Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Meeting, Greeting, and Baptism Chain Reaction...


Hello Family!

Time keeps flying by like crazy! August has been the fastest month yet! I can't believe that summer is just about already gone...not that I mind or anything. It's great to feel the temperature cooling. 

Seminary orientation....I hope it was the blast that it has the reputation of being. Who is Mollie's teacher? She never mentioned Seminary to me.  

We have geckos here too...Well, we have a bunch of different types of lizards here and they are everywhere. You constantly see them running across the pavement as you walk. Some of them get pretty big, but luckily we've only had couple of little geckos inside of the apartment. 

I hope you learn to like shopping, because you are taking me on a spree for normal clothes in less than a year and a half! I already can't wait....start saving now ;) 

Wait...I thought dad had a stainless steel fossil like the one you bought me. He showed it to me when we skyped on Mother's day.....Are you talking about my ceramic one? I didn't think he cared for that one too much. OOOOOOOHHHH! Just wait until I get back. Then you'll have me adding to the motorcycle fire. I think I've decided that I really want one when I get back. It may take a little while to actually get one though. Dad and I can take the licensing class together when I get back. You can come too if you want.

A guy here the other day was telling me about the mosquitoes when I said that I was from Texas and was mentioning how they started to spray for them. People are too lazy to do things for themselves. They just want someone else to spray the whole town, so they don't have to take the time and effort to just spray themselves.

The fish actually wasn't too bad. The type of fish was Brancin, which is sea bass. I saw it on a restaurant menu today for 200kn a kilo....so like $35 or something, so it's a pretty popular type here. We are grilling meat on Tuesday. I'm more excited about the meat than I was about the fish. He still keeps mentioning the snails and asking if we would eat them. We keep telling him yes, and he just laughs. I'm not sure how serious he is versus just looking for a reaction. 

Questions:
1.  How are you doing these days?
Pretty good. I'm staying healthy as far as I can tell, so yeah....all right. 

2.  How the heck did you eat those fish?   
Just a little at a time and don't look it in the eyes while you eat it.  

3.  Do you need any clothes items?
I don't think so.....If I did, I'm pretty sure I could get it here, but so far, so good. 

4.  Your shoes are looking hashed…are they still comfortable?-besides the issue with the insoles...
Oh yeah...the shoes are fine. Just the insoles are shot. And they don't even hurt yet, but I figured that since I'm half a planet away, it might be a good idea to fix a potential problem before it becomes a big problem. The shoes just looked dirty because we walk across gravel and dust here and it just sticks. But when I get around to polishing them up, they still look pretty good. The bottoms are getting a little smooth in some parts on my slip-ons, but that just means that I'm actually doing stuff....or walking around at least.

5.  Did you ever get another suit?
Not yet...... 

6.  Are you going to?
Eventually....when the other one completely wears out....I'm just biding my time. 

7.  How is the language coming along?     
UH.....some days are better than others. I gotta get going faster though, because I’m almost 1/3 the way done here, but my language is not 1/3 of the way  there. And yeah, Czech is crazy. They have tons of weird accented letters and it's pretty funky. It's cool though. The word for "hello" in Czech is "Ahoy", so they sound like a bunch of pirates. We were listening to something in Czech the other day and I could understand a little of it, but not too much. It's still pretty different. We had a polish guy at church and he said the prayer in priesthood. That was crazy. Polish sounds like someone took a Slavic language and sprinkled German into it. It was pretty crazy.  

8.  Favorite food to eat?
Eh, it depends on the day. We eat a lot of sandwiches (Ĩajna kobasica is my favorite meat...it's just a salami type sausage) and Top Ramen....some things never change...But it's different here. It comes with soy sauce packets and chili powder and stuff. It's a little bit higher class 

9.  Are you guys actually cooking for your selves?
If we feel like it, but usually not too much because it's just a pain...Especially without a dishwasher. The fewer the dishes the better. 

10.  **Deleted**

11.  question deleted...
Answer deleted......   two can play that game..... 

12.  Have you had an individual interview with the mission pres. yet?  If so…how was it?  You don't mention him much.
Like 4 times. He was just here a week ago Sunday for interviews. They are fine. Pretty much just to see how everyone is doing and if we need help or have any concerns that he can help us with. It was cool. 

13.  Are you questioned out?  :)
Not yet, but one more ought to do it.... 

14.  Did you know your dad is HOT??
yup...that one did it....questioned out now.

I think the expression is "chalked full" but maybe not....Is there really official spelling for slang? I hope you enjoy the wedding. That sounds like it will be a trip.... literally....hahahahaha. If anyone who knows me asks about me, you have my permission to say that I send my greeting their way.....  

So just some news from over here for the week:

On Thursday we met some cool guys: We went to the big bridge that leads to the old town...center, to meet a man there. Well, he wasn't there, but a lady came up to us and asked if we knew Croatian. She said that there were a couple of guys that wanted to talk with us, and she pointed at them. They were guys that sell travel excursion tickets to tourists, so we went over to them and had a conversation for over an hour just answering all sorts of questions that they had. Mostly in English....turns out that they knew pretty good English. They were way cool (their names are R*** and I****) and they said that they had some preconceived notions and prejudices about us, (they thought we were like the Amish in the sense that we ostracize outsiders if they try and enter our "community" and the other guy just knew what he saw on "Big Love" and a little bit of research that he did as a result of curiosity from the show...nasty...) but they were able to resolve them through talking to us. They said that we could stop by and talk again whenever because they are always there. It's always nice when people think you're normal. So just a story where we were able to find people whom wanted to talk in a completely unexpected circumstance. It was pretty crazy. It definitely had a "we've been led" sort of feeling about it. 

So the next big thing, the sisters had a baptism on Sunday! It was for M******, President P's mother. It was pretty awesome. She was so excited and so was he. I asked him how he was feeling after the baptism, and he said that he was ''still shaking." His mom had been pretty hard-core in her religion and this is just such a huge thing for her. I asked President the other day if he would have ever imagined that he would baptize his mother into another faith that wasn't ***** and that afterwards they would be active in that faith. He said, "Nope. Never...never in a million years." It's pretty cool. It all started with a member here, D**** K*****. He's 23 and started learning from the missionaries when he was like 17 or 18. Well, he was never super interested at first, but he ended up going to Dixie state in St. George for college, and he got baptized while he was in America for college. Well, his mom found a copy of the Book of Mormon with his testimony in it, and that was the first she had heard about the church, but she really liked what she read, so she investigated and was baptized a few years ago (her name's S*****) So she told her daughter about it, and B***** was soon baptized. 2 years later, her husband, who is President P  was baptized, his 9 year old daughter was baptized, and now his mother a year later. And his 12-year-old sister is showing some interest now. It's so crazy how it spreads. And now, D*****, the guy that started it all is starting his mission papers. He was pretty dead set against it and everyone has been working to get him to go, and a few weeks ago, he surprised us all by saying that he was considering it, and now it's pretty much a sure thing. Elder M and I are going to start teaching him Mission Prep. We have the manuals and everything (they just got in from Zagreb on Friday). It really just goes to show that nobody is prepared for the gospel alone. There are always people around them, some just need a little more convincing to hop on and join the ride. 

So, this week was pretty good. We were also able to meet with M****, one of our investigators. He's really nice. He's 32 and had a rough past, but entered into a Catholic Zajednica (pretty much a little community that's kind of like a big group home) and he straightened things out. Well, now he's way good. He loves Christ and the Bible, but he feels like the Bible saved him and that the Bible is the foundation for his life. So when we introduced the Book of Mormon, he wasn't too thrilled.  We keep trying to convince him that Christ is his foundation. It's gonna be slow going, but he'll be fine. He asked us why we never use the Bible when we teach, even though we do.  He doesn't really believe us when we say we actually use it, so next time I'm going to show him my quad and prove that we use the bible and cross reference bible verses with Book of Mormon verses. It'll be good. It's just so hard to meet with him...for some reason. He doesn't have a job, so I'm not sure why....hmmmmm...it's a mystery. 

I think that's about it for this week. I hope all of you have a good week....Especially you, Mom! Have fun driving to and from Seminary! And Mollie, have fun at Seminary!  

Love you all a ton!
P.J.

No comments:

Post a Comment