January 24, 2011

Dear Family,
Thank you for all the birthday wishes!
Happy Birthday to Michael!!!
I'm doing good, still 21 years old, we're probably going out to lunch tomorrow and eating cereal for dinner, and we have district meeting tomorrow so Sister Dillender is going to make chocolate chip cookies for everyone! But no package, but that's ok.
Lets see, last week we went to Biograd, it's just a little town, we basically walked around the whole thing twice and still had lots of time, I took some pictures so I'll send some! And we went to every China shop in the place, I bought a fan with a totally Catholic picture of Mary with baby Jesus on it. Which I will cherish forever and forever remind me of these Catholic people I talk to everyday and all their weird Catholic traditions! And it will be really useful in the summer when it's hot again. Which reminds me that it got cold here again. We hear that it does that here, a couple weeks of good weather a couple weeks of cold. So we're onto the cold again, but it's still sunny so not that bad at all!
On Tuesday we made HAMBURGERS. They have hamburgers here in Croatia, don't worry, but won't they don't have is the same BUNS! So it's a different experience here, and they have thinner patties. So we made REAL hamburgers, and it was SO good. I will tell you that I'm the one who cooked the meat, yes, I touched the disgusting raw meat and formed it into patties TWICE because we liked it so much that we ate hamburgers on Wednesday, too! And on Thursday we sang the Star-spangled banner during companionship study, so we had an all-American week! It was fun.
Lets see, we got some lessons this week with some potential investigators, that went well. And we had dinner at a members house TWICE this week - which is a record. One of the ladies fed us SO much food! That one the Elders went with us, and I had to give some of my food to Elder Brown, because I couldn't eat it. It's good to have elders around in those situations.
Oh! And on Wednesday Sister Dillender cut my hair!! Yay! It's a little shorter than my shoulders and so nice. I got sick of washing all of my thick long hair in the shower so I said, Let's do this thing! And she chopped it all off. AND before she did I was considering two different lengths, this one or one a little longer than shoulder-length, so I told her the shoulder-length one because I thought, then if she does it shorter it won't be TOO short, and I called it! Because she did cut it shorter than she meant to, but it was OK with me, because this is the hair length that I actually wanted! Woo hoo! I will send a picture of it, too. It also makes it a lot easier to wear my hair day which is more dressy without actually being more dressy. All very good. I think I actually like this length a lot, so I might stick with it.
English class is going good and our investigators are doing good. Our two main investigators are 2 teenage girls whose dad is a member, but can't get baptized because they don't have permission from their Mom, so of course they've been taught by missionaries for like, two years, and for the first time LAST week we taught them something they didn't already know! Anyways, I brought that up because well, first, they're the ones that we do young womens with, and we had a really fun lesson on Saturday from one of the young womens manuals about journals! And we had them make journal jars, where there's a bunch of questions on slips of paper, and you pull one out and write about that in your journal, which they really liked and it totally made us want to make one, too! So we're planning on doing that sometime. Write in your journals!
Sunday was good, and this morning was good. I read 2 Nephi 4 - it was exceptionally good this morning, I don't know why, but it was really nice. Nephi was an amazing person. the Spirit took him on top of mountains! And he had angels come down from heaven! That's cool. And in one verse it says "Why do I get angry with mine enemies?" or something like that, and I thought, "Well duh, because your enemies are your brothers AGAIN even though they've seen an angel and have a testimony, and you're mad that they're tearing your family apart and doing everything that you and your Dad warned them not to do! And it's going to affect all the generations to come, too!" So it's no wonder he was mad, which I hope this makes sense, if it doesn't you'll just have to read the chapter. Anyway, it was nice to read. And I finished off reading Micah the other day, and I think that I liked Micah 4:7. But I can't remember if that's the right reference. It seems like it could be 7:7. I'm not sure. There was something about "when I'm sitting in darkness, the Lord is a light unto me." or something.
Today we've got all kinds of errands to run, and sales to go to (haha, just kidding :)) and so I love you all! Happy Birthday again to Michael tomorrow! And I LOVE you!
Sister Laws

The first one, I think it's first, is in Biograd, it's about a half hour from Zadar. And the second one, the magnificent view!! Is also in Biograd, same day. We sat on the riva - that's the sidewalk that goes all around the coast, (a quay?? in English?) and ate a snack, that would be when I took the picture. And the last is from this morning, I didn't have a picture of my haircut so Sister Dillender took one. I'm sitting in my room on the back of the chair I study on, and that next to me is the map of our half of Zadar. Where we spend our time tracting and it includes where we live and the church! I think I look a little weird in that picture, but the point is that you can see my new haircut! So yay!
Have a great day!

January 17, 2011

How is my family this week?

Before I forget, could someone send me Lauren Laws's mission home address? I can't find it in my e-mails and it would be fun to write her.

And I got an e-mail from Aunt Dorthea this week which was a fun surprise. And of course e-mails from all of you!!! Yeah! Thank you for supporting me and keeping me up-to-date :D

Questions I can answer this week: How was my talk? GOOD. The stuff that Dad sent was very helpful and after I figured out an outline of sorts the writing part actually happened, haha.
Funny stories around my talk: We went to a lady's house on Saturday night and it was just supposed to be a visit, the last thing we did in the day so it was later, and we were there for more than TWO HOURS, because she kept on talking even after we said we had to go. And this would be the first time that I've gotten home so late, because as you know we have a curfew and all that - but we couldn't get out of her house forever, which means that I had zero time to finish my talk Saturday night and the whole time we were at her house I kept thinking about how I have to write my talk and how I didn't have any time to do it. So I didn't have any time Saturday night, so I woke up extra early Sunday morning (5 am) and wrote the second half of my talk.
And then, I used a story from the talk that Dad sent, that President Packer told, and because it was from the 70s we didn't have a translation or the Ensign or anything, and so I just translated a little part of it and then half paraphrased half told what happened in the rest of the story. And after I was done with the talk one of the Elders showed me that in the gospel principles manual the whole story is in one of the lessons! So I could have used that to help. So that was funny.
Overall I think it went well, though. I kinda like writing talks here, so I wonder if I'll like it even more when I'm at home and writing things in English, which is easier of course.
Question number two: Amelia asked about baby names! How fun! I think I like "Aliah" the best, but how were you thinking about pronouncing it? Is it "AW-li-uh" or "Uh-LI-uh" or "Uh-lie-AHH"? And out of those pronunciations I like "uh...lie... AHH!" the best. Just kidding, I like uh-li-uh. But I'll keeping thinking about it and we'll take a vote in my district and get back to you!
Oh, and Mom, I guess you don't have to worry about sending the music. It's not a big deal. But tell Michael that he's irresponsible. Just kidding.

OTHER funny stories from this week.
One of the members asked us to visit someone in the hospital, the father of one of her friends, so we went and did that with the Elders. And none of us knew anything about the hospitals here, like in America you have a clear and obvious entrance, and there's a check-in desk that can tell you information, and all of those good things. But here it's like this fenced compound thing, and we went in the back gate and everyone is looking at us weird and we're wearing missionary tags that advertise that we're weird, and there's different buildings with labels like "pediatrics" and we went into the wrong building, which included the psychiatric ward on the top floor, and then we walk clear to the other side of this "campus" so to say, and find the building, but we can't find the stairs or an elevator, and finally we find someone to ask, go to the fourth floor, somehow helps us find the right room, but as we're walking by there are all these EXTREMELY old people, like the sleeping that looks like they're dead and the white hair in all the rooms we pass. We get to room 405 and there's no one inside, so we ask a nurse, and she says, Who are you looking for? And it turns out I forgot the paper with the man's name written on it, so we have to call the member and she says and so we ask the nurse again and she tells us that the man we're looking for left the hospital yesterday, he went home because he got better! It was so AWKWARD and so stressful, and now, it's a LITTLE BIT funny. It's not really funny yet, the memory is still processing, but it's pretty funny. And a once in a lifetime ordeal, so I can't complain. It's funny.
We went out to restaurants a couple times this week (which means twice) and ate good food, and our landlord gave us one crate of potatoes and another crate of kiwis! We have really nice landlords. The kiwis are really yummy.

Oh! And I've been meaning to tell you this. We have almost been experiencing summer weather here. It's amazing! It's not at all summer-ish, actually, but more like spring. The last couple of weeks have been sunny, and mild, and only a little chilly at night. It has been really really nice. Oh, and I realized this week that I've lived in Zadar longer than I lived in South Carolina with Amelia, AND longer than I lived in Idaho Falls. That's crazy! Oh, and I've been meaning to ask, I thought Michael was starting school this semester? Is that going or was there a change in plans? OK, I think that's all, we're heading to Biograd, which is a little town a half hour away, not Beograd which is the capital of Serbia, so we're hustling buns! Love you all!

Sister Laws

January 10, 2011

HAPPY BIRTHDAY OLIVIA!
And happy first step to Jude! That's really cool - he's growing up so fast! I hope, Jesse, that Justin does get his promotion quickly and that you guys can move out to your own place! That would be awesome. And I hope that everyone has a great week this week. Mom, thanks for letting me know about the package on the way. I'm sorry to say that there's little likelihood that I would get it before my birthday, but that doesn't bug me! Because I got 4 Christmas packages this week and it felt like Christmas again! So I'm sure my birthday will feel like my birthday, even if it doesn't come on my birthday. :D

So MY week: I GOT 4 CHRISTMAS PACKAGES! Yay! Christmas again! The elders had a meeting up at the mission home so they brought all our mail here to us. Thank you Amelia, for the stuff you sent my companion. She is really grateful for the foot stuff and said just this morning that her feet already feel smoother and better. (I'm grateful, too, but I haven't used any of it yet, my feet are smooth enough for now, lol i'm kidding, but it will mostly come in useful in the summer, my feet were pretty calously in the summer) That was a good idea. Thank you, Kelsey, for the two packages! I'm excited for the food, because food is ALWAYS great, and for my new journal! I bought a dinky little journal here because I finished my last one a couple weeks before Christmas, and I am GLAD to have a new one - and my companion is, too, because she whips through journals pretty fast. So yay! My last package was from my friend Alicia, she was my roommate at SUU, and she's getting married! That's pretty crazy, because the last time I heard from her she didn't even have a boyfriend! So it's all happened in the traditional Utah style - fast and meant to be! She's getting married in March in the St. George temple, too bad I won't get to go :( It was good to hear from her.
OH! And I almost forgot to say that I got Mom's package that we've been expecting at our house! It came Wednesday at the same time as a package for Sister Dillender full of reese's peanut butter cups and butterfingers! yum! and THANK YOU PARENTS! That's such a neat calendar! For those of you who don't know, which is probably none of you, Mom and Dad sent me a calendar with pictures of them on all the months! I haven't seen most of those pictures! It is so fun to look through - I especially like looking at the wedding pictures. You both look so happy! And Dad looked just like Michael when he was younger, and Kelsey's kids look like the few pictures that are of her in it, and Tylie looks like Amelia when she was a baby, and and and! It's great! Thank you! And the magazines are fun, too! And I just remembered, so I'll say it right now, I found the music for that song from the primary them this year, Mom, I have it in my stuff from the MTC, so if you haven't sent it don't worry about it! I haven't played it out on the piano yet, though, so I'll have to wait to tell you if I like it. But I'm sure I'll like it. AND if you don't mind sending me in an e-mail the music for that Did you Think to Pray? piece I played in sacrament meeting once, I can print it off from here and then maybe we can have a musical number for sacrament meeting! That would be great. OH and THANK YOU Dad for sending me those couple of talks about justice and mercy and thanks Mom, for what you said about it, too! That's a BIG help! I started to write my talk yesterday, but I still have no idea what I'm going to say! So you are officially lifesavers! Which was already obvious.

Some of the best things that happened this week other than all that:
Sister Dillender and I have been joking about "what if another war starts in Croatia and we have to be evacuated, what will we take with us if we get a call that says we have a half hour to get to the bus station" (it takes 20 minutes to walk there, so half an hour doesn't leave us much time) - this may not seem funny, but we made a list that we will put on our door (called the End of the World Kit) - mostly included is passport, a change of clothes, journals, and a second list that has things that we would HAVE to have if we had the space and time, mainly chocolate, flash cards for learning words on the bus, and other useless stuff, that was really fun to make and talk about. AND we've been joking about "what if a monster came around the corner right now? what would you do?" and "what if a t-rex walked down the street?" and the best one: "what if a monster came around the corner AND a t-rex walked down the street at the SAME time?" Which is quite a dilemma, because you have to run away from the monster, but if you move the t-rex will see you! I think we're maybe a little desperate for entertainment, and maybe even a little bored because all the lessons we set up last Sunday fell through this week. and THEN we were on the top floor of a really tall building last night, a building that the elders said you could go out on the roof and see a nice view of Zadar, so we checked the door and there was a lock, but there was a whole in the door so we were peeking through, and then Sister Dillender said maybe the lock isn't actually doing anything, and pulled on the lock, and a MONSTER attacked the door from the outside! And I'm not sure if I grabbed Sister Dillender's arm and pulled her with me or if she just followed, but I BOLTED and we were in the elevator cowering and heading downstairs in two seconds flat! And in all honesty we still have no idea what made the noise that made me think there was a monster outside. So it could have killed us.

AND this week I got my first ever referral! It's a really funny story, a member named Sanja Kolega gave us the address of her sister-in-law who had a surgery, and she said maybe her sister-in-law is more humble now because of her circumstances and the surgery, so you can go over and try to teach her. So we go to the place, we find the building 20A and go up to the second floor and see the name Kolega on the door, which is exactly what we were looking for! We knock and a lady asks who is it, without opening the door, Sister Dillender says "we're missionaries and Sanja sent us here to see if you needed help" and we hear the lady walking away and the tv turns on! She didn't say anything and just walked away! So we're like, that's too bad and really rude. But we leave a note on the back of an english flier for her in her mailbox, that just says we would love to help with anything and our phone number. So we decide to stuff english-class fliers in mail boxes (because we're starting classes this week) and walk around these garages that separate the buildings we were at with another set of buildings. And what do we see? We see number 20A Put Murata! Which was the street we were looking for - even though we were already on that street. So we go in, we check the mailboxes and see a Kolega, we go up to the second floor and it's the right Kolega and we went to the wrong building! So we knock, a lady asks who it is through the door, we say that Sanja sent us we'd like to help with anything and what does she say? That she doesn't have time and walks away. So we leave the same note in her box and hopefully she calls us sometime. The best thing that happened was the next day the first lady Kolega CALLS us and says that we left a letter in her box and she doesn't know a Sanja Kolega. Which was really nice. It was a really funny experience.

This morning we cleaned the house, which was nice, and included finishing laundry, cleaning the shower and toilet, and bathroom in general, sweeping and mopping the floors, and doing the dishes, and did not include taking down Christmas decorations. We still have ours up even though it's tradition in Croatia to take down the tree on Three Kings Day, we asked a couple people what you do to celebrate three kings day and they said basically nothing, that it's just a holiday. So that's cool. And we had a good Sabbath day yesterday and will probably have a GREAT week this week.

I'm sure you'll all enjoy yourselves! Love you tons!
Sister Laws

Oh- and I found a new favorite scripture a couple weeks ago, I don't think I ever said! It's 3 Nephi 21: 9-10. And I read James 4:14 a couple days ago, also good.
LOVE YOU!

January 03, 2011

Sretna Nova Godina!!!
Had a good week, it mostly just went by really fast and very uneventful -- except for new years eve, of course. So I'll start with some things from Christmas, even though that seems like a century ago, that I meant to write about last week and I'm not sure if I did or not. Mom sent CDs as part of the stockings to Sister Dillender and me, one for comp and two for me. And I wanted to mention that they are GREAT. All three are really pretty and there are a couple of songs on mine that I really wanted! Yeah! And Sister Dillender likes hers, too. Really really. Thanks a bunches. Also in the stockings were APRONS! We use them all the time, they are so much fun and really cute. Every pday morning we make a big batch of scrambled eggs, and this morning it was my turn to make them because it was Sister Dillender's turn to shower first, and I wore my apron this morning for that. So it is very useful and very great :D And at our zone meeting a couple weeks ago we got a copy of the Book of Mormon - maybe some of you have heard of the thing where you take a blank Book of Mormon and read it marking all the times it mentions Christ or God. Everyone got a copy for that purpose, and Sister Hill, the mission president's wife, explained that she started reading it and only marking the doctrine from it - as in the things that we teach in lessons. And how great that was going for her, so she encouraged us to pick one of those things or basically read the book of mormon again and mark it in any way that we want. So I was in 3 Nephi when they did this for us and they asked us to start reading in the new year. And so I got to the point this week where I needed to read the end of 3 Nephi, and the last four books in four days to finish the Book of Mormon in time to start doing this new thing on the first of January. And I did it! It was a blitz, I read at night, in the mornings before showering, at meals and I finished in time. I like having goals like that. And now I've started my new Book of Mormon and am having a great time reading it! I chose to circle the mentions of the Godhead, and mark the doctrine from the lessons at the same time, which is going well. I'm doing different colors, too. Blue for the material from the first lesson, orange second lesson, green third, purple fourth, and yellow fifth. Which are the colors that correspond with preach my gospel, which makes it easier to remember. And I discovered that I really like reading the history stuff and concentrate more on that, so I hope this shifts my focus to the gospel! Yeah! It's been going good the last couple of days. And I've come up with lots of ideas for other things I would want to mark when I read it again. Like just marking Christlike attributes or just marking when it says the word "sign." I'm looking forward to all the time ahead I have to study the Book of Mormon! Last thing related to Christmas, I still haven't gotten my package from Mom and Dad that they sent straight to me, but there's good news attached with that! Sister Dillender had a companion who is from Finland, who sent her a package, and whenever the companion got packages from home it only took one week for them to come. And the package that Sister Dillender just got this week took three weeks to get here! So if mail is that backed-up with stuff coming from Finland and Europe, than it's no wonder it's taking this long for things to get to Croatia from the U.S. All is well! I wanted to be able to say that it got here, just so there was no worrying, but not yet. And I got the letter from Mom, that Dad sent. It worked. So thank you! Don't worry, Mom, I mostly thought it was funny. I figured you didn't forget to write, but I thought maybe something technical went wrong with the computer or something. And it did :) kinda.
Another funny thing that I thought about telling you all was that I forget to set the alarm a lot - and we use the phone for the alarm so it's my job to set it - and I forget and fall asleep and every time that I've forgotten to set it I've woken up at 5 or 5:30 or 6 and laid in bed thinking, Why am I awake? And realized that I didn't set the alarm and set it then and fall back asleep. It has been a really funny thing for me. I'm glad that it happens, though, because otherwise we would be sleeping in and breaking the rules!
And I keep writing "anyway" instead of "anyone." I don't know why, but I've done it a couple times in journal or planner, and so I'm guessing something is wrong with my brain. I dunno, though. It's funny also.

So the crowning event of this week was of course new years! On New Years Eve our mission president gave us the option to stay up until midnight if we want and so we did! Maybe not a great idea, but it was fun. We talked and chatted and I finished the Book of Mormon, and we played cards. And we'd been hearing fireworks going off all day long. No one really cared about waiting for a grand finale or anything, I guess. And actually we've been hearing fireworks since before Christmas, every so often, and since New Years, too. They don't have laws about not setting off the real ones, so a lot of the fireworks have been the actual live real go up in the air and explode fireworks. Croatia is firework-happy. So what we did, we went upstairs to the gazda's porch, because they have a much better view than we do, and we got to watch with them! And what happened, around midnight fireworks were going off all around us! It's really hard to describe but it was incredibly cool! On the right, straight, left, and left there were fireworks being shot into the air and we just sat and watched it all! And then it's traditional to shake people's hands and kiss cheeks for the new year so we got to experience that with our neighbors, which was fun, and then we went back downstairs and fell asleep really fast and the next day there was NOBODY outside! More than we expected, because we heard from other missionaries that there's nobody outside on new years day, but not very many people up and about, and none of the stores are open or anything so we didn't have a lot to do with missionary work. We made it work, though. So that was fun! It made me think that it's stupid America does fireworks once at the fourth of July and that's basically it. Silly America. But if we could buy fireworks it would be like the second coming every new year, because of our consumerism. It was really fun.

There's one thing I could use a little bit of help with: I have a talk on the 16th about Justice and Mercy and I'm having a hard time finding like a talk or sources for that! If anyone reads anything good about justice and mercy and wants to pass along the talk that would be great! If not then don't worry about it!

Jesse, that's super cool that Jude is saying Mom! When he turns one that means I've been in Croatia a whole year! That's crazy!
Kelsey, I can't believe Olivia is in primary! And that video you recommended, I didn't go to youtube, don't worry, but it was attached to your e-mail!! I don't know if you did that on purpose, so if you did thanks and if you didn't technology is amazing! I didn't watch the whole thing, but what I saw was really good.
Amelia, thanks for all the great pictures! I can't believe Tylie was sitting under the tree! Did you put her there or was she just hanging out? AndI got the ones that you just sent, it's fun knowing that we're both online at the same time!
Michael, thanks for the letter last week and the updates!
Parents, thanks for being amazing and sending me things from home for Christmas and now birthday. I don't have any wishes, so don't worry about sending anything big! Thanks for the homemade cookies and the treats and clothes and letters and all that jazz!

Love you all!
Sister Laws