Sister Laws: December 20. 2010

MERRY CHRISTMAS CHARLIE BROWN!
Do not worry, there has been no watching of movies here, but we did hear our landlord upstairs the other night watching Home Alone! We could just hear the music for it.
IT'S CHRISTMAS IN ZADAR!
Why?
Well, on Friday we had our last English class of the transfer, and some of our students surprised us by giving us GIFTS! Yay! One lady gave us a scarf (mine is a light pink) with puffy balls on the ends and gloves, and a Christmas gigantic muffin to share with the Elders, and one guy brought us a box of chocolates, and another lady, who we started to teach a little bit, gave us each a picture that her cousin drew of a famous place here in Zadar, AND a book of the Psalms in Croatian, which is SO nice and awesome. And THEN it started TO SNOW!!!!!! WE GOT SNOW!!!!! It was SO SO much fun! This whole winter, whenever we ask, people have told us that Zadar doesn't get snow, and then on Wednesday one of the Spanish students told us that it was supposed to snow on Friday and we all thought, Sure. It won't. And it didn't all day, and someone told us it was snowing in Sibenik, which is about an hour and a half away, but we still didn't think it would and then we were reviewing everything we had taught in English with our students and Sister Dillender saw the snow start outside and said "snijeg pada!" and we all got excited and it didn't come down very hard during the class and everyone left and then while we were waiting for the Spanish students to come me and Sister Dillender sat by the big window around a space heater and sang Christmas songs with all the lights out except for the Christmas tree lights in the background and it started falling harder and then little neighborhood kids came waddling out in all their winter clothes and threw snowballs at each other... and THEN, since none of the Spanish students came to class, we got to walk home in it, and we were all bundled up because we thought it would rain, at least, so I was wearing boots and winter coat, and we dropped everything off at home and went outside and took pictures! And made snowballs and tried to hit a trashcan with them, and walked around in it. So PICTURES are on the way for sure and it was SO MUCH FUN.
That was Friday. And on Saturday we had our branch Christmas party. We had a really nice dinner and we made gingerbread houses out of these wafer thingies, and some less-active and non-members came so there were lots of people, really fun, and on Sunday we had our Christmas program for sacrament meeting! The story of the Christmas program: I knew I would have to pick out the music because I'm the piano player here. So I did that. But until Saturday morning we didn't have ANYTHING for the actually speaking parts. So we went early before the activity and met the Elders at the church, and we showed them the scriptures that we had picked out that morning in companionship study, and there was just no thinking happening at all, so we didn't get anything written, had the Christmas party, so Sunday MORNING I woke up early and WROTE our Christmas program. It wasn't a final edition, it was scribbled out and there were arrows all over and not everything is translated. Go to church early, the Elders are there, we ask, Do we need to re-write this or is it legible enough?? I'm making copies of songs that I need so I don't have to juggle four different books, because I had to take songs from the semi-easy edition, the real edition, the easy edition, and the Croatian primary book, and getting a member who knows English really well to help me with translating a couple parts and we haven't divvied out the parts or anything until the meeting is starting late, no one is playing prelude music, I sit down and realize, that I haven't practiced these songs that I learned in the last week for 24 HOURS, so I'm like, oh this will be interesting... AND IT WAS GOOD! The members like to sing, I used some of the piano music that Mom sent me for a couple of short musical numbers, which, during one of them one of the papers kept falling so I was looking at it upside down trying to play it for a second until one of the Elders straightened it and it fell again, but I was past that part by that point, and we had scriptures and thoughts and it WAS legible, so we survived! Christmas program, check.
So what else did I do this week? I got elbowed in the face during frisbee, no split skin no stitches and NO visible bruise yay, we are doing 12 days of Christmas for the Elders. So far we've given them 1 chocolate candy bar, 2 packs of gum, 3 bags of popcorn, 4 oranges, 5 lollipops, 6 beunos (that's a candy-bar type thing here) and 7 chicken nuggets, we thought we could do the first half serious and nice and the second half things like 8 pez and 11 teaspoons of chocolino (a baby-food here that everyone eats, not just babies). So that should be fun. We've just been leaving everything on their porch, but last night we doorbell ditched because we didn't want their chicken nuggets left out all night. It was fun to doorbell ditch again! Its been a while. One day we had to eat lunch at the church because the power in our house was out (they were doing some kind of work on it, so they had to cut the power, which meant no heater, which meant freezing) so we ordered pizza and watched some of the churches Christmas films, that are really short (Mr. Krueger's Christmas, Nora's Christmas) so I guess there has been film-watching. But those are mission-appropriate. That was fun. And another night there was some REALLY loud thunder and bright lightning, it woke us up, but it was over by the time we woke up for the day. It was right above us and the thunder was RIGHT after the lightning, it was crazy. Oh, and I saw the coolest thing last night! The moon was glowing and around the glow was a rainbow! That's the first time I've seen that, Sister Dillender said she's seen it before, but it was so cool! And yesterday we went over to a member's house for lunch, it was yummy. soup, pototoes, and turkey. good stuff.
AND THAT WAS MY WHOLE WEEK.
This week: we have zone conference, so we'll be in Zagreb on Thursday for some fun Christmas times, on Christmas Eve we're going caroling to some of our old people that we carry lunches to, on Christmas I'll be hearing from you all! We're doing a gift exchange between us and the Elders and we've managed to keep it a secret who we have! So we'll have to do that sometime. It will be a GREAT week. Oh, and Mom you never said there was a package coming straight to me, but no it hasn't come yet. Thank you! I hope it's great. Oh, and I don't know what I put in your phone but it's "dobar dan" instead of dobro, they both mean good but it just has to match up with gender, since dan is a masculine word. I'm glad to hear that everything is going alright with Grandma. Hope everyone has a great Christmas and lots of fun with the little kids crawling and running around, and gets good presents and enjoys good company, and good health!
LOVE YOU ALL! čujemo se!
Keshia

And I forgot to tell you, I read Esther this morning in the old testament. It was a good book. I like the part where the King asks Haman (??I can't remember his name, he's the bad guy) what should I do for the man I want to honor? And he thinks to himself "Who would the king want to honor more than myself!" and tells him to do this big elaborate thing and it's not even for him! So funny.
And I randomly flipped open to somewhere in 1 kings, I think. It's a story about a king wanting the farm of somebody, and when the guy says no, the King goes home and lays on his bed and won't eat or get dressed or anything, basically he's pouting, and the queen comes and says don't be a baby, I'll get you the land. And she has the owner killed and the king goes to get the land and then ELIJAH the tishbite comes and the king says "so my enemy has found me" and Elijah says, "yes, I have" and then curses him for doing what he did! the actual story is better, of course, because I'm major paraphrasing it.
And I read a really good talk in an Ensign, by Elder Bednar called "Quick to Observe" (December 06 Ensign) he talks about the spiritual gift of being quick to observe, and also the gift of discernment. And how the gift of discernment has four parts: recognizing hidden error and evil in others, recognizing when we have that in ourselves (like the influences of a bad spirit) recognizing the good in others and bringing it out, and recognizing the good in ourselves! I thought the recognizing the good part was nice, because whenever I think about the gift of discernment (which is not often) I think about the bad part. It was a good article.
And I read Joel, and I liked Joel 3 : 10. You'll have to read it to find out what it says!
SRETAN BOŽIĆ! LOVE YOU!

I almost forgot about pictures!
The first one was Sister Dillender's idea. She wanted to send pictures home for everybody for Christmas, but didn't want to spend too much money, so she made the Sretan Božić sign and we took pictures by the sea last p-day! It was a really nice sunny day, but super cold, too!