September 27, 2010

Hi family!
This week has been SPECTACULAR for me, and you all sounded great, too.
I got e-mails from every single one of you! yay!
You're all awesome.

I'm really excited for general conference this weekend - we almost weren't going to be able to watch it because none of the members have internet - or room for everyone to come over and watch - and the church's internet wasn't working, but the Elders figured it out yesterday, so it's conference time! yay!
It will be in Croatian, but still. I can't wait to have all the talks in my hands. And before I forget, someone from Sister Nelson's family sent her a copy of the dedicatory prayer for Croatia, or an article about it or something, so it's online somewhere! Check it out!
Our mission president said he'd get us a copy of it when he could, so that's cool. Glad to hear that Amelia had a great bday - it sounds like it was really awesome. And I'm happy that Mom had a safe trip to South Dakota. This morning before we came to internet I started thinking about "What if?"s like, what if Mom got in a car accident and was in the hospital on the verge of death and I don't know about it yet?
So I'm glad that I hear from you once a week, through the internet, instead of having to wait for hard-copy letters, because then I would make myself crazy! But usually I Don't worry about you all. Just sometimes when my imagination runs away.

So why was my week so great? We got FIVE new investigators! yay! Four of them are all part of one family, two teenage kids, a mom, and a grandma, and the other is a lady with a young son. I can't wait to keep teaching them!
Yesterday at church we had an old couple visiting from England, and I translated sacrament meeting for them O_o It's a TON easier to translate from Croatian to English than English to Croatian, I missed a LOT of stuff even then, and both the Elders were speaking, and missionaries are a lot easier to understand than members, but still.
It's pretty cool. We know this language!
It's crazy! Sometimes I think, I can't believe we talk to people every day in another language! It's cool.
We had interviews with President this week, he came down to Zadar with his wife, and she knows Russian and is learning Croatia, so we went out contacting with her while the Elders had their interviews! It was really fun. She didn't really end up saying a lot except for "Dobra večer, kako ste?" but she was really cute about it.
One thing that I'm so grateful that we have in this church is inspired leaders! We don't have to follow men, but men of God who speak for God and know what we need and are trustworthy! I don't know how other people are so trusting of their bishops and priests when we have PROPHETS and everyone else is just trying to guess. For example, we were talking to one lady a couple weeks ago and she was like, yeah, your church has a prophet and our church has the pope, who translates the scriptures and the will of God, it's the same thing. And I was like, I didn't say this, but I thought - that's not the same at all, our prophet KNOWS the will of God, he doesn't have to TRANSLATE it.
And I'm grateful that we have a loving God who gives us these prophets, so we know why we're here and what we're doing and didn't just through us to the earth to wander around. That is really great.
Another cool thing that happened: we were tracting and a Dad opened the door, he wasn't interested in learning more, didn't let us in, but we were talking to him and he was saying that he's in a klappa group, which is a traditional Croatian acapella (I can't remember how to spell that word, weird) singing group, and Sister Nelson was like, Do you have CDs? And he gave us a CD for free! He was so nice! We can't listen to it, because it isn't church music, but for later it will be AWESOME. It will be so fun to get to know this culture more in different ways when I get home - like listening to music and watching movies and stuff from here, that I can't do while we're misisonries.
And one more cool thing that I did this week: last p-day I bought a Croatian bible! It's so nice, it's like our scriptures with the tabs and everything, which most bibles aren't like that here, and it's really really fun to read, easier to understand than the Book of Mormon because it uses simpler language, and really fun. So that's exciting to me :)
Hope everyone has a great week and enjoys conference! I know I will.
Thanks for all the love and support!
Sister Laws