8 kolovoza 2011

Well family!
It was great to hear from you. I am feeling very tired, very thirsty, and the internet cafe that we're at is very very hot. I don't have a lot of energy for emailing right now...
Ok, I'll buck up a little bit for it..

Obviously the craziest news of this week: I'M COMING HOME A WEEK EARLY! Something about a mission presidents' meeting and so president rowe won't be in the mission when we're supposed to go home so he could have kept us all a month longer or sent us home a week early. He chose a week early since we have a very large group of missionaries coming in. and he probably wouldn't get brownie points for unexpectedly extending all of our missions, though if he had asked, I would have probably told him I would. anywho, here I come in 3 weeks home to the good ol America and family. THREE WEEKS! That's like nothing, that's like sneezing. Pretty crazy. I go back and forth about it, at first I was more disappointed because it meant I would miss out on that week, and I spent my whole mission thinking i would come home on september 6th. but the 30th is my day now.

oh, and because of this change of plans half of our group (there are 8 of us going home) is going at one time, one plane, and the other half is coming a little later or something. So the elders I actually served with are of course in the other group. So I may have a very boring plane ride home. but on the other hand, i'll have fun getting to know some elders that I didn't get a chance to serve with. make new friends I guess.
so i have definitely come to terms with coming home a week early and all that that entails and of COURSE I'm excited to see all of you :) as for my preference, if I would prefer you at the airport or at my homecoming. Probably the airport. It wouldn't exactly be coming home if I didn't see my family for a week and a half after I arrived. But if it is better for everyone else the homecoming, I'm ok with that, too. It will be how it will be.

what else? as I'm getting closer to the end of my mission I'm getting less talkative, I can't think of a lot of things to tell you all. and my week was pretty boring, and it's really hot here...
ok, second wind.

Last monday I played ping pong at family home evening after we were done with internet. That was pretty fun.

On tuesday while we were waiting for our english students to show up one old lady and I were talking about all kinds of things, Oprah, Obama, Michelle Obama, Croatia etc. And somehow we got on the category of singing and we ended up singing Edelweiss together. She's a cute old lady, and it was fun. It's kinda crazy all the people I've met through english classes.

Wednesday, nothing.

Thursday we went out to ice-cream with some of our english students after class, a mom and her three daughters. The daughters are 14ish, and two twin girls that are 8. They are such a sweet family and so loving. They invited us over to their house on Saturday, too, and fed us lunch. Yummy stuffed peppers, breaded chicken, these weird green potato and spinach ball things, and bacon. Well, croatia doesn't do bacon, but it was something like bacon. It is so cute to see how much they love each other and how affectionate they were, if it wasn't for the crosses and smoking etc they would be a golden mormon family. I guess they'll just have to be golden, for now. Oh, and the little girls are kinda half trying to learn english, they mostly just come to be with their mom and sister. And one of them wrote "aj lav mam" on the whiteboard, which is the phonetic, Croatian way of writing "I love mom" so stinking cute! they have a brother, too, that doesn't come to class but we met him on saturday, and we expected him to be maybe "too cool for school" or something, but he was really nice and he wants to live in NYC and he's training for American football. that's weird! he's the first person I've met here in croatia that is training for american football. They are a very cute family.

on friday we went over to an inactive's house and had a good lesson with them and talked a lot about recipes and cooking, which is hard because those words aren't exactly used that often in Croatian, so it was a little hard to follow the conversation, but we got along alright. I think I'll take them some American recipes like chocolate chip cookies and brownies etc. Because they mentioned liking American desserts.
So I was preparing a talk all week, because elder warren asked me to give one. and I was thinking on saturday morning, ok tomorrow we're fasting, because it's fast sunday. oh, and I need to finish my talk. and then i was like, wait a second, why am I giving a talk?? So I called him and he had totally forgotten that it was fast sunday as in, testimony meeting. And then during testimony meeting I was sitting there and I was thinking I probably wouldn't bear my testimony, just because. And then all of a sudden I realized that it would be my last fast sunday in Croatia. So I bore my testimony and I would have started to cry, because it overwhelmed me for a second, but I got ahold of myself and didn't cry at all.
Kinda crazy to start hitting "lasts" like, last fast sunday and last etc. can't think of other examples.

today we ALMOST finished everything we had to do for legal stuff. I think I mentioned a couple weeks ago that we'd spent the whole day doing legal stuff, this morning was a little like that. but we experienced some miracles, because we needed some numbers, like personal identification numbers, for sister creager. And the last time we had gone by the police station to get them they told us they couldn't give them to us, that we had to go to zagreb for them. well this time we went in, and they handed them right over! miracle! yay! I can't wait to be a citizen in the country I live in. haha, just kidding.

And with all of that we walked around in the sun and heat all day, it's been kinda hot today and this last weekend. so that's another reason I'm tired and the heat is NOT helping! so that is that :)

I love you my family! it was great to hear from you!
I will be seeing you all the sooner!

LOVE SISTER LAWS

oh, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!