Hello
Family!!!!
This
last weeks been pretty good. The weeks are going by faster and faster. In just
2 weeks my first transfer will be over (in most other missions, transfers are
just 6 weeks, but ours are 9). Which means in a week in half I should be
receiving a phone call to find out what's going down for the next 9 weeks. I
would be really surprised if I moved out of Karlovac. But who knows?
That's
pretty exciting about the new bishopric....especially for Bishop/Brother
Woodland....oooohhh....that's so weird.......Everything is going to be so
different when I get home. That's the weirdest part. It's only been like 4
months. And that's way cool about Spencer. I hadn't heard about that. Tell him I said
congrats! Is it English speaking in Tucson? And Mollie looks like she made a
good haul. Is the Sony stereo dock thing the thing she was saving for? She
didn't e-mail me this week. And I’m glad I’m half the world a way to avoid the
mental destruction that watching people play that dumb dance game causes. That's cool about your
room. Y'all are gettin' too fancy for me. I won't be able to live there any more
when I get back because I won’t fit in.
So
ya....have I said that this week has been average? It's heated up a bunch. It
started off being in the high 40's low 50's and rainy, and now it's humid 80's
and super sunny. It's SOOOOO HOT! Especially since no one has air
conditioning....including us. So the apartment doesn't cool off much at all.
We're hopefully gonna buy some fans this week. But the joke is that during the
winter you can’t get the Croats to take clothes off and during the summer you
can’t get them to put clothes on. It's kind of gross when a man opens the door
without pants on....just his briefs and a t shirt...or just a towel...... blech. A little disturbing. And people,
especially little kids, have no problem with public urination here. They just
whip it out, go, and go back to playing in the park. So don’t roll around in
the grass.
Albania would be
okay....As long as you end up in Montenegro or Macedonia. It's kind of
interesting. Montenegro speaks "Montenegrin (SP?)" but it is really
just Serbo-Croatian with a twist, but for some reason it's not in the mission
with Serbo-Croatian speakers. They stuck it in the south with the Albanian
speakers. It just doesn't make much sense to me, but oh well.
They're
haven't been any super funny stories this week, so I'm at a little loss.
Oh....one thing. I bought an external hard drive today to store pictures on.
Here's why: The computers are super ghetto and slow at uploading so the hard
drive would be faster storage and I’m also not sure of the quality of shutter fly
photos. It might just be the old monitors, but it looks like it uploads them in
low quality. So I probably wont be uploading to shutterfly very much. I'll
probably just be attaching some pictures if I want to send them home.
Oh
one funny story....So we eat out a lot....from like maybe 4 different
restaurants because Karlovac doesn't have a whole lot. Well, we eat out at least
once a day usually. Most places deliver here, and delivery is always free
(and people think you're dumb if you tip. They think you can't count money or
you're forgetting it....it's way nice), so we either get it delivered to our
apartment or the church. So when you order they ask for your address and we
told the guy at Mona Lisa (one of our favorite kebob/pizza/calzone places) that
the address was Tuškanova 10 (the church) and he asked what floor and we said
the first floor.....now usually they would ask which business, but after we
said first floor, all he said was "Ya....Church of Jesus Christ,
right?" We just started laughing....I think we get it a little too much.
But it's good and it's cheap.
So
now I’ll answer your questions
1.
Do you know if you are calling on Saturday or Sunday for the Mother's Day
Call? We want to be sure we don't miss it. Also, I think I'll go
ahead and get a international phone card. What is your number for me to
call you on in case the Skype doesn't work? Do you have all the Skype
info you need in order to use it? I don't have it, but Dad will. I
may have to send you out an extra e-mail with that info.
We
still have a few weeks. You can wait a little bit if you want. We can talk with
the Higbee's this week and finalize plans for using Skype. If we do use Skype,
I’ll just log on with my username and password and call dad that way. It'll be
fine.....JUST A COUPLE OF WEEKS AWAY!!!!!!!!! I wouldn't recommend buying the
phone card. You might never use it.
2.
Do you guys have a cell phone or are you borrowing one?
We
have a cell phone for our companionship (everyone does). So you would just call
that one. I don't know the number, but if we end up using it, I’ll send you the
number in the email, or call dad and hang up and then you can call back....I
don’t know.
3.
Not a question, but give me a "Mom Moment," okay? You know…if
you took those vitamins, it may help you from feeling so tired. Just
putting that out there. Is this a normal tired or should I be concerned?
My sleep is fine now. Everything here has just as much vitamins as everything
in America. It's just that the people telling us to take the vitamins can't
read Croatian, so they can’t read the labels that talks about how everything is
fortified. And I was just tired for the first few weeks because of jetlag and
stuff....but now I stay awake throughout the day and get excited at 10:30 when
I can go to sleep. It's fine.
4.
How are your investigators doing?
The investigators are doing well.
A**** is cutting back on her smokes and her coffee. She'll be able to give
them up. The problem is getting her to church. We've really drilled it in that
it's important and she has to even just for baptism, but she's still never
been, which is why we keep moving her baptismal date. Right now it's for May
20th, but we'll see. She understands she should go, but it's still a struggle,
because she's considered herself religious her whole life, but she's never gone
to church, so now it's weird for her that she has to go. It'll work out.
5.
What goes on at the Zone Conferences?
Well technically we don’t have
"zone conferences" very often. The church doesn't want them happening
too often because they get expensive with all of the food and transportation,
so you can only have zone conferences every other month.....so then in the
months where we don’t have zone conferences, we have "specialized training
meetings" which are essentially the same thing.....it just helps us get
the money for them. But you go and the mission president, the zone leaders, and
the assistants (along with anybody else who's asked) teach lessons about things
that would help us improve our work and be more efficient and successful. It's
broken up into halves with lunch in between, but you pretty much just sit and
get taught for somewhere about 4 hours. It's pretty interesting. And then you
take what you learn and apply it.
6.
How is a mission different from what you thought?
I'm not really sure.
I'm not sure if I had any expectations before I went, but being a missionary is
different than I always pictured. It's weird to wake up in the morning, feel
like P.J. and then go and put on a tag that says "Starješina Quinn".
It's weird to think that all of the missionaries are just 19 and 20 year old
guys that are just trying especially hard to behave themselves. Because I
always imagined becoming a missionary and just becoming a different person, but
for the most part, it is the same. I just wear really hot clothes and try to
survive in a foreign country with a weird language.
7.
What personal changes have you noticed from being on a mission?
For a
while I thought I was getting more patient and more loving, but then an old man
yelled us the other night for walking through a field because we were walking
to the field to get to a building on the other side of it. He was telling us
that we had to cross the street and use the sidewalk on the other side.....which
is ironic, because he was standing in the field. It went like this: Boys! What
do you think you're doing? You don’t walk through fields. Get to the other side
of the street and use the sidewalk. And then when we told him that we were just
hurrying through, he yelled at us to hurry on the sidewalk on the other side.
He was super jerky and was just chewing us out.....So as I was saying, I felt
loving until that happened. But then he yelled at us and I had to resist every
urge in my body to just flip him off and just keep on walking.....I was so mad!
First off, You know how I feel about old people....which I’ve been trying not to,
because Karlovac has a lot of old people. Second, I hate people that
are just rude because they think they can be.....But besides that, I think my
patience has been growing....maybe. Also, not saying that I'll be different
when I get home, but I really realize how much time I used to waste. Just the
thought of taking naps or just watching TV or movies for hours at a time seems ridiculous.
I think back and wonder "How did I ever fit all of that into my day? How
did I fit that into my planner?"....oh I’m such a loser. I guess the thing
that's changed the most is my mindset. It seems weird that I ever went anywhere
by myself. It feels like I was breaking rules. It also seems super scandalous
to think that I ever hung out with girls. It's just funny because as a
missionary girls are such bad news. Oh well.....It's only been 4 months and I’m
turning into an awkward missionary.
I
think that's about it. It's really nice to hear from you guys every week. If
anybody asks how I’m doing, tell them that if they really want to know they
should write and ask me....just kidding....but you really can if you want ;).
Tell everyone I said hi! Oh...and Mollie, I'm probably gonna finally ship your
birthday thing today or tomorrow....it should be there in a couple of weeks.
Sorry I'm lame. I love all of you bunches!
Until
next Monday,
Love,
P.J.
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