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