This week has been really good. Elder Genther's leaving today, so I'll be the only one here in Osijek that was here a month ago, and we'll have Elder Bell as Branch President. He's been in Karlovac, which is near Zagreb and has the second biggest branch in Croatia, so it'll be a little getting used to from being in a city with a local Branch President and people with callings that share the load, to being here, but there's been a lot of growth there in the past couple transfers, so hopefully he helps bring some of that success to Osijek.
Hey, wanna hear a cool miracle that happened this week? So, we passed out 4000 fliers (us and the elders) for english class. We passed out the last couple hundred in mailboxes in buildings by our house, even though we'd originally planned to go to a different area. one of the last apartments by our house we went to had about 50 people in it. we rang about 20 people's bells to get let into the building. We decided that was ridiculous and left without ever getting in. Then we finished passing out the rest of our flyers. At sign up night, we had over 100 people sign up. The last person to come, a girl named Jelena, talked to us for a while, and elder Genther basically shared the whole first lesson and got us a return appointment for tomorrow. She is looking for something more in her life and wants to know if she can find it in our church. It was awesome. We looked for her apartment building on our way home yesterday to make sure we could find it, and then tracted some buildings around there. her apartment is the very last one we put flyers in. if we hadn't been so diligent in passing out flyers, or if we'd been let into that one building, or if we passed them out in that different area instead of by our house, or if tons of other if's these past 2 weeks had happened, we would have never found that girl. it was exciting.
Tuesday we found and taught a college-aged girl named Evica. She had a roommate, a sister, and 3 other friends there, some of which were mildly curious, and others were very much not interested, one of which ran out of the room giggling and laughing during the prayer at the end. Hopefully she was laughing at butchered croatian, not the gospel, but either way, she wasn't at all interested. We found Evica when we were tracting, and we taught her about the restoration. when we started to talk about Joseph Smith, she said something like ˝that's just like me. there are so many churches, and i'm looking for the truth.˝ She's one of the first people I've ever met here like that, who wasn't content with what they had and wanted more. She said she'd read the book of mormon, and we set up another appointment. unfortunately, when we called that day to confirm it, she said she was actually really busy and didn't have time for something like this right now. I just hope the peer pressure didn't scare her off. That day we also talked to a student named Zvonimir. He seemed really interested and said he'd read a the book of mormon and meet with missionaries to talk about it, but when we called him back, he laughed and hung up. that was a little frustrating.
On wednesday, we taught a mom named Žužika who had a 3 yr old girl named Sara and a 8 or so yr old boy named Petar I think. Her husband came in towards the end. They're a really cool family. They weren't really looking for anything more in their lives or interested in changing their lives, unfortunately, but it felt really good to be in the home of a family that loved each other and worked together and where the parents worked really hard to love and teach their children. I hope we can show them that the gospel really can bless their family like it's blessed mine.
Seminary was good. Marijana brought a friend named Mihael. She's really good at sharing the gospel and bringing friends to things. At church we had almost 20 people at church yesterday, including missionaries, some of which haven't come for months, and 1 of which had never come before. A lot of the people were there just to see and hear elder genther before he left, not for the gospel, but it was still nice to have lots of people at church.
Well, that's my week. love you all!
Sestra Black
