Mar. 02, 2010

Hi family!
I love you all so much and I'm so glad that I get to e-mail you this week!
Last week my e-mail was locked out for some unknown reason and then when we got it fixed it was too late to write. It was very sad for me. I hope mom and dad let you know that I got here safely I sent a snail-mail letter along and to tell you guys that it would be cool with me if you used dearelder.com the whole time I'm here, because then I'll be able to receive your letters any day of the week and I'll be able to spend more time writing you and giving details.
Ask me lots of questions because so much has happened that I don't know what all to say and not.
I don't have a cold anymore, starting the first day I got here. I could tell that I didn't have time to be sick so it went away. I like how that happens.
So I am the only missionary here at the whole mTC going to the Slovenia/Croatia mission. I am the only missionary learning Croatian, so I have a whole classroom all to myself. I don't know how this happens, but it happened to one of my teachers when she was here, too. So it's bizarre.
My companions are two sisters going to the Czech Prague mission, learning Czech. It's a somewhat similar language. We live in a room with six beds and we had two other sisters living with us but they left today for Montana. My comps names are Sister Martsolf from Colorado and Sister Mart from Mongolia.
I started learning Croatian straight away. I learned how to pray in Croatian first and I've learned tons and tons about grammar and cases and etc. And now I'm just trying to build-up my vocabulary. It has been awesome. I love learning a language. When I went from high school language classes to college I thought the speed that we learned picked up, but I have learned basically everything I ever learned in college about french here in a week and half about croatian, if that sentence made sense at all.
From my high school I have seen four other sisters here at the mtc, and it has been really fun to see them and catch up with everything with them.
My comp Sister Mart doesn't get a lot of letters so if you guys ever feel like it, write her on dearelder.com and say whatever you feel like!
As for the gospel side of being at the mtc - yesterday we signed up to practice teaching the first lesson to a teacher but when we got there we ran into a guy that we met as a group the very first night. he was acting like an investigator, at least we thought so. His name is daniel and he's from mexico and he gets extra credit in school for working at the mtc. So he isn't a church member and last night he recognized my comp sister mart and wanted to talk to us and asked her a bunch of questions about why her family chose to be mormon and so instead of practicing with a teacher, we kinda practiced with a real guy! we didn't teach very much doctrine necessarily because he said right away that he didn't want to hear the first lesson, so we just talked to him and it was so great! we are so excited, we signed up to talk to him again on wednesday and hopefully we can help him receive the answers to his prayers about the book of mormon. he said he has prayed and hasn't felt anything. but we're praying and i'm praying praying praying that we can soften his heart. I didn't think that we would get this type of experience at the mtc! so pray for him, too, please :)
Also, I'm guesstimated to leave the mtc on the 19 of april and the guesstimated date of my completion is the 6 of september 2011. fyi.
Ask me lots of questions because my brain is basically mush most of the time! thank you guys so much for all the support. i love hearing from you and hope you have a wonderful week!
Happy birthday to Mom next Saturday! u Subota! And congrats on being primary pres you will be wonderful, I know it.
Oh - last bit of news: I was at the travel office with my comps and asked about the visa stuff and they were really surprised to hear that I hadn't received a visa packet! so they gave me some stuff to fill out and sent my passport into salt lake for all that. when i was in there the next day handing back in some papers i'd filled out the lady who was helping me called into the travel agent working with croatia and the travel agent said that she had just got my packet back that day as undeliverable address. what is up with the postal service?? can you believe that?? I think it's pretty crazy that TWO of my things got lost/whatever in the mail. I am convinced that it's the devil and he was trying really hard for me to not make it into Croatia and it's just convincing me all the more that I'm supposed to be here. unbelievable.
lastly, i would like to know more about the olympics - we heard in a talk that canada won the gold in hockey, but i'd like to know what happened in the couples figure skating, did the chinese pair win? and anything else that sounded interesting!
oh, and amelia - in mongolia there are a lot of deaf people so everybody knows mongolian sign language and they teach the missionaries here about it. 2-4-7 means I love you and zero-zero means bathroom. it's pretty fun to learn from sister mart about mongolia and i thought you'd be interested!
ok - i think that's everything i have to say...
oh lastly for real - i was sure the weather would be better here and it has snowed or been really cold and cloudy almost every single day. that kinda sucks. but we've had two days of really nice sunny and we sat outside for companionship study and it was so nice! icna't wait for real spring and summer!

ok love you guys i'll e-mail next week!

love, sister laws