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