Week 23

Hey Fam!

So I must apologize for last week.  All of us missionaries were hurrying out the door because we were going to play racquetball.  So sorry for the scramble of an email and not much information.  I promise to do better this week.  Although nothing has really happened this week it has been pretty good.  That is besides the crazy weather.  It will rain like crazy one day and just kill the missionary work, because there is only limited activities we can do in the rain, then the next it will be like 80 degrees making a very nasty muggy day that is no fun to walk around it all day. 

One of the days when it was raining we had gone over to the old church here in Zagreb to see if they needed any help because they are currently turning it into the mission office.  When Krešomir was alive he bought it for the church.  It is the whole level of an apartment building so it is pretty good size.  However now that we have a legit building it hasnt been in use for a long time.  So the mission home is moving to Zagreb and so they have remodeled this building so it can be the office.  ANYWAY..... we went over there to see if they needed any help and they said not so we started walking home and just talking to people along the way.  Until it started to POUR!  It was insane.  It was just like home lol.  One minute nice and sunny and the next a complete down pour.  So lovely Elder Lifferth and I are in our white shirts and ties were running through the rain to get on a tram to get home faster.  Then at the end of the tram line we have to walk about 10 mins to get home.  So we decided to wait it out in a dollar store shopping for little things that our apartment is still lacking from when Elder Warren and I opened it.  So that was fun....

We had a lesson with Marko this week.  I would say it went fairly well.  Because he is still struggling with receiving an answer about the Book of Mormon we decided to focus a little bit on that.  So during my personal study, which is basically fully devoted to trying to figure out what we should teach our one and only investigator, I was reading through the latest conference address looking for things that might help him.  So I read through Elder Bednar's talk on the Spirit of Revelation and I felt like that might help him to better recognize an answer when it comes.  So we watched that with him, in Croatian, so it's a good thing I read it over first so I knew what we were talking about.  At the end as we were discussing it he said, ˝That is what I feel when I read the Book of Mormon, maybe I have already received my answer.˝.  So I feel like that helped him and maybe this week we can move forward.  His original date was on the 18th but we are definitely moving that.  I realized this as I was looking over the baptismal interview question that is really not even close to being ready.  I did ask him why he wants to be baptized and he told me that he never thought he needed to be baptized but now that  he has talked to us he wants to be obedient and knows that is what he needs to do.  I liked that answer a lot because I feel like many members of the church dont even do something things because they dont know why they need to.  Marko, if for nothing else, just wanted to be obedient.  That is a great step I think. 

So we really have been just doing a lot of work to try and find new investigators and I must say that it can be very discouraging.  I just tell myself that they dont understand.  But at this point I'm just telling myself whatever I need to so that I can maintain a positive attitude.  So this walking around talking to random people is getting kind of old.  I'm afraid of the fact that i am already saying that.  At the end of this month i will be a fourth of the way done with my mission and I feel that if I start saying that now this could be a very long mission.  Like the other day I was just going to talk to this guy and ask him where I could find a place to recycle our plastic bottles and he was the biggest jerk ever!  Before I could even say anything he just put his hand out and said, which doesnt even make scene to me, ˝nothing nothing I wouldn't I wouldn't˝.  First of all that doesnt even make sense.  Which makes me not want to talk to him anyway.  Second, he didnt even give me the time of day.  What the heck did I do.  So it is experiences like that one that make it that much harder to talk to the next person...Sorry that was just me complaining about mission life.

Yesterday we had District Conference, which is basically Stake Conference.  However, since we dont have enough member in the whole country to make a stake so we have a district.  So that means that all the member is Croatia were in Zagreb yesterday and an area 70 was here to talk to us.  It was really good.  I liked it a lot.  I mean I only got to understand like 3 of the speakers but what I caught from the other ones was also very good.  Even our mission presidents wife gave her talk in Croatian!  The area 70 was Elder Donaldson and he was so fun to listen to.  He would stop everyone and a while and ask the translators if they needed a break or ask them if they were saying everything right lol.  He was very good.  Also, other things that I was hoping would be mentioned, were mentioned.  So for example, we have some what of a problem with member missionary work here.  A return sister missionary that got home about a month ago spoke and really brought down some fire.  It was great.  Then Elder Donaldson did something that I really liked.  He showed the congregation his notes.  They consisted of about 3 lines that wanted to say.  Then he told us that he was only the mouth piece by which the Lord would be speaking today.  He told us that he didnt do this to brag but to show that what he was saying was not from him.  He some of the exact things this country needed to hear.  It was a really good experience.  And to top it all off we had a lunch after wards.  That shows you how few members we have in the country.  It you can feed all of them in about an hour.  But there is a lady that works for the American consulate here and she went to the Army base in Italy and bought Root Beer.  It was an answer to my prayers. 

Well I feel like I have done a whole lot a blabbering today.  I just want to let everyone know that I love them so much!  Thank you all for all your love and support.  I hope everyone has a great week! Love you all!!!