February 21, 2011

Dear Family,

As some of you mentioned I hit my one-year-on-a-mission mark! I meant to mention it last week and I forgot. It's pretty crazy. It doesn't seem like a year. In honor of this, however, I did not get to burn any ties (the Elders wouldn't give any of theirs up) and I didn't eat any candy or cake or even do anything special. But I did read "a year ago today" in my journal, meaning I read the journal entry from my first day in the MTC. It said::: "SOO much stuff has happened. I don't have any time to write about it. Goodnight." hahaha, so that was funny. Of course, I did write some stuff the next day for that day. Which I also read, so that was fun. I've actually been reading every day in my journal for "a year ago today" (when I remember) and I'm adding in things that I didn't write down and still remember. Which has been good. Even though I don't have a lot of time (or energy or desire) to write in my journal all the time. Which is what is required if I wanted to write down everything that I did. BUT! I can tell you all what I did on the 17th.

6:00 alarm went off
6:10 got out of bed and got ready
6:15-6:45 played frisbee, and came home and got ready
8:00-11:00 personal, companionship and language study
11:00 went contacting -- we actually talked to quite a few cool people that morning. A lady who heard our accent and tried speaking to us in German for 5 minutes (Sister Dillender knows a little bit of German) and then Sister Dillender asked the lady's grandson "do you speak Croatian?" and the lady was like, "you speak Croatian!?!?" We didn't think our accent was that bad or anything. We think the lady was just really confused. Another lady we were walking with/talking to, and SHE asked US "Do you have a pamphlet or something I can read?" And we said, Oh yes. Do not worry. That is our sole purpose here. Just kidding, we didn't say that. But we said yes, of course. And then a younger guy with his daughter, she was probably younger than one and she had the cutest confused look on her face every time she looked at us or we looked at her. And then this one lady was really nice and she said she loves seeing us out, and how we're dressed nice and talking to people in a foreign language. That was really nice.
1:00-2:00 had lunch
2:00 weekly planning, we just plan for the next week, talk about investigators, talk about where we'll tract or where we'll go, what we'll teach, language classes, etc.
5:00 dinner
6:00 lesson at the church with two investigators (sisters)(our young women)(the ones that are investigators still just because they can't get baptized) and a new member (she was visiting from Rijeka, another city). We taught the Plan of Salvation.
7:00 institute
9:00 home
10:30 in bed

So it was a pretty generic day! Nothing that exciting. And I didn't even think about taking any pictures for it :( BUT I have been a missionary now for a year. So that's kinda cool.

Some of the highlights from this week: Ivana (the member who was visiting from Rijeka and just got baptized last week) was really great and we had a couple of new-member lessons with her this week. It was really cool to hear about how she quit smoking (she just prayed every time she got the urge to smoke) and how she met the missionaries and her whole story. She is really great, she's already talking about wanting to go on a mission and she said she was reading the Book of Mormon on the bus so that people would see it and ask her about it. It was really fun to see some new-member energy! She was really cute (20-years-old).
We got a REFERRAL from the INTERNET/WEB-SITE. That never happens here, someone asking US to bring THEM a Book of Mormon? No way! She was a younger girl, probably 20s, but she wasn't interested in learning the lessons or anything. But she has a Book of Mormon, and that works miracles, so it's still really cool.
It rained all day on Wednesday, and it was also pretty windy, so we couldn't even carry umbrellas, and I forgot to wear my rain coat (I was wearing my other coat) so it was a good thing it wasn't really hard rain, because I got kinda wet without it coming down really hard.
We went over to one of the old people's house that we carry lunches to, a nice couple (90 and 92 years-old or something close to that) and they gave us tea (pomegranate or something like that) and cookies with it and THEN we were admiring a picture on their wall, the husband was a sailor and went all over the world and brought it back from Korea, and he went and brought out two more paintings also from Korea with a similar look to them, and he GAVE them to us! It was so nice and awesome. And they are both really pretty and cool. It made my day. And they told us about where they're from and their family and stuff, and they asked us what year we were born in and they both laughed when we said we were born in the 80s. They thought it was the funniest thing ever.
Yesterday Sister Dillender gave a talk in church, it was really good, on the sacrament. The first thing she did was point to the sacrament table, and we all looked, and then she explained that first we look at her face, then her arm, then the table. And it's the same with the sacrament, because it points us towards the atonement of Jesus Christ -- I thought that was really cool. And SO TRUE! Yay for the atonement! Oh and one of our English students came to church, too, that was really cool. She's not an investigator technically, but hopefully she felt the spirit and BECOMES an investigator! Yay!

So THAT was my week! It was a really good week and it felt very missionary-like. It was great. This next week is the last week in the transfer, so on Monday I'll be able to tell you all if I'm staying in Zadar or moving to Zagreb this transfer. I can't decide which one I'd prefer, I've been here for 8 months!! That's like, a whole school year. It would be really weird to be in a new place, but it's gotta happen sometime! I can't expect to be in Zadar the rest of my mission (that would be 14 months total by the end of it :)) So we'll see. God knows best.

No exciting plans or anything for this upcoming week, so I don't have anything more to write! LOVE YOU ALL!
Sister Laws