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