Sunday, October 14, 2012

Yikes...three weeks behind in posting his e-mails...sorry! ~Dore


Wazzup?

First of all, I did laugh at the Star Wars thing, but the groan afterwards was louder than the chuckle ;). 
                        ~For those of you who are curious about what the, "Star Wars" thing is....~


It's been a great week! The weather is cooling down, so how could it be anything other than great?

Ya...it makes sense that I'm here. President Rowe said something interesting in my last interview. He said something to the effect of "Why did you get called here? The Lord could have called you to Tucson, Arizona, but he didn't. He called you to the Adriatic North Mission, half-way around the world to build branches!" It's something that's made me think, Why am I here?

So something that I thought about for Christmas...Seriously, I can't think of anything that I want right now. Maybe a suit eventually. Supposedly sales season is coming up....

I would assume that you could call the phone again after the Skype...I'm pretty sure we can Skype again. We have it on the computer here at the church. But I don't know anything. No one has even said anything since it's still 3 months away....an eternity in missionary land.

Questions for the week:
1.  How do you like your new companion?
He's cool. I think we'll get along just fine. I guess I don't have too much to say. He's not a problem, and I don't think I am, so things are good.  
2.  Any new Elders come yet?
Yup...finally. The first ones since I came. Two came and are in Slovenia, and then a missionary in Sarajevo. I was asking a couple of weeks back if the two missionaries going to Slovenia were actually going to make it there this time (we all know what happened last time ;)) and I heard that President Rowe wanted to send them somewhere else, but he was looking at the missionaries in Slovenia and realized that if he didn't start sending missionaries in there, in a year's time, all of the elders would be gone from the country. All of them.... So people have to start going there. We just need so many more people all across the mission.
3.  How are you doing with the language?
It's interesting. I find myself getting better. And it's weird because we have a greenie sister in the district, and not that she's bad at the language, she's just new.... but, I saw how far I've come. Since I've been the newest one for so long, I kind of felt like I was still not getting anywhere, but now that I got a reminder of where I was, I'm feeling better about things. I heard a guy speaking Slovene a couple of weeks back....I'm a little ashamed to say that the language sounds super funky now. I think I'm going Croat against my will.
4.  Are you planning on buying boots for winter/snow?
Nah...I'm not sure if we're even allowed to wear them. According to the missionary handbook, you can't. It also doesn't really snow here in Zadar. It did for the first time in like 20 years last year, but it should be fine. I don't think anywhere here gets too much snow, and I was fine at BYU without boots. I think it'll be cool.
5.  Did you know they have FB missions now?  I guess that is a mission where the missionaries write home every night!  Can you believe it?  We know someone whose son is on one of these missions.  It's a pilot program.  Where do we petition for this??  Kidding.  I think you might get completely burnt out on your family if you had to write us every day.  How about a cell mission?  You know…where you call your family every day.  Sign us up!!!!! :)
I've heard of the Facebook missions. They've been doing it for a while now. I think it would bite. How would you not be trunky 24/7? I love you guys a ton, and it'll be great to see you again someday....somewhere around 16 months in the future, but I think that a mission would be so much harder with constant semi-contact like that. It's kind of like a giant tease. It's a bit of blessing, I would think, that I don't do that.
6.  Any investigators? 
Eh, a few potentials, but nothing super rock solid. We're working on solidifying things. We've been trying to meet with L*** and A****, but they've been busy, but we'll get there eventually.
7.  Get mooned lately?  We did, yesterday…a trucker on the side of the road decided to climb out of his truck.  It wasn't a pretty sight AT ALL!!!!! 
Nope...well...kind of. A guy with no legs was swimming off of the coast in center (the no legs part is why we were watching him. We wanted to see how he was planning on climbing the ladder to get out) well, and he got out of the water and then stripped off his speedo....it's weird to see a [rear] with no legs attached to it...just a random thought.....

Can you let Grandma know that I got her letter a couple of weeks back, and I'm slowly, but surely working on a letter back to her? Thanks!

Oh gosh...Does Mollie want friends? Tell her not to dance in public. Our family didn't get those genes.

So this last week has been all right. Nothing too super exciting. Elder A  and I got back to Zadar on Tuesday night and pretty much didn't have time for anything after that. And then the next few days until now have just been normal. Trying to hit it hard everyday. But it's kind of funny. The only tags he has are in Serbian Cyrillic, and since the war, people around here don't really care for Cyrillic...so he's just been going around without tags for the last week and is tag-less until we can get some Croatian ones from the office, which will be a couple of weeks because of shipping. He thought about wearing them, but it's better not to get beat up, I should think.  

I also found out that I’ve got a cool Bosnian souvenir coming my way. In all of the larger Bosnian cities, they make pens out of bullets. Well I got Elder B some candy (crunchy M&M's and Jelly Bellys) and got them to him in Osijek, and he got me a bullet pen in Sarajevo when he was there for zone conference. It'll be cool to have.  

I'm pretty sure I'm gonna come home with lung cancer. You know it's pretty bad when you walk into an apartment where they smoke like crazy inside and you don't even notice it anymore. It honestly doesn't bother me too much anymore. It's going to be sad when I step outside of a store where people are smoking out front and get mission-trunky because of it ;).

I hope everything is going well for all of you. I'm trying to think if I have any questions for any of you, but I'm like a guy with an eraser and no pencils....just drawing blanks....don't judge. I came up with it literally like 15 seconds ago... Any interesting news from the ward? It's going to be crazy to go home and eventually be in a "ward" again. I'm gonna laugh if I ever hear somebody use the phrase "small ward." Those two words just can't go together after being over here.

One last thing. We accidently found a Chinese restaurant here in Zadar, and it seems to be pretty good so far. They had good sweet and sour squid and the wan-tan soup was all right. The only downside is that it's a little pricy and far out, but it's good to find new places to eat at.

I'm pretty sure that's about it for this week. I love you all a bunch and look forward to hearing back from you next week!

Love,
P.J.

P.S.: The picture of the chapel is a picture of the church here in Zadar. The Zagreb Chapel is a whole lot bigger and actually is church produced, so it looks like a church, instead of a bottom floor of a house.

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