Hey everyone!
I must say, it's nice to be back in Osijek again. I felt very missed. Everyone was overwhelmingly glad to have me back, and that I didn't just stay on exchange forever like Elder Schouten did when he went to Serbia on exchange.
Elder Lifferth is here instead of Elder Jacobsen. Elder Lifferth is on his last transfer, so he goes home in January. Elder Jacobsen is now AP. I am the only one out of the 8 of us in Croatia/Serbia from the same MTC group that is still with their trainer for their second transfer, because 7 or 8 new missionaries came in this transfer, and we have an extremely young mission. Elder Marcek is with a missionary who has been out for about a year, and Elder Adams is with Elder Schouten, who is a transfer ahead of us, but the rest are with missionaries who have been out for the same amout of time or less. Elders Smith and Mulder are together, and Defreitas and Armond are together, and Elder Bishop is training, on his second transfer, before his training is even done. crazy.
On Tuesday, I reached a milestone- I ordered food, and the woman I talked to understood everything I said and didn't ask me to repeat anything, and I knew what was going on for the whole conversation. that was great.
This week we've been speaking Croatian a lot more as a companionship, so that's been really good. I've been able to actually use croatian a lot more recently. and Marijana has been speaking more Croatian with us, so we've been able to get some good practice in. We made pies and had a lesson with Ivona this Thursday. the filling was more runny than we were hoping for, but it still tasted really good. We talked about the restoration.
We've been doing more with calling former investigators from the area book and less actives and updating the ward lists and things. We'd been sort of avoiding that because people are even harder to understand on the phone than in person, but we've had some small sucesses with that.
Oh, last week while I was gone, Sister Creager and Sister Staheli gave Ivona a baptismal date, but she freaked out a bit and said they were pressuring her and such, so that was a little disappointing. She believes everything we've been teaching and loves coming to church and activities, but she's scared of change and the future.
On another not so happy note, Marina stood us up on saturday and she says she wants to be baptized, but she's not doing anything we've asked her to do to prepare for baptism.
We had seminary on saturday about Genesis 24-33. have I said yet how much I love seminary yet? It was great, as always. She asked an interesting question saturday. have you seen the scripture in the new testament that says basically that it's good for women to have long hair, but not men? in corinthians maybe? anyways, she asked if men aren't supposed to have long hair, why do they have long hair (pointing to Heavenly Father and Jesus in a 1st vision picture). She sometimes has really deep questions, and sometimes very interesting ones.
Well, things are good in Osijek. have an awesome day! Make someone smile today.
love,
Sestra Black
