Serbia

This week had some interesting things. On Tuesday while we were watiting for the tram, we ran into a drunk pentecostal who was telling us all about how the pentecostal church was the first church, and how we don`t have the gift of tongues or healing in our church, and how Joseph Smith added to the bible, etc. We just let him rant for a bit and didn`t really say anything or answer his questions because he didn`t want to hear what we had to say, and he was being really argumentative, so he wouldn`t have listened anyways. We just told him that we knew that the book of mormon was true and that it is a witness that God loves all of his people, and then luckily the tram came, so we just said ˝thanks for sharing what you believe. Have a good day˝ and then left. I`m sure he thought we just didn`t have any answers to why our church isn`t like the pentecostal church or why we believe what we do, but he wouldn`t have listened to anything we could say to defend why our church isn`t of the devil like he was saying. That was interesting.

On Wednesday, we met a woman named Ivana, who the missionaries had been teaching a few years ago, but then she got busy and just stopped having lessons. We ended up on the opposite side of town trying to find her house because there`s a street with the same name as the group of apartments where she lives. so she came and rescued us in her car. She gave us really good icecream. She asked us about how to get direction from God in our lives because she has a hard decision to make about her career. We talked to her about faith and revelation from prayer and scripture study. It was good.

Thursday, we went to Serbia for a zone conference. The 4 of us in our district left on a bus in the morning, and about 30 min from Osijek, Elder Genther realized that he didn`t have his passport, which is sort of important if you`re going to a different country, so they got off the bus at Vukovar and went back to Osijek, and then came back on another bus. so that left me and sister Creager alone on a bus to Serbia. Just before we crossed the border, we asked the bus driver when our stop was, because we didn`t want to miss it and go all the way to belgrade. He was surprised and wondered how we had even gotten tickets on that bus to sremska mitrovic, because the bus didn`t even stop there. He told us there was a stop close to there, and he could drop us off there, but it was just this little gas station on the side of the highway. We called the elders there in sremska mitrovic, and they came to the stop to pick us up. We were very happy to see them. It`s not fun to be lost in a country where you barely speak any of the language. The conference was good, and lots of fun. 3 of the 6 Serbian elders (Elder Adams, Defreitas, and Armond) were with me in the mtc, so it was like a little reunion. Before, when there were only 2 elders in Serbia, they were just part of the Croatian Zone, so this was the first time ever, as far as I know of, that sisters have gone to Serbia at all. This was my first zone conference, so I was never used to anything else, but sister creager kept saying how weird it was that we only had the 10 of us there, and that we couldn`t see the rest of the missionaries in Croatia.

Seminary with Marijana was once again a highlight of the week. She showed us how she had found answers to some questions of hers in the scriptures without us leading her to a specific chapter or anything, so that was really cool. She`s so much fun to teach because she has really good insights and she loves the gospel. Elder Genther is trying to get her to give a talk in church, but she`s too nervous to speak in front of people. It`s sort of sad, because any talk she gave would be better than having the branch always just listening to us missionaries trying to communicate in our broken croatian.

Yesterday I spoke in church. This was the first time I`ve written out everything I was going to say for anything since the 1st week of the mtc, but I figured it was better on the people`s ears if I wrote it out first. I had Marijana correct it so it would actually make sense and be grammatically correct. I talked about testimony. I think it went ok.

Well, that`s pretty much all the important stuff for this week. I love you all. I hope you have an amazing week!

Love, Sestra Black