Dear Family,
We had a few very promising potentials from last week, and nothing happened with that, which was a little disappointing, but we invited, and they still have their agency, and maybe something will still come from it. We have a new english student who loves the peaceful feeling in the church. We invited her to church, but she said she wasn't ready for that, and we were going to ask her to meet with us, but we didn't understand enough of the conversation to find a place to say it un-awkwardly. we probably should've just said it, but we let fear get in the way. Things like that happen more often than I'd like to admit. We tried to have a lesson with some less-actives, Evica and Jelica, but Jelica left right after we got there, so we just taught Evica. We learned that she can't read because her eyes are bad, and she can't come to church because she's worried about her heart, so the only thing she feels she can do right now is to pray, so we read a chapter of the book of mormon to her and discussed it, so that she can get stuff out of the book of mormon, even though she can't read it. We want to help Jelica start having family home evening with her kids, because we think that will really bless their family. This week we started doing personal progress with marijana. this is a big step because she's been fighting it, but now, even though i don't think she's way excited about it, she's willing to give it a chance. She invited a girl who she was in the hospital with to come to seminary. she didn't come, but Marijana invited her, which was awesome. We had a good lesson with Ivona this week before english class, and she actually came to church this week for the first time in about a month and a half. that was really exciting. We had her write down questions she wanted answers to, and she said they weren't completely answered, but that some of them were, and we reminded her that God doesn't usually answer all our questions all at once, but ˝malo po malo˝ (little by little).
We had a great short lesson with Lidia where we shared a Christmas message and about how Christ's coming is a message of great joy, like the angels say in Luke, and that since it's so joyful, we should share it with our neighbors. we could have done better at committing her stronger, but I think she felt the spirit, and for once, we were allowed to teach in Croatian without being made fun of or feel like it was pointless.
This week was Elder Lifferth's 2-year mark, so we celebrated by going out to ice cream. Ivona and 2 of the elders' english class students came to aktivnost. Their names are Andre' and Nijomza (or something like that. I don't know how to spell it). One's albanian, and the other is hungarian, which is sort of interesting because there aren't very many foreigners here. We're having a Christmas party with our members and english students next week, and we're going to try to make gingerbread houses with wafel sheet things. we'll see how that works. Marijana invited her Mom and step-dad, which is a big step for her because she's not on very good terms with them. Her mom said she'd make kolač (dessert), and her step-dad said he was excited to prove that we were dumb americans, but it sounds like they actually will come.
well, that was our week. I hope you had a great week, and I look forward to talking to you this week.
love,
Sister Black
