Croatia) looked good so we just bought some turkey breasts and a couple legs, which the Elders cooked and it was SO delicious. We had stove-top stuffing from America. We used the potato flakes that Mom sent me, except we made them at the church and when I was halfway through with the two original packets I realized we hadn't brought any milk, so they were really tasteless, but we made some real mashed potatoes with it, too, and then the two other flavored packets that didn't need milk, so we had plenty. We made the gravy packets, thanks again to Mom, it was good. We had some vegetables and a fruit salad which we put vanilla pudding into, because we thought it was a good idea, but we got to the church and told the elders and they said "is that pudding from Croatia?" and we said, yeah. And they explained that they had tried nearly every kind of vanilla pudding and Croatia did NOT know how to make pudding. So when we got around to the fruit salad later in the meal we found out that Croatia does NOT know how to make vanilla pudding, it had a weird metallic aftertaste, so that failed! It was pretty gross, so we stopped eating it and shared it with the members that night at Institute :) And the crowning thing to the whole meal was the ROLLS which I made from a recipe we found in the apartment. They were SO SO SO good! I plan on bringing the recipe home, it was super delicious and nice to have good rolls, because Croatia also doesn't make rolls. So our meal turned out to be a success! It was the most American Thanksgiving on foreign soil prepared by young missionaries! Just like I thought and hoped it would be. And after the meal we read one of the gratitude talks that Mom sent me, which was really good, and we made Thanksgiving Plates! (we wrote on paper plates everything we were grateful for) And I totally intended to send pictures of our wonderful meal, but I forgot to bring my camera. Next week I will. And if you noticed, Sister Dillender and me made almost EVERYTHING for it. The Elders made the turkey and the boxed stuffing and the packet gravy. So it was DEFINITELY a sucess :) It was so great and so much fun! And the whole time we were cooking pies and rolls we listened to the Forgotten Carols! Yeah Christmas music!
And on Thursday when we were walking home at the end of the night we say a dead cat on the road with its insides on the outsides and it was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in real life. I had no idea cats' insides looked like that and I was so disgusted I couldn't stop looking. Just so you know.
on Friday (And actually every other day of the week) it rained, and we were walking home and I had forgotten my umbrella at the church and Sister Dillender's umbrella broke, but LUCKILY I was wearing my rain coat! It works! the hood and everything! And my rain boots work, too. They were good purchases. And it really did rain almost every single day this week and yesterday ALL day long. I really like the rain :) Also on Friday one of the old couples that we deliver lunches to for service gave us chocolate for Sveta Kata! That Saint Katharine Day or something like that, it was really sweet of them. Sveta Kata is every November 25, exactly one month before Christmas, and to celebrate they put candy under kids pillows! I learned about it on the 26th, or I would have told you all sooner so you could celebrate it! But for future reference! And I will definitely try to find out some more holidays or traditions that Croatians have and pass them along!
And of course we've been eating leftovers (they're gone now) and every time we would stuff ourselves again and feel like we had another Thanksgiving dinner. And on Saturday I ate my third Thanksgiving dinner and then had leftover pie on top of that and then had a big cup of the hot chocolate that Mom sent (THANKS AGAIN) and made myself disgustingly sick! I felt so gross. But I dipped chocolate chip cookies in it and it was really really delicious at the time. So.
And the most exciting thing on Saturday was that we got contacted by a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses. We basically let them say their bit and took their little paper and let it all go, because we didn't want to get into an argument. I've never experienced it but the JWs here can be a little confrontational. (All the ones I've met have been nice, even these two.) Anyway, it was funny to be contacted when we're the ones supposed to be contacting!
Yesterday was a good Sunday. We heard from a member that North and South Korea are preparing for war. That's kinda sad to hear about. Any updates on the situation are appreciated! We heard it might end up being the third World War, but I would say it's a little early to be jumping to those kinds of conclusions.
And then THIS MORNING We put up the Christmas tree! That was fun, we haven't decorated it yet or anything, and we need some more lights because one strand popped in my face for no reason, and scared me and another one doesn't work, and we need more decorations because we don't have that many, but it's really fun preparing for Christmas! The Holiday Season is here! And also there are lights and decorations up all over Zadar, like on the streetlights and grocery stores, so that's really fun. And I thought of just a couple other things I wanted to ask for 1. The Pocket Handbook for Missionaries, it's a really small book and 2. crest whitestrips, for fun.
Thanks everyone for e-mailing. Sounds like everyone's Thanksgiving was great! Jesse, your record player sounds BOMB, and the fair sounds like it would have been fun. And Kelsey, I love the quotes from your kids! So fun. Everyone have fun in the snow! And I'll have fun in the rain :)
I've been reading a lot of the conference talks from this last conference, Thanks Mom! and I really liked President Monson's closing remarks, and Elder Bednar's "Receive the Holy Ghost" and I really liked Elder Scott's "The Transforming Power of Faith and Character" the first time I read it, because of his language and the concepts, I was like "I do not understand this..." It was like I didn't know English or something. But I read it again and it was really really good and just what I needed to hear! And then this morning I read Pres Uchtdorf's, I can't remember the name, but it's the one from the general session, not the priesthood session (which I read a couple days ago and is ALSO really good) and he was talking about simplifying when life gets harder and crazy and focusing on the most important things, like the gospel, and how that's wisdom. And THEN in Mom's e-mail today she said, "when life gets like this I have to just slow down, focus on what's really important, breath without hyperventilating, and KNOW everything will be OK." Which is like exactly what Pres Uchtdorf said! So that was really cool.
Ok! Love you all!
Sister Laws

November 22, 2010

Dear family,

I had ONE OF THE BEST WEEKS EVER! Do you want to know why? Because on Wednesday the APs came down to Zadar for exchanges and brought our mail, which means that I got a package from Mom with lots of fun things, and a letter from Jesse, and then THIS MORNING I got ANOTHER package from MOM, which means that sending it straight here is SOSOSO much faster than the mission home, which I figured anyway, but STILL, so I'm sitting here writing President and I go back to my inbox and SEE that Amelia wrote me in the meantime! (You're up really early, thanks for the letter :D) Which means that I've heard from ALL the members of my FAMILY this week and I'm ENJOYING capitalizing LETTERS right NOW!
Thank you for the letter Jesse, it was so fun, and the fun pictures on the margin were really cute. I'm sending you a real letter in return :)

Guess what I got from my wonderful Mommy? I got toothpaste, thank you because my tube is about to run out, a flower bulb, which was such a great surprise because Sister Dillender said she was just thinking about needing to buy a plant of some kind, I got DELICIOUS gingersnap cookies, they travel well, thank you Michael for making them, and thank you from Sister Dillender, and I got good granola bar thingies, I got a GREAT temple edition ENGISN, I LOVE looking at the temple edition Ensign, we had an old one in the apartment, and sometimes I'd just look through it and remember what it's like to be in a temple, and how great that is, I got piano music for Christmas which I've been going crazy with on the piano, I'm so glad to have it in plenty of time to practice, stuff to make snowflakes, we whipped one out apiece and there will for sure be more to come, and some talks on gratitude for Thanksgiving! and I got a nice letter. I think that was all for the first one. And then this MORNING I got the Forgotten Carols CD, which we put right in, one of my Christmas CDs that I asked Mom to send because I didn't put any Christmas music on my mp3 player for some stupid reason, I got the Conference edition of the ensign and a friend magazine, which I'm ridiculously excited about, and dudududuh! gravy packets! STORY: We've been planning for Thanksgiving between us and the Elders, because we want to do a nice Thanksgiving meal and the Croats don't have any sort of Thanksgiving holiday as a replacement, we figure we can make a turkey, we have a recipe for rolls, I forgot to ask for pie recipes last week, but one of the Elders did and Sister Dillender too, and we're planning on ham, we got a box of stuffing from Sister Whitaker's parents when they came to pick her up, Mom sent potato flakes in the Halloween package, and basically the ONLY THING we were partially stumped on was GRAVY (one of the Elders said he figured he knew how, but I didn't trust that very readily) and Mom DELIVERED! She is inspired. We are going to have the BEST American Thanksgiving dinner ever, I'm so excited for Thursday! And if I forgot to mention anything it was just as appreciated. Thanks SO MUCH!

I got a nice long e-mail from Michael this week, thank you, good to hear that you're not registering for classes, haha, and all that other stuff, and that you're semi-sick of girls so I don't have to worry so much about you getting married within the next little while. Oh, and the picture you described in your e-mail didn't make it to me. So that would be nice to see next week.
It's good to hear that Dad is safely home from Florida, that kinda sounds like the weather here in Croatia, and in South Carolina, too, except maybe a tad bit colder. Oh, and it's been raining every single night. Some days during the daytime it cleared up and was sunny by the afternoon and some days, like yesterday and today, it's still cloudy and breezy. It's fun to always fall asleep and wake up to the rain, even though we can't play frisbee in the morning when it's raining like that. But we get along with sweaters and all the Croats are wearing their winter coats. That's kinda funny. We wonder how they can stand being so hot and they wonder why we're not freezing. It's not supposed to snow here, maybe every other year it snows, so we won't be getting a white Christmas. or Thanksgiving. The snow pictures that Kelsey sent look so fun! I can't believe the snow was so deep! all the way past Nyah's waist! That's craziness. And I'm willing to try the animal crackers and cocoa thing, especially for breakfast because it's usually cold in our house in the mornings. Everyone's Thanksgiving plans sound like fun, that's cool, Amelia, that you're going down to Louisiana, I keep trying to think of what I ate when I was there for Thanksgiving, because it would be fun to throw in some southern flair for our Thanksgiving here, but I can't think of anything that I'd be able to make/have a recipe for.
Thanks Mom for telling me the date of your baptism and all that. Our landlord didn't come by for more work on the apartment, but we can tell there's more to come. We don't know when. They're really great, though, it's not weird at all having them there. And I'm glad to hear that Sister Lauren Laws made it to Italy, what was the illness? That's too bad. Did she have to travel by herself here? That sucked for me, I hope she didn't have to. You know what would be cool??? I just thought of this, but it would be cool if someone could forward me those e-mails from her, so I could read what she's up to. That would be fun for me.

And FINALLY I meant to bring my study journal to the internet place today, because I learned some cool things this week, but I FORGOT so the only thing I'll share is that I am in a BIBLICALLY historical place! This is what you all HAVE to do. 1. Look up "Dalmatia" in the Bible Dictionary (in case you didn't know, because I don't think I've told you, the part of Croatia that I'm in right now (Zadar and the coast-line) is called Dalmatia) 2. follow the scripture 3. look up the person that the verse says went to Dalmatia in the bible dictionary and 4. you'll find out who went on a mission to these Croatian people that I'M teaching TODAY back in the times of Peter and Paul. And then 5. don't get confused, because the epistles to the same person aren't written to him while he was here. They were written before he came to a mission here. And the reason I'm putting you on a scavenger hunt is because 1. it's cool and 2. I can't remember the name of the person, haha. And I finished reading the Book of Helaman this week, which was very good. And I started to read one book at a time in the Old Testament so I can read the whole Old Testament and since I'm stuck in Deuteronomy and don't want to read from it, and I started in Haggai, and it was a really good book and really short. I basically read most of the short books this week, so we'll see how well this idea goes for the longer books. I'm taking suggestions for people's favorite books of the Old Testament if anyone is offering.

And FINALLY FOR REAL: Mom asked about Christmas. I don't know what to ask for, because sometimes I think of things during the week but I forget to write it down and I forget that I want it, so it doesn't matter anymore and also there's just not a lot of things I can think of to ask for. But, here's a shot: clothes: something missionary nice is always fun, and I could probably use another sweater or two since it's winter. I don't need white, brown, gray, or red, but any other color would probably be good, and anything else warm, and maybe a couple of pairs of more tights, nothing with patterns is allowed, I probably wouldn't wear bright colors, but some more basics would be good, (that sounds boring, so some fun colors would be good, too) and maybe some fun Christmas pajamas, food: maybe some raspberry sticks and orange sticks, and chocolate covered cherry things, and more homemade cookies (especially, Mom, if you make some chocolate cookies with mint chips) and a Chocolate orange, and then hygiene: I don't really think so. I can buy everything like that here. And as for THINGS: there are things I want here, like souvenirs, but I don't want them now, because I don't want to have them sitting around for the rest of my mission, there are things I want to give to YOU GUYS, but I don't want to send anything, because I don't want it to get lost in the mail, AND anything that would be fun and missionary appropriate would be fun. Music, talks, favorite scriptures, I remember one Christmas we sent Michael aprons, that would be fun, and Amelia and me sent pillowcases, that would be fun, and plenty of pictures!

Other than all of that jazz!! I hope everyone has a great week and enjoys their Thanksgiving feasts!

LOTS AND LOTS OF LOVE LOVE LOVE!
SISTER LAWS

November 15, 2010

Hi family!
It has been a LOONG week for some reason. Good, but last pday felt FOREVER ago. Thanks so much for writing me everyone and telling me about your doings and your children, it really is one of the funnest things for me to hear little stories about your kids. I LOVE it. They are so cute and lovable.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESSE! You're old. I'm kidding. Have a great day and spend it with your baby and your husband. In that order of priority. Haha, just kidding.

Some of the cool things we did this week: on Tuesday we had sign-ups for our English classes, it's at the church and so we made palačinke! Which is called crepes in English. Because we were at the church for two hours and people came every-so-often to sign up and it was during our dinner time so we had that for dinner! And I took one of the packages of butterfingers that Mom sent me and Elder Bachynski (who is seven feet tall) crushed the butterfingers with his fist!!! With one smash! So we sprinkled butterfingers in them with the nutella and it was SOO good! Thanks for the butterfingers. And we had lots of people sign up, at least a ton more than when we were doing it over the summer, and we started doing the classes on Wednesday, and then had it again on Friday, and the best thing is! That Sister Dillender is teaching Spanish here, so I'm learning Spanish!! It is not going nearly as smooth as learning Croatian went in the MTC. I said "yo soy bye-ya" instead of "ba-HA" on Friday -- I'm also not really working very hard at it, I can't learn Spanish when I don't even know Croatian and I don't even need to know Spanish yet. But I'll have all the notes for when I get home :) I'm really excited for that.
We also had men in our apartment, because our gazda is putting in pipes for some reason that we have not been able to understand yet, and gazda means landlord by the way, so they've been working on that and there is dust EVERYWHERE and it's a little weird to have them there. They aren't there all day and we're gone most of the time, so it's not a problem at all, but we have had to camp out in the bathroom a couple times to have a normal conversation without feeling like they were listening. Which was kinda funny.

On Monday AND on Saturday we played a game that Sister Dillender taught us! It reminds me of apple to apple - it's called loaded questions, if you've heard about it, and what you do, is one person asks a question, like "if you could go anywhere, where would you go?" or "which mythical creature would you be?" and then everyone writes down an answer, which can be serious or funny, and then you give it to someone who reads them all out loud, and then the person who asked has to try and guess which answer goes to which person. It was really fun the first time, we played with some of the members in the ward at family home evening, and it was really funny, and then the second time it wasn't as fun, because it was just the four missionaries and one girl at young women's - because the other kids there didn't want to play, so we could all guess each others because we know each other well enough, so it wasn't as funny. But it's a really fun game, we'll probably play it again sometime.

We heard about the Italian temple getting the cornerstone! That is so cool. Our members were excited, because it's closer than the Frankfurt temple. Except one of the members said that it wasn't closer. We shall see when it's finished. And it's SO cool that it's in ROME. Just because we hear so much about the Catholic church. Oh, and one of the members had her "baptismal date anniversary" on Sunday, and it made me realize that I can't remember when Mom was baptized! Or if I knew the date I don't remember it at all. When was it exactly? And Mom mentioned something about a world-wide training meeting that her and Dad went to -- haven't heard anything about it. I'm guessing no one here participated in that. And I don't know which new manuals we're talking about either, because we just barely got the new gospel principles class manual, which we had in English a year ago. So. [shrug]. We also heard that "they" found something in Arizona that has Hebrew written/engraved on it! And the question "how did a lost tribe of Israel get to the American continent" was the only thing that I really understood for sure from the article one of the members had about it. So anything you know about it would be cool to hear and interesting! Not that we need to know the answer to that question, since we already know! BOOK OF MORMON!

That's cool that Jude is standing up! What a grown-up little guy! And I hope water-aerobics are fun, Jesse. I remember doing that once in young womens and it was fun. Good luck to Brent on his test and finals this weekend, you'll do great! That's so awesome that Tylie can sign all those words! Dad, have fun in Florida and be safe! Kelsey, thanks for sharing the hymn "Lead Kindly Light" sometimes I forget about English hymns because we never sing them! So it was nice to hear them. Mom, thanks for sending me the conference thing to Zadar! I'm looking forward to getting it! And Michael, l agree with Amelia, sometimes I wonder what's going on in your life. I give permission to Mom and Dad to tell me anything about him since I'm in the dark. And thanks for sending the picture of your halloween costume - you do look creepy, and your beard looks weird. That's not a goatee, that's a beard. It probably looked so weird because it was black and your face was white.

I'm sorry to hear that Grandma Hicks has a growth on her kidney, I hope everything's ok. And I don't know what cataracts are. Could someone explain those to me? I would ask someone, but I don't think I'd understand in Croatian and my companion doesn't know.

Have a super fantabular awesome week!
Love you!
Sister Laws

November 8, 2010

Hey family!
So this is how I found out Amelia was having a girl: "we were both a little bummed to find out we weren't getting a boy" --from her e-mail. I read it and then did a double-take, "What? Does that mean she's having a girl?" So, I feel a little left out because it sounds like everyone already knew before that e-mail and I didn't get a "It's a girl!!!" or something was missing from the e-mail. Maybe a sentence got deleted or something.
But-
CONGRATULATIONS! Yay! IT'S A GIRL!
And I think I forgot to say Happy Birthday to Kurt! And then Happy Anniversary to Amelia and Brent. And early Happy Birthday to Jesse, just in case I forget to say next week. My last companion Sister Nelson, has the same birthday as Jesse! That's kinda fun.
Thank you all for writing and sharing fun things about your kids! They sound as adorable as ever. I can't believe that Jude is crawling around! That means he's old and I've been gone a long time. Which reminds me that Mom mentioned my hump day is Nov 17, but it is not. We automatically stay a couple weeks longer in this mission because of the transfer schedule, 9 weeks instead of 6, so my halfway mark is not until Nov 27. It's a minor technicality, so I'm just saying. Which is UNBELIEVABLE. But anyway. And I heard this week that Michael has a goatee. Bleh. That is my opinion of goatees. Haha, I'm teasing, but it's hard to imagine that it looks good :)

And Mom asked what my address here in Zadar is:
Keshia Laws
Stadionska Ulica 66
23000 Zadar
Hrvatska

But try to send most stuff to the mission home, because we don't have a separate mailbox from our neighbors and I don't want anything to get lost or to suddenly move and have my mail in the hands of forgetful missionaries. And our street name may or may not have changed, so that may be confusing. It should be fine, though.
Oh, and THANK YOU PARENTS for the Halloween package! yay! a shirt (it's really cute, I wore it yesterday :)), window decorations, butterfingers, candy corn and candy pumpkins, the bobbleheads were really cute, and now we have mashed potatoes to add to our Thanksgiving dinner! So we have stuffing AND mashed potatoes and it's going to be an American holiday spectacular! And I'm glad I brought it up, because I need to ask how to make a turkey, because we are considering trying. Or we will cook chicken breasts. And hot chocolate! For when it's cold like today is! Yay! Thank you so much. We have a ton of candy and junk which actually makes it feel like it was Halloween, instead of before when we didn't have that. It's great.

So what did I do this week? On Wednesday we went to Zagreb where I got my package and where we picked up some clothes from the two sisters that just left, so I feel like I have a whole new wardrobe because one of them was my size, so that's really fun. Actually it's just three skirts and a sweater, but it still mixes things up enough that I don't feel like I'm wearing the same things everyday. We had zone meeting and it went really well. It's always great to receive inspiration from our mission president! Which reminds me that Mom asked some questions. Here in Zadar there used to be 4 elders but they took two out and put them in another city, so there's only two Elders here with us, it was the same way in Varaždin when I served there, but in Zagreb they have two sisters, and four elders, the zone leaders and another set. Our zone covers all of Croatia, so when we have zone meetings and conferences we go to Zagreb, which is the middle city for everyone and it has the church building so we have somewhere to go, but there isn't a mission office there or anything, here in Zadar Elder Rhodes is both the branch president and the zone leader, and last transfer he was training, too, and the two of them stayed together, so Elder Bachynski is still a newer missionary, but we got one new elder this last transfer, so he's technically the newest. He was all alone in the MTC like I was! It's crazy how that happens! I haven't had a chance to ask him how he liked it, though. Oh, I heard through a grapevine of missionaries that one of my MTC companions, Sister Ganbaatar, finally made it to the czech republic last transfer! If you don't remember, she's from Mongolia and was having a hard time with her visa, she was serving in Utah until it came through. It was fun to hear how she was doing, there's apparently a bunch of Mongolians in the Czech Republic, so she's like the only one who can speak to them. So that's pretty cool.
Anyway, we've spent the week "advertising" for language classes and it sounds like we'll get a lot of students, which should be awesome. We sang Happy Birthday to a little girl and her friend on the street, it was fun, AND we were putting fliers in mailboxes on Friday, it was dark, and we were walking up a driveway because the mailbox was on the side of the house, which is semi-common here, the gate was open so it wasn't like we were breaking and entering or anything, so it was all good, BUT we're halfway up the drive, kinda a longer driveway, and this dog starts barking at us, not a big deal, but it's HUGE and it starts running! And we didn't know if it was on a chain, it must've been because it didn't dig it's teeth into our heels or anything, but we BOLTED. It was really funny, because we like rounded the corner and ran up the street and we're wearing skirts and our bags are flopping around and then we both start laughing. It was a big dog.
On Saturday we made chocolate cake for one of our investigators and had a party for her birthday, that was fun, and we tried sarma! It's like filled peppers but is pickled cabbage instead of pepper and the inside is a little different, and it was pretty good. We were invited to go to a members house with the elders, but we couldn't go so she sent us food home with them, which was really nice. It's so fun to try new things here. Our jack-o-lantern from Halloween melted on our porch, it was really disgusting, food doesn't last as long here as it does in America. It died really fast. Also on Sunday, my companion Sister Dillender was finishing getting ready, we had just finished up the cake, and she put on a long sleeve shirt and a sweater over and I asked her "Are you going to bake in that?" And she said, "Oh, the cake is done" And so I said, "No, are you going to cook in that?" And she said, "Are we having lunch right now?" So I finally had to say, "No, are you going to be hot wearing that??" It was really funny, maybe you'd have to be there. Communication errors are the funniest, especially now that we take everything literally because we're always thinking about saying things in Croatian or hearing Croatian and so everything has to be very literal and straightforward and simple. Anyway, it was funny. We had a really good Sunday yesterday, good church, good testimony meeting!
And that is the whole week!

I hope everyone has another good week and remembers to write to me next Sunday! Just kidding :) Oh, and thanks Kelsey for sharing those scriptures from Job, they were good, and if I remember the reference right I think that Job chapters 30-32 or 30-33 are some of my favorite! But I've never read all of Job all the way through. I keep saying that I'm going to read the Old Testament, but it's hard for me to read. :/ Especially where I am now, in Deuteronomy. And I didn't read any talks this week, surprisingly, but I liked the scripture 1 Peter 3:15 and I was reading through some of the scriptures in the topical guide under "cleave" and I thought it was interesting that it says that Cleave means Join, in the TG, and that all the verses talk either about cleaving to God or cleaving to your spouse. I thought it was interesting word choice! And I liked Jacob 6:5 that goes along with cleaving.

And since Mom asked for a wish list, the only things I can think of right now, which I remembered to write down, was 1. Forgotten Carols CD 2. My Christmas CDs that I left at home and stupidly didn't put on my mp3 player, there's two that are in my CD case that I'm thinking of, and 3. recipe for your chocolate cookies with mint chocolate chips and 4. I sent a camera memory card home when I left the MTC and if you want to send that one back to me, wiped clean of the pictures, then I can send the memory card I have now home, because it has a TON of pictures on it. Those were the only things I wrote down. I'll keep thinking.

HAVE A GREAT WEEK!
LOVE YOU!
VOLIM VAS!

Sestra Laws

November 2, 2010

Hi family!
THANK YOU ALL FOR THE FUN PICTURES!

Sounds like everyone had a good Halloween. And we did too! But I'll tell you about it in a second.

First, I'm writing today because yesterday was a holiday here in Croatia, so all the shops were closed. So we couldn't do e-mail, but they're letting us do it today, yay, and our shopping, too. I remember all the weeks that Michael didn't write on time and it was always so sad and frustrating, so SORRY, don't worry! Everything's ok, and we didn't know that we'd be doing e-mail today instead of yesterday until Sunday. Or I would have told you.

My week was good. We got Sister Dillender all settled in here (I can't believe we've only been companions for a week now, this week has been a LONG one)(and short, too, of course, they all are short and long at the same time). On Wednesday we had lunch with Sister Whitaker and her parents, who came to pick her up. She's my trainer and now she's at home! It's kinda weird. Her parents were really nice and brought us beef jerkey, reese's peanut butter cups (which are SOO good. appreciate what you have in America. we have no reese's) and stove-top stuffing! Which we will be using for Thanksgiving! Yay! We don't have any real Thanksgiving plans yet, but I'm sure we'll whip something great together. They asked for my parents phone number, just to call you guys when they get home, and I couldn't remember Mom OR Dad's phone numbers, AT ALL. So I gave them e-mail addresses, I think they'll get home tomorrow so look for an e-mail from them, Mom and Dad. I just thought it was really funny I couldn't remember phone numbers. I know 208-4 something. And that's it. All unused information has completely left my brain.

So on Saturday we had Halloween! We had young women's and carved pumpkins and then we had a branch activity, we didn't dress up for it, but we had lots of food and one of the Elders made a pinata for it (that was indestructible, we had to just open it up) and so that was fun. It wasn't exactly like Halloween because there weren't little kids running around in costumes or too much candy, but we did what we could for it :) And I actually saw a sign in town for a Zadar Halloween party or something, I have no idea where it was or anything, but I thought it was funny because the whole sign was in Croatian except for the word Halloween. They have a name for it, but they just called it Halloween, probably because of American culture influence on it. It was funny to see.
Sunday was good, because Sister Nelson left and Sister Dillender doesn't play the piano and the elders don't either, I played the piano for sacrament meeting! A little weird. It went just fine, though, and the Elders brought over an unused keyboard that they had in their apartment, so I get to practice all week now, and that will be really fun to have a piano at our house, and it wasn't too bad playing for the meeting, because we have a simplified hymns book, so it will all work out! But it's crazy playing the piano in a meeting. It's totally one of those things, if you had spent more time on developing that talent when you actually had the time, then it wouldn't even be a problem now! But it's not too stressful, either.
And yesterday, pday, we went to the graveyard. The holiday is All-Saints Day and everyone goes to the graveyard and leaves flowers and tidies up and so we went and walked around and looked around and took pictures of the cool statues, and then we played games at the church, ping pong, skip-bo, put a puzzle together. It was fun. And a LONG day without e-mailing you all. It was fun, it's cool to have different holidays to celebrate. And then for family home evening that night we played pictionary, which was really fun with the kids that were there.
So that was my WHOLE week. It was good and this next one will probably be better. Oh, tomorrow we're going to Zagreb for zone meeting so I'll get any mail then - so I should finally get the package that Mom sent at the beginning of this month. And it seems like there would be something more that I could ask for, since Mom asked, and I know that sometimes during the week I think, Oh I should ask Mom to send that, but I can't remember ANYTHING whenever I come to e-mail. So it must not be that important anyway. Except I remembered toothpaste. Because it's different here. But you definitely don't have to worry about sending that, I can buy some at the store no problem. I'll think more about it, but really I don't think there's anything. Oh, and because Sister Dillender brought some clothes down to Zadar I have some new things to spice up my getting-old wardrobe selection! Yay! So I'm not even worried about getting new clothes anytime soon.
I can't believe Dad is in Korea, that's like literally the other side of the world from me! Hope you're having fun!
That's all I got, have a great week! Love you all tons!
Sister Laws
(And I'd like to see pictures of Jesse and Michael's Halloweens, too! If you get a chance to send them :))


Here are some pictures!
The first one was more than a week ago when Sister Nelson and I went to Zagreb to pick up my new companion and drop her off! The drive up was SO BEAUTIFUL, all of the trees were changing colors and the mountains were covered with trees, with patches of evergreens and it was all so pretty. So we took a few pictures at the stop we had, it was cold! But Zadar has been mostly sunny and warm still. It sounds like it's kinda like South Carolina, except it started to get colder a couple weeks ago. But it's still sunny and when you're outside walking around all the time all you need is a sweater and maybe a coat at night when it's colder. And long-sleeves in the morning for playing frisbee.


The second one is a view from someone's porch, we were tracting and they weren't home :)
Good picture of Zadar


Then at young women's with my pumpkin!


Sister Dillender with a pumpkin mustache :)


The last one is at the graveyard, tons of flowers, tons of people.


Have a great week!

Sister Laws

October 25, 2010

How is my family doing today? And this week and next week and forever?
So this is what happened this week, last Monday I forgot to tell you that transfers were yesterday because Sister Nelson and I both thought we were going to stay another transfer together in Zadar, and we usually don't get transfer calls until Wednesday or Thursday, so I wasn't really thinking about it, and President Hill called us on Monday night and told us that Sister Nelson was going to be transferred to Zagreb, and I was staying here in Zadar! So yesterday we got a bus to Zagreb and picked up my new companion, Sister Dillender, and came BACK to Zadar, so I just traveled all day long yesterday, but now I have a new companion!
Sister Dillender has been here one transfer longer than I have, and she has served in Zagreb the whole time, she's from San Francisco/Oregon, and she's a really fun sister so this transfer is going to be great. The next transfer is right after Christmas just so you know, so we'll be getting all 3 big American holidays together!
Well, like I said before, I think, that Croatia doesn't celebrate Halloween, we may not get to do a lot for that, because one member told us we can't call it Halloween or bring pumpkins to the church, but we'll probably have a costume party or something. I'm sure we'll figure it out.
So what else did I do this week?
Well, it was a little weird, because the whole week Sister Nelson and me knew we couldn't be companions anymore, and she had to pack and do last minute stuff a lot, so it was weird, but good. Mostly just a regular week except that it wasn't regular at all. lol.
On Tuesday we met a tourist from Korea who immediately became our best friend, we had lunch with her and took pictures, it was really funny. She taught me how to say Hello in Korean, but I forgot in less than an hour.
And we spent the whole week meeting with people and Sister Nelson saying goodbye, and taking pictures -- and Saturday night while Sister Nelson was packing I cleaned the apartment and organized our spare rooms, which was actually really fun and something I've been wanting to do anyways, so that was the perfect time to do it! And yesterday we had church it was really good, the members were all there and they brought Sister Nelson stuff for goodbye presents and it was a really fun church day, and then we got on the bus!
And now I'm here again in Zadar, new companion, new transfer, and that's about all that I've done!
Mom asked some questions again, so the weather is changing, but it's still half the time warm in Zadar and half the time chilly, but nothing really bad, it's rained a few more times than usual, like in the mornings during studies, and then by the afternoon it's sunny again, or it's just a cloudy day like today, but it hasn't been too cold and we never get snow here, so I don't have to worry about that at all. Buttermilk, I don't think that is here at all, but I'll look when we're at the store today. What is it if I don't find it here? Like, what would I substitute for it? Oh, and I made chocolate chip cookies this week for Institute and the members really like them! They weren't exactly the same because the sugar here is weird and we made them small so there were more, but they were good, it was yummy to have mom's recipe!
So I just got an e-mail from Amelia! That's crazy, what time is it there?? Wait, I think it's a reasonable hour on the east coast, that's crazy. I'm not always here this late at internet, so that was good timing!
Ok, I don't think I have anything else to say, except this p-day came really fast (and slow, too) but it snuck up on me, so I didn't really think of lots of things to share.
Oh wait! I just remembered something.
I read a really good conference talk, this may turn into a weekly thing telling you about conference talks that I've read, because I LOVE doing it - oh which reminds me, side note: that we listened to Elder Eyring's talk from this last conference for district meeting on Tuesday and it was SO SO good! We didn't watch it conference weekend, and it was so good. The one about trusting in the Lord, I loved it.
So back to the talk I read this week, it's from President Faust from the April 2002 conference, it's called "It can't Happen to Me" and he talks about just because we're older and wiser doesn't mean we can let our guard down and think that we can sin and we'll be ok. And he shared a quote from Spencer W. Kimball that I really like :
"Develop discipline of self so that, more and more, you do not have to decide and redecide what you will do when you are confronted with the same temptation time and time again, you need only to decide some things once. How great a blessing it is to be free of agonizing over and over again regarding a temptation. To do such is time consuming and very risky."
I really liked that because it's really easy to wonder over and over again, "Should I watch this movie even though it's bad?" Or "Should I sleep in even though the alarm is going off?" (That's for here in the mission field, you can all sleep in if you want to) but if we have self discipline and are determined, then we don't have to keep asking ourselves those questions.
And then I read a different talk which has some of the same idea, by Elder Scott "Peace of Conscious, Peace of Mind" from October 2004, that talks about peace of mind comes from outside elements, like stress from work or a family problem or something, but peace of conscious comes from knowing we're following God the best way we can, and comes from repenting from our sins, and it was really good, too.
So read conference!
Yay.
Lots of love to all of you!
Sister Laws

October 18, 2010

HI FAMILY!!!
I LOVE hearing from you!
Guess what today is?
Today it has been a YEAR since I turned in my missionary papers!!!
That's incredible! It does not feel like that long. Time is just plowing on. I know what Jesse means, that time is flying, because if Jude has been alive for 6 months that means that I'VE been in Croatia for 6 months!! Not quite, but close.
They say by six months out you're supposed to be able to say everything you want to when you're learning a foreign language on a mission. I don't think I'm there yet, but I guess I have another week or so for that :)
But I LOVE Croatian. I gave a talk yesterday in church on service, it went good. I used four points from True to the Faith and how we can serve others 1. gladden hearts - by being grateful, and loving people around us (like asking questions or giving compliments) 2. say kind words - I used President Monson's talk from relief society broadcast, we printed it off at the church so we could read it after me AND Sister Nelson heard such good things about it from our sisters! 3. perform labors for others that they cannot do for themselves - temple work, using our talents, and visiting teaching (we're trying to get the ladies here to start visiting teaching regularly, so I had to throw that one in there!) and then 4. share the gospel - by serving others we have opportunities to share the gospel and actually have people listen! I used D&C 64:33, True to the Faith book and quotes from general conference ensigns. We have conference ensigns from the year 2002 to now, and I've been going crazy reading them! In fact, I read a talk by Elder Holland this morning, titled "The other Prodigal" and it was SO good. He spoke about how the other son from the parable was diligent, and obedient, but his weakness was in being angry at his parent's love for his brother when he returned, and how we don't have to be mad when other people get attention, either from others or from God, because God's love is limitless for all of us, and "just because God is smiling on one person, doesn't mean he's frowning at us" or something like that. It was really a great talk.
And I just want you all to know that I truly know that I was MADE to be on this mission - I know because I love this language and it makes so much sense and is so much fun to learn, and because I've had a few people tell me that I look slavic, which is something that if I wasn't here in a Slavic country I would NEVER know, and just being in Croatia with these people is so great and sometimes I just feel like I fit in (other times I feel like the biggest American ever, too, lol) and I can't believe I'm a missionary sometimes! I'm so grateful that God convinced me to go on a mission, because really, it's a miracle that I made it to this exact point in my life :D
One thing I thought was really cool that I read this week in e-mails was how active you all are! Golfing, volleyball, triathlon, and all of that fun! You are all a good example of that.
We play ultimate frisbee a lot of times in the morning, and lately it has been so dark when we go to play that we can't even see the frisbee! And every so often we play basketball (I am sorry to say that I am AWFUL at basketball) and when it's raining in the morning we just do sit-ups and stuff in the front room. Our apartment is nice and big, so we have plenty of room for that.
Which reminds me we had apartment checks this week, they try to do them about once a transfer or something, one of the senior couples came to Zadar and just looked around to make sure we didn't have anything growing in the closet, and it was acutally kinda fun to deep clean everything for that. I love to organize! And because we have a big apartment that has been passed from sister to sister there is plenty of junk and messes everywhere, so that was fun to put everything in order! It makes me excited for when I have my own house (someday).

I'll answer some questions really fast that Mom asked me: I haven't got my package yet (I got a letter from Michael though! Yay!! Thanks for the updates on your life!) and I actually forgot that I was expecting it! Which made me happy, I have something from home to look forward to!
YES, I would like some piano music, we have a primary's songbook so unless there's a specific arrangement or something you were thinking for that, and the new song would be great to see, and if you could send some of the Christmas music that we played, because I'm thinking ahead (sometimes I do that too much) and we're probably going to do something for our branch for Christmas in a couple months, and it would be fun to have that sheet music a little in advance so I could brush up on it. That would be really great!
As for the food: we do not have miracle whip, we have mayo, we do not have hershey's chocolate syrup, we do not have skippy peanut butter regularly and peanut butter is NOT the same here at ALL, except that it's recognizable as some form of peanut butter, the Europeans do NOT know how to do peanut butter (unless France was an exception, Michael) and we do not have oreos, which is why it was so great to get some! We ate some with the peanut butter, and some with chocolate milk (which we made from some powder that expired a year and a half ago that was in our apartment :D) and we do NOT have the good ranch mixes, there's one store that sells some kind of ranch mix that I haven't tried yet, and a different grocery store sells really good "American caesar" dressing, which we usually get. We DO have cereal, we have the best cereal ever! I really like the cereal here. I will be sad to go back home where the cereal is not as good.
Oh, which reminds me, last p-day we went to a member's house, she has a friend from Macedonia that we wanted to teach (she went back to Macedonia though, they only spend half the year here, the other half there or something like that) and her friend made us Macedonian food!
It was really good, stuffed peppers, beans, some casserole thing with rice, a really good and simple soup, and then a salad with tomatoes, onions, cucumbers? I can't remember, and Macedonian cheese which was SO good, I don't know how that salad was so good, but I really liked it. I think it was the cheese. And then dessert, and these weird "black figs" or something like that, it was really fun to try new stuff, and a yummy feast!
Thank you for sharing scriptures and what you did at church, it's fun to compare sometimes.
Good luck to Amelia with her new calling, you're going to be great!
And thanks for the update on your kids Kelsey, they're so cute!
LOVE YOU ALL!
Sister Laws

October 11, 2010

Hi family!
Thanks everyone for e-mailing me this week! It's great to hear from you all.
We had a busy week - we went to Zagreb for a mission tour on Thursday, Elder Schuze from Germany came and talked to us. It was really good. He was a member in Eastern Germany during communism and he gave us a lot of insight on what it was like to be a member then and for these Croatian people. We're all just young American (or Canadian) kids so sometimes we get impatient with people here, because we don't understand everything, so it was really great. He really encouraged us with everything and told us to be PATIENT. But also the zone leaders told us that in Croatia in the last 3 weeks us missionaries have found 25 new investigators - which is a really big deal for this mission - and there are some baptism scheduled in one of the cities for the end of this month. It's a great time to be a missionary! And Sister Nelson and I found three new investigators on Saturday, too. A really nice older couple and their sister-in-law who lives next door. They have a really cute family and hopefully we can get all of them in on the next lesson Wednesday morning. It's a really exciting time for this mission, I think, especially because Elder Nelson came and gave that dedicatory prayer, it's given all the missionaries and the members here a lot of hope! Which is kinda different from at first when I came here, I noticed during my first transfer that everyone was a little worn out with all the rejection, so it's awesome that everything is picking up!
Last p-day Sister Nelson and I were "tourists" here in Zadar, we walked around and took lots of pictures. It was a bad time of day because all of the shops close in the afternoon, I guess because it's hotter and there aren't a lot of tourists during that time, and then they re-open during the evening, but it was fun to just walk around and enjoy Zadar. It's really pretty here. On Tuesday we made no-bake cookies! They were really good. I love no-bake cookies.
Wednesday seemed like one of those really busy days where not a lot happens. We were just working hard being missionaries! Thursday we went to Zagreb. Friday was a national holiday, so there wasn't school and lots of people out, but it was also Saint Šime Day for the Catholic church, so everyone was going to mass and everyone we stopped said "Danas je Sveti Šime!" so that wasn't really fun, we tried to ask people what that meant, like he who was and stuff, some people didn't know, but I guess he was like a protector of Zadar, and he tried to leave Zadar in ships for some reason, but he went out three times and there was oil (or something that was stopping him from leaving) so he knew he had to stay in Zadar! And we heard he was buried in Jeruselum or something. It was a big deal I guess. Luckily we had weekly planning, english class, and a lesson with a girl the Elders found that night, so we didn't spend as much time contacting people.
Saturday was a busy day, we had young women's and it was one of the girl's birthdays so we ordered pizza and started to watch the movie, Legacy, since we as missionaries can't watch other movies, and then we went to her house for palačinke, and then we walked really far (like an hour) to a neighborhood where we found our new investigators, we figured it had been a while since missionaries had been there and we were right!
And then YESTERDAY we had a couple visiting our branch from Arizona and they brought everyone their own bag of treats with a picture of President Monson and pictures of the Savior from their ward in Arizona to tell the members here how much they love them, and they brought us missionaries American peanut butter and oreos - which is kinda funny because Sister Nelson said a couple weeks ago, The peanut butter here isn't that bad, and it really isn't, but when we opened the American peanut butter it was like "this is SO much better!" we forgot how good it was. And the American couple, they came because they were on a cruise and they invited a non-member couple to come with them, which was cool, and then there was another couple visiting from Germany, so we had a member translating from Croatian to German for them sitting in front of me, and Sister Nelson translated from Croatian to English for the Americans and sitting behind me! So that was really fun. It was an exciting Sunday. And then Sister Nelson and I walked an hour in the opposite direction to look for an inactive member, but we couldn't find her, she doesn't live there anymore, but we saw a really pretty sunset over the sea and we tracted a little bit while we were out there, which was also interesting, because it's been a while since missionaries have been there, so people were more receptive.
So overall it was a GOOD week.
I'm glad your weeks were good, too. It's fun that you're all getting ready for Halloween! Croatians don't celebrate Halloween, but there's a little bit more of an American culture in the branch, because of all the missionaries from there, so we'll probably end up having a Branch Halloween party or something fun like that. We'll probably dress up like missionaries for it.
Have a super week! Love you all bunches!
Love,
Sister Laws