Terry Pratchett, The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents

This book won the 2001 Carnegie Medal. I liked it.

[20 Feb 2012]

Well, I finished up another planner yesterday. it's been a good week. last sunday we were told we had a meeting on tuesday in serbia, but the elders had 7 lessons scheduled for that day, and we had 4, so we got permission to go on thursday with the croatian zone instead. we still had a lot to reschedule, but it was a little better. it was sort of funny because sister milius changed our lessons on wednesday on accident instead of thursday, so that was a bit of a mess to fix the schedule. on valentine's day we went to Danaja's house. she's been having a really hard time because her son has been really sick and she's sick now too. we also had a lesson with iris, a woman who wants to want to stop smoking because she knows it's bad for her, but she doesn't have enough to desire to try to stop. We also met with Lea, who is wonderful. Wednesday we had a few lessons. they were fine. One of them was another lesson with Iris. She committed to pray every day. Wednesday we woke up at 2:59 to go to Zagreb (we would've been fine waking up at 3, but we figured the minute was worth the bragging rights). We went to the tram stop to check if the trams still ran that early, which they didn't, but as we were calling for a taxi, someone started whistling at us, which we studiously ignored for a minute, and then looked over to see who it was when they didn't stop. it was a former investigator that lives by us named Jadranka. She told us we should wait inside. She works early every morning cleaning a cafe with a huge window. perfect place to wait for a taxi. It was very unexpected, but nice. The conference was very good. We took a short break in the middle, and President Rowe said ˝hey, i'm going for a walk if anyone wants to come with˝, so of course, everyone followed him out of the church. he stopped in the parking lot and started throwing snowballs and started a competition to see who could hit various signs. Elder Wade won. then we continued our meeting, a little more awake and ready to work. after the meeting, we rushed to the train station, but we barely missed it, so we left at 6:30 or so, and didn't get home until about 11. Oh, the joys of going to zagreb for meetings. I think i'll be behind on sleep forever. oh well. On saturday we had a lesson with a girl named Valentina. we were not very excited about meeting with her because she had stood us up once at the church, we rescheduled to go to her house, which is on the outskirts of the city, the opposite end from our house, and when we were close, we called to confirm where exactly she lived, but she said ˝vidi, nisam kod kuće˝ (look, i'm not home). so we scheduled to come a different day. Before we headed out, we made sure on a map that we knew where it was and how to get there, and when we got there, it looked like nobody lived there, because there wasn't a path in the snow or anything. an old lady told us to go away and stop trespassing when we tried ringing the doorbell. we asked some guy if he knew where she lived, and he said there was someone with that last name who lived across this little bridge, so we went there, and that was her house for real. We had the street wrong. anyways, She said she'd read the book of mormon and pray to find out if it's true. She didn't come to church, but i think she's ready for the gospel. i'm excited about teaching her again. Sunday was fine. Elder Wade gave his first talk in croatia. it was very good, despite the fact that he couldn't pronounce the topic he was speaking on: žrtva (sacrifice). The weather's starting to get better. all of the snow's starting to melt. My croatian's getting so much better, now that i talk to more people every day. the other day, when we were in zagreb, i suddenly realized, ˝hey, the people walking by are saying real words, not just jumbled sounds˝. That was exciting. I'm still nowhere near fluent, but i feel like i can actually hold up a conversation now, and the ratio of people who would rather talk in croatian than english with me has gone up dramatically. We now only have aktivnost in croatian because Andrea enforces it, which is really good for us. when we tried to do that in the past, filip and marijana heavily objected, so we gave up and had it in english most of the time. since andrea doesn't know any english, it's been a lot easier to just talk in croatian.
so, to sum up, the week's been good, life's good.
Love you all
Sestra Black