Happy thanksgiving!

Hey everyone! I hope you're having a wonderful week. We're having thanksgiving today for p-day [preparation day, their one day a week to do laundry, read emails, and whatnot /kjb], so I'm pretty stuffed. We're going to go back for pie with the elders after emails. We made 2 pumpkin pies (1 huge and 1 normal sized) and an oreo cheesecake. I don't think we'll be able to eat all of it.

So, this has been a pretty hard week. We didn't have anyone to teach at all this week except for Marijana, who we taught twice. so, we had a lot of time for contacting and other finding [activities]. Once we took Marijana with [us] tracting, which was more fun than going by ourselves, and we had someone there who could actually understand everything people were saying. Monday night we tried to meet with an inactive named Kristina and her family. Only the kids were home though, so we just left them the cookies and a birthday card because it was Kristina's birthday this week. The kids said that they really hoped they could come to church this week, like they always do, but they didn't come, as always. It makes me so sad because they love church so much, but Kristina doesn't take them to church. On wednesday we helped Marijana, who is the branch historian, to finish the branch history for this year. We wrote short bios about each of the active members while Marijana wrote her conversion story. It's a pretty good story. She and her friend were on a tram, and they started making fun of the elders because they were apparently acting really weird. The elders told her that they could actually understand what she was saying about them, and gave her a pass along card. they were curious what the church was like, and they thought we were jehovah's witnesses, so they came to the church to see what it was like. One of the elders had felt like he should stay at the church a little longer after english sign ups, so they happened to be there when she came. So that's how she was introduced to the church. Anyways, it was fun seeing things that happened this year in Osijek. On saturday, we had a conference in Serbia. Sister Rowe and 3 of her kids came. Anna and Jessica turned 7 this week, so we made them a card and gave them gummy snakes. They adore Sister Creager. she served in Zagreb for the first few weeks President Rowe was here, so they're pretty attached to her.

Have you read the special Book of Mormon issue of the Ensign? it's so cool. I read the whole thing this morning from cover to cover. One thing I especially liked was an article from someone who had served in my mission, in Slovenia, about the book of mormon coming to Slovenia. They still don't have a Doctrine and covenants. When I was there we sometimes used the croatian one, but they usually just use the english. It made me really grateful of all of the materials we do have in Croatia, even though it's nowhere near what they have in English. I was also reminded that there are still places that don't have the book of mormon, like Slovakia. I'm pretty sure they just use the Czech one.

On the 6th, Elder Kopischke is coming to Zagreb, so we'll have a multi-zone or mission conference and we'll get to hear him. That sunday we have district conference with all the members in croatia, so we'll be back to Zagreb for that. That should be fun. in between those two, there's rumors of an exchange in my district. My guess is that Sister Creager is going to Zadar for the week, but Elder Lifferth won't tell us anything definite.

Well, Have a great week, and a great Thanksgiving.
Love you!
Sestra Black