Ariana’s posts are moving

Apparently there were privacy concerns related to a similar blog from another missionary in the mission, so a few months ago Ariana passed on a request from her mission president not to post anything until we could limit views to her family and friends. So I finally got around to figuring out how to do that. All her future letters, pictures, etc., will be posted at the following, new blog:

    Ariana’s Adriatic Mission Missives

I hope to move her older posts to the new site soon.

Unfortunately, the whole idea is that only certain people can see the new site. And Blogger has a bug at the moment that prevents me from seeing who is following this blog. So if you email me, I will add you within a day or so to the Official List of People Who Can Read Ariana’s Letters. If you use more than one email address, it may work faster if you tell me which email address you use to access blogger a.k.a. blogspot a.k.a. google.

Thank you,

Kevin Black
blog administrator (to the extent that there is one)

Krštenje!

Hey everyone! Things are going awesome here. This has been the best week ever!

We finally got the translations for sister moody's papers from our lawyer, so we're closer to getting her visa. the temporary one she has now just lasts another week, and it usually takes a little while for it to get done. she should be fine though. The senior couple moved in thursday night. they're called the Ivins, and they seem pretty cool. their son served in the catania mission under elder toronto in bari, ragusa, and siracusa, so i'm guessing he knows charissa.

On friday, we left at 4:45 am from osijek, took a train to zagreb, then a bus karlovac and then to zadar. in karlovac, we took a break, and petar disappeared. elder bell found him a bit later smoking. so he'll have to have his baptism pushed back a little bit. that was discouraging. When we got to zadar, we took a ferry to ugljan island and drove to the estate where the event was. It was awesome being there with members from 4 different countries. this is the first time we've had anything like that since the war, and it was awesome. Friday night we had a fireside with speakers from the very first members in yugoslavia, including Mišo and Ankica Ostarčević, the first couple baptized in croatia, and Ann madsen, truman madsen's wife. The baptisms were going to be that night, but they were moved to saturday morning. Rafaela Plentaj, a girl in zadar that has had missionaries working on her family for her whole life, was baptized. That was very exciting. Mirjana was next. She got scared, and it looked for a minute that she wasn't going to go through with it. Rafaela's baptism was sort of shaky, and i'm pretty sure she ended up with a mouthful of sea water, so it's not surprising she was frightened. when Mirjana went under, it didn't look from the shore that all her hair went under, and her foot came up after, but the witnesses said it was good. A lot of people were worried about it, and i was worried they'd have to do it again. Elder Kopischke said it was good though, and nobody argued after that. Elder Marcek baptized her, and then, after she had changed, Elder Bell confirmed her.

After breakfast, we split up into priesthood and relief society and YSA/youth. We had an awesome meeting with Sister Kopischke and Sister Madsen. Sister Kopischke talked a lot about things that keep us strong in the church- testimony, prayer, scripture, holy ghost. We were sitting across from Mirjana, and we could tell from her face how much she felt the spirit and felt united with the saints. it was great. then sister kopischke had a question and answer session, and Mirjana asked what to do if you have family members who aren't baptized. Almost everyone in the church here deals with that very closely, so it was a perfect question. it was great. then Sister Madsen talked about upholding priesthood leaders, even when they're not perfect. It was an awesome conference thing. pretty tiring though. we woke up way early and went to bed way late every day from helping with cleaning and cooking and such.

Then we went to Zagreb on sunday for district conference. it was awesome. First we had a meeting about the 40 yr anniversary. the prime minister and lots of media people were there. there was lots of stuff about Krešo, and then elder kopischke talked a lot about how the church is helping the country of croatia to be better and stronger, and how we believe in having an organized government and hard work. that the way to have a strong country is to strengthen the family. he said that we will join any coalition that will defend our values, and the way to change things in a country is to not change the government, but to change every individual. It was an awesome talk.

We then had the normal district conference meeting. President Babić (the district president) gave a powerful talk. He started with a story about president snow bringing someone back from the dead to finish his mission, and then talked about how powerful the priesthood is, that it founded and created the world. He then told the saints that they needed to be one and work together. he then promised the members that if they were united, that we would have a stake in croatia in 2020. it was pretty powerful. everyone felt that. President rowe talked about how the time to build the foundation of the church in croatia is over, and it's now time to build the beautiful structure of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He then invited all non-members there, especially directed to the gov't and media people, to act on the feelings they'd felt in the meeting, and to join us in building the kingdom of God. There were lots of other amazing talks too, but those were the highlights.

On the way home we could tell Robert (remember that kid from last week that we invited to church on our way walking there and he actually came?) was completely converted. We drove with president rowe to the train station, and he taught robert in those 10 minutes all of the lessons. it was pretty impressive. he also told him to go convert his family in serbia, and to serve a full time mission and then get married to a nice girl. He's scheduled to get baptized 3 weeks from last saturday. on the train, he talked to tons of people about the book of mormon, and he very powerfully bore witness of the restoration and the converting power of the holy ghost. it was great.

Well, that was the highlights of this week. I'll send a few pictures from zadar.

Love you guys!
Never forget that God is a god of miracles!
Love,
Sestra Black

of house hunting, hospitals, and hungary

Ćao svi! Kako ste? First off, I didn't get admitted to the hospital, and i didn't cross the hungarian border. On monday, we went to the hospital and visited with Marijana while we wrote letters. We bought some apricots and got some good potentials while we tracted and contacted in the evening. On tuesday, we went a kilometer and a half from hungary to a little selo to visit an inactive couple. their names are Spasenija and Milivoj Bilić. Spasenija means salvation, but i'm not sure what milivoj means. probably gracious or something. anyways, they hadn't been to church in 2 years. From what I gathered, they stopped coming when Spasenija started having a harder time getting around. They're both sort of old, but she has a harder time getting around. They had a good time showing us old pictures of missionaries and the branch. We read Moroni 6 with them and talked about the sacrament. They said they'd try to come to church this week. They did.

Wednesday we helped the senior sisters, sister rowe and sister turner, find an apartment for a senior couple who will be living in osijek in a week. we found a way cute apartment that was perfect for an old couple. The woman who owned it seemed very hesitant to let mormons live in her house, and was worried there would be church services in it. We were afraid that when they saw that the church's name would be on the contract they wouldn't be happy. Sister Moody and I went back the next day, after sister turner and rowe went home, to show them the contract and explain things on it. That was interesting. It was a slightly different feeling representing the church like that instead of just teaching them the gospel.

On thursday, we were tracting and we had a lesson with a cool family. They didn't accept a return appointment or anything, but after we left, the daughter, Marija, who was about 20, ran out and started telling us how desperately she wanted her parents to come closer to Christ. She begged us in tears to not give up on them, and to at least go back a couple times more. she was moving to the coast soon, and was worried about what would happen to her parents without her influence there.

Mirjana got consent from her husband to be baptized in Zadar, and Petar's still doing great. They're probably the only ones getting baptized this week, but none of those five have completely given up yet.

This week at church was awesome. It felt like a real branch with families. not just a couple of kids and an old man meeting together. It was so awesome seeing so many people, especially members and their families, who weren't there just because of a missionary leaving or a special guest, but just in a normal week. Another couple, Bernard and Gordana, have started to come back to church, and their niece, marijana wants to get baptized, and their nephew, zoran, came to church and has a tentative baptismal date. So at church we had Lidia and Alen, Marijana and her grandma and cousin, Gordana, Zoran and Marijana, Spasenija and Milivoj, Božo, Petar, and this kid named Robert from serbia that we picked up as we were walking to church. Maybe that doesn't sound like a lot, but it is. also, Marijana's cousin asked Marijana if he could get baptized. the elders are going to start meeting with him. Oh, and Robert got a book of mormon and said he'd start reading it and that he wants to learn more. It was a great sunday.

Well, that's it for this week really. have an awesome week. love you all!

Sestra Black

hey everyone!

well, this week has been pretty good. we beat all our weekly goals except for sacrament attendance. Either we are horrible at helping people understand why church is important, or... something. it's easier for people to commit to baptism than to attend a church service. i don't know why. if anyone has ideas for fixing that problem, i'm open to advice, because i'm out of ideas. or if someone wants to move here and buy a car and help drive people to church and never move away, that would be appreciated as well. well, here are the people we have on date for baptism: Andrea- I'm so excited she finally agreed to a date. and she's not living with her ex-boyfriend anymore, so that's a huge step. and i'm glad she's meeting with us more regularly now. I'm excited about her. Mirjana- Marijana's grandma. She's great. she doesn't understand 100% all of the concepts, so we'll have to re-teach some things like the plan of salvation and such a couple times, but she's committed to do everything she can to support this church because of all we've done for her family. Ivica- Marijana's brother. He just needs to stop drinking coffee and smoking. and we have to figure out how he can go to church because his job makes him work on sunday. The working on sundays will be the hardest part. His grandma's way excited about that though. She's been saying for the past couple weeks how much she wished Ivica would start caring about religion and coming closer to christ. We were having a lesson with mirjana, and he was passing by, so we asked him to sit and talk with us a bit. Marina- Her dad still doesn't want her to get baptized or go to church, so we'll need a miracle for her to be able to be baptized right now. and i have full faith she'll get that if she does everything she can to make this happen. the hard thing is that she's not putting this first right now, so we'll see. she still can definitely do it though. Petar- He's some guy that asked us for help with writing a letter in english, so after we helped him, we read a couple scriptures with him, and asked him to be baptized. he said sure, as long as he's not in america (he wants to get a job in america. we'll see if he gets it.) we're going to hand him off to the elders though. it'll make things easier.

I'm pretty excited about these. It's great, because the biggest reasons people have for not being baptized or interested are: I'm too old, I've been catholic too long, so i can't change now, and once in a blue moon, I'm muslim. but andrea's muslim, and mirjana's been very catholic for a very long time.

Elder Texeira is coming to our mission on thursday, so that should be cool.

Suzana got a job on the coast and is moving tomorrow. she says if her fiance doesn't change his mind about letting her get baptized by the time she gets back, she's moving out on her own. I'm pretty sure she'll get baptized this year, even if i'm not still in osijek when it happens.

We started teaching this man from india because we were eating lunch last week in his restaurant, and we started talking to him. We gave him an english book of mormon for now, until we can get him a hindi one. we went back on friday, and he was asking us tons of questions about how he would know if it was true and what happens after death and such. it was fun. usually people don't ask questions about things like that, things that actually are important questions to ask. it was nice. so now we're teaching an albanian, nigerian, and an indian man. i think that's pretty much all the foreigners in the city, besides serbians or bosnians. osijek's not very diverse.

We met with Vera again. I asked her this week if she believes that Jesus is her savior. she seemed really offended that i would even ask, but then basically said that Jesus was a great example of how to live, but He wasn't any different than muhammed or buddha or any other religious figure. It's really sad, because she's only been baptized a little over a year, and already she's rejected most of the things she accepted as truth then.

Well, have an awesome week. love you guys!

čao svi

Hey everyone, how's it going. it's only been like 4-5 days, so i don't really have that much to say... so I recently met the first black person I've seen in osijek. His name is something like Cyriecus (he says to call him Sirius, but i don't know how his name's supposed to be pronounced). He went on and on about how in his country, everyone talks to each other and accepts each other, but Croats just look at like you're crazy, and they all go to church, but they're not really Christian. He studies at the Evangelical college down the street from our house where everyone thinks we live. We also met a man from india who owns a restaurant just a block away from our house. As much as I love Croats, it was fun to talk to someone who wasn't one.

I may have talked about this before, but the 2 main philosophies we fight here are ˝Bog je jedan˝ and ˝Svi ima svoje˝ I'm so tired of those phrases. The hard thing is that they're true in a sense, but they use it to mean something completely false. ˝Bog je jedan˝ means God is one, and svi ima svoju vjeru means that everyone has their own faith/religion, and you shouldn't try to change that, but just respect that we're all different. There's only one God for the whole earth, and we all pray to the same god, and people can come closer to God by following any religion. that's true, but they use it to mean that God doesn't care how we worship him, and that yeah, Jesus said everyone has to be baptized, but he couldn't have actually meant that because hindus and muslims have great religions too, and what matters religion-wise is just that you follow the traditions of your forefathers. It drives me crazy. When noah was a prophet, everyone on the earth had to listen to just that one prophet, or they'd drown. God hasn't changed. If he wants the whole earth to do something, he tells the prophet. I don't see why people think that's such an incomprehensible concept. It's bold, but not scripturally unfounded or illogical

We made Marina (Marijana's friend that has been investigating for about a year) a calendar to help prepare her for baptism and fix her relationship with her dad. If she does everything we she possibly can to be ready, God will do the rest and soften his heart. We read Moroni 7 with her, 29-33 or so, about how God will do miracles, if we have faith, that we can do ˝everything that's expedient˝ in Christ. and then we read the next verse, of what's expedient in Christ-- to be baptized. She really felt like those verses were written for her. She has been doing more than she has before, and she doesn't quite have faith that our plan will work, but she's putting forth work.

We finally met with Vera for the first time since elder lifferth left. She thinks that she made the decision to be baptized way too fast, and that it wasn't really necessary, that it doesn't matter what church you belong to. that was really sad to hear from her.

Last night when we were tracting, we ran into a woman whose daughter is in a hospital in Rijeka because she has autism to the point of aggression. We felt the spirit really strong as she shared her concerns about God and we just testified that God loves her and that our trials in life are because God loves us and wants us to grow, not because He doesn't care and wants to make us suffer. She didn't let us come back or have her number, but she said she'd read the plan of salvation pamphlet and hopefully get some answers that way. I think I'll write her a letter about some of the restored truths we have from prophets in our day on this subject. and maybe give her the conference talk from last year that had the story about the girl in the icu who had angels watching over her. I wish the people here in croatia could understand how much they need what I'm trying to give them.

Well, that's all for today. Transfers are in a week. I'm pretty sure I'm staying here for another half a transfer at least. I'll let you know next week though. Thanks for staying tuned. Have an awesome week!

love, Sestra Ariana Black

Ariana’s bye week

Ariana told us a week ago that she might not write this week. She and her district were meeting in Bosnia, or something like that. . . . [Update] so of course 5 minutes after I get around to posting this, I see she wrote today. :) /kjb

Zdravo!

Well, Bosnia was fun. I got permission to do emails today since we were gone on monday. This week was pretty good. I gave marijana a list of the 3 or 5 inactive members who are her age, and she looked them up on facebook and asked if they'd come to church, and one of them, a boy named Toni accepted the invitation. his mom used be an active member and play piano for our church, but then she got a paid job to play piano in a different church, so she stopped coming. Toni has started to read the book of mormon, starting with suggested chapters from marijana, and now he's just reading from the beginning, and he came to church on sunday, and he's working towards receiving the priesthood, and he says he'll start going to seminary. I'm way excited about it. Hopefully that will lead to the rest of his family being active again.

I almost planned myself an exchange to bosnia (with president rowe's permission of course), but it's ridiculous going from osijek to sarajevo and back again, or meeting somewhere in the middle and switching companions, so it didn't work out. but we might still do it a different time. It would be interesting going from a catholic to a muslim country. (don't worry mom, i still have been practicing my asking for big things skills)

So I don't know how much I've said about this, but on the 1st of June, we'll have a celebration to commemorate the first baptism in Yugoslavia 40 yrs ago, and it'll be a huge event with tons of famous people there and lots of cool activities and events, including baptisms in the Adriatic, a history tour of where Čosić translated the Book of mormon, hiding the manuscripts because of communism, where the first baptism was, the first place they met, etc., so we're working really hard to get all of the members and their family and friends to come to the event. and maybe the missionaries will be able to attend as well. it depends on us making our goals. And then we have district conference that sunday in zagreb, which will also celebrate how this is the first time of having missionaries in every european country, with the opening of Bosnia, Montenegro, and Macedonia this transfer.

The most heartbreaking thing of the week was that Kristina decided that our church isn't different enough from the catholic church to be worth disappointing her family and being baptized again. It was really disappointing. We haven't quite given up on her completely, but it was really sad. Things were going so well, and then all of a sudden, she gave up. I've been told several times that I'm not allowed to get discouraged, but it's frustrating when people don't want to make the changes in their lives that you know will make them happier than any other choice they could make.

Did I tell you Marijana's grandma's getting baptized? We set a date for the 19th. I'm excited. That shows all the people I talk to every day who say they're too set in their ways to change religion. we had a lesson with her where basically she just talked forever about how she knows our church is true because it helps people and does what Christ would want it to do. The biggest problem is her husband thinks she's crazy and isn't very excited about all of this, but he'll come around hopefully.

President Rowe was here on sunday, which was awesome, as always. He visited with all the members, and his croatian is getting a lot better. he's been slowly learning. after Church he gave marijana a blessing for her health problems and the surgery she was going to have on monday, but the surgery was pushed to the 16th. It was a really great blessing about God showing his power through her. I wish she could be a normal healthy kid. She's got a lot of faith. In less than a year, she's helped the branch here more than all the other members combined except maybe zoran, and probably more than some of the missionaries that have been here. My experience here would've been a lot different without her.

Oh, speaking of zoran, he moved to the coast for the summer, like everyone else in this city, so we're down to no priesthood besides the missionaries once again. luckily, Toni and Alen are both working on being more active and receiving the priesthood.

Well, things are pretty good here in Osijek. Have an awesome day.

love,
Sestra Ariana Black

Hey everyone!

I hope you're having a wonderful week. Things are pretty good in Osijek. This week has had some miracles and some big disappointments. Dužanka, who I thought was about to get a baptismal date, gave up. She was beginning to get answers, but it was too much work, and things didn't happen as fast as she wanted, and she's overwhelmed with life, and she says she can't do it anymore. We haven't given up on her yet, but if she's given up believing she'll get an answer, she won't get one. The highlight of the week was friday. We had a lesson with Kristina where we watched the restoration movie, and we finally got her and Marijana together. It was awesome for Kristina to have someone who's going through what she is. My testimony of member-present lessons was strengthened. At aktivnost, Matea, an investigator who is going to school in Zagreb, but is from here, came, and she brought 2 friends.

Marijana's grandma came to church this week, and we asked her if we could meet with her, and she agreed. Marijana asked her if she'd get baptized, and she said maybe. I knew she was ready. she's seen how much the book of mormon and this church has blessed Marijana's life, and she wants to learn about that. Marijana has been sharing scriptures that she's found through her scripture study with her grandma, and it's been softening her heart to the book of mormon. I'm so excited about that. and seeing how excited Marijana is about it makes it so much more exciting. For english spiritual thought, we made a chart for questions of the soul, and invited people to find answers from the book of mormon, and it got a few people more excited about the book of mormon. that was cool. We also had a very good lesson with Žužika, a woman who has a really cute family who we met with once, but haven't seen in a couple months. She really got a good understanding of our purpose, and I feel like we were bold and loving in our invitations. She didn't accept everything, but I feel like I did everything I could to help her understand our message.

Elder Wade and Mulder were here for some visa stuff for a couple days from Varaždin, so we sent them on some goose hunts for us to find people. It was fun to have some servants for a couple days.

Seminary was awesome, like every week. Elder and Sister Taylor, who are leaving in a couple days, came to visit for the last time. I love having lessons with her. We'll be talking about something in the old testament, and she'll bring up a scripture in the Book of mormon that goes along perfectly with it that she found in her scripture study that week. She knows much more about the book of mormon than most kids her age, especially ones that have been members for less than a year. She really understands the principle of finding answers and revelation through scripture study.

On sunday, President Babić, the district president, came to Osijek with the district Relief Society president and her councilor. That was cool. They've never come before. I was disappointed Kristina didn't come. She needs to come to church, or she can't get baptized. I would've loved for her to hear President Babić's talk too. it was really good. I gave a talk about charity too. It's sort of annoying. there isn't really a good translation for the word charity. in the bible it usually just uses ljubav, but that's love, and most of the official church stuff uses dobrohotnost, but most people I've talked to say that's a horrible translation, and I'm not sure what connotations it has. I think the new Book of Mormon they're translating uses the word dobrotvornost... i don't know. I can't wait until the new Book of Mormon comes out. That'll be exciting. They're pretty much done, they're just working on finishing the guide to the scriptures that's in the back.

have an awesome week!
love you guys!
Sestra Ariana Black

Happy Serbian Easter

We pushed Kristina's baptismal date back to May 12th. It was one of the better lessons we've had with her. We used the baptismal calendar more effectively, so I think she feels more like she has a road map and plan to get to baptism, not just a date that we hope she'll be ready by. We put on the calendar when she'll talk to her parents and a goal for us coming to her house to meet her family, along with a place for her to mark her reading. I think she saw more that we wanted to help her be prepared, not trying to rush her to do something. it was good.

We had a good lesson with Du?anka this week on the plan of Salvation. She read 9 chapters of the book of mormon. We talked more about how she'll get an answer from God of whether the book of mormon is true. She wants to get baptized, and we still need to figure out a date, and we have to help her understand a few things, but it's been really cool to see her faith grow in a pretty short period of time. We also had a good lesson with a woman named An?a. We could tell she really felt the spirit while we were talking. she's got lots of potential.

This week we had an awesome lesson with Marijana about family history work, and she's actually working on it. I'm excited about that because before, she hadn't wanted to do any family history work because her family isn't the greatest, and she didn't want to be closer to them, but I think she saw how family history work is missionary work, and she trusted my promise that you can get the same joy that comes from missionary work when we do family history work, and that it helps us be closer tied to God's family. It's always cool to see her actually apply the things we teach her. Yesterday we had a lesson with her with someone who she helped us contact. To prepare for the lesson, Marijana prayed for guidance, and then found some cool scriptures and insights to share in the lesson. It wasn't a great lesson; the people weren't ready to listen to our message as much as we thought, but we shared our message boldly and brought the spirit. It was a good teaching lesson for Marijana though. Sometimes you do all you can, but they're just not ready. We had another lesson or two sort of like that this week too. That's the saddest thing about missionary work. you do all you were called to do, but some people just aren't ready to accept it.

Sister Moody is doing great. Now that she's a bit more confident in talking to people in Croatian, she's just talking to everyone. She told her family that she loves being a missionary, so I guess that means I'm doing my job well. She gave her first talk yesterday. It was about the Book of Mormon. It was good. We had 6 Members there, so that was exciting, since we haven't had more than 3 for a while. Alen was given a calling to bring the bread for the sacrament, so hopefully that will help him progress towards being more active. He started recently to show some desire to be more active and have the priesthood, so that's been cool to see. Zoran says he's moving for real this time, so we'll be out of priesthood leaders again if Alen doesn't step up quick. We really just need to baptize some more of them soon. We have a goal in our mission to baptize 40 people by June 1, the 40th anniversary of the first baptism in Yugoslavia. It's about 1 person per missionary, 2 per companionship. So we're working towards that.

Love you!
Sestra Black

Easter and Transfers!

Sretan Uskrs!!!
I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. Mine was pretty good. You may be thinking, if you've been following this closely, why does the title say transfers? didn't she just have transfers like 3 weeks ago? Well, we had them again. 2 of our missionaries were moved down to the Adriatic South mission to open Macedonia, Since our language is closer to Macedonian than Albanian is, so a lot of people were moved around. Elder Wade was transferred to Vara탑din, so Elder Marcek came here to be the Osijek district leader.

Things are going pretty well here in osijek. Kristina, our investigator with a baptismal date, is doing well. We've still got a few things to work through, but things are good. We'll probably have to push back her baptismal date so she can have the chance to go to sacrament meeting a few times before she's baptized. She's got strong faith and a strong desire to follow Christ, but she just has a hard time accepting having to change her viewpoint though. her desire to follow Christ has, to this point, been much stronger than that though. I have faith she'll pull through this though. I'm excited for her.

This sunday was awesome. Iris came to church for the first time in a month and a half or so. We introduced her to Marijana, who talked to her about her experience with quitting smoking, and how it was horrible to go through, but it was worth every second. Marijana had been smoking more per day than Iris had, so i think that was encouraging to Iris. We've been trying to have a lesson with the two of them together for a while, but it hasn't worked out so far. I think now that they've met, they'll both be more up to the idea. She's progressing pretty slowly, but every time we start thinking she's not worth our time right now or that she needs to be dropped, she starts progressing and coming closer to baptism.

We showed Marijana the YW session of conference as part of seminary, and it was really great. We all took notes, and after the conference, shared what we had learned, and she had some good insights. she said she learned a lot, and she was really excited to show it to her friend Marina because she thought it could help her. My next project for her is to get her excited about family history work. She's gotten excited about missionary work, and i think once she understands that family history work is another way she can bring people to baptism, and that then we'll have more people helping us to get a temple in Croatia on both sides of the veil, I think she'll be way excited about that, which will help her respect her family more, and will help her be a stronger member and be more excited about going to the temple.

We got a new investigator named Du?anka last week who shows great promise. I hope we can help their family get baptized. She really wants to know that God exists and loves her, and she is willing to do the work to find out through the Book of Mormon. She's got 2 cute little kids named Luka and Lana, which makes it harder to have lessons, but I think there's great potential for them.

This week we also saw Luka, the 9 yr. old son of an inactive member in our ward. He was really excited to see us, and he talked to us for a little bit. He was with his grandma, who really doesn't like the church, so we couldn't talk long, but it was fun to see him. He and his sister are some of my very favorite people in osijek.

For easter, we went to mass with our old investigator, Ivona, and then went to our church, and then worked on some finding activities we're planning, and then went tracting. Nobody wants to listen to two girls talking about Jesus and the resurrection on Easter, because everyone's celebrating, but we've been told to go tracting from 6-8 when at all possible, so we did.

Well, I hope you all have a good week. love you guys!
Ari

Opći Sabor (general conference)

This week was pretty good. We got lots of potential investigators and lessons we weren't expecting to have. We also got to listen to 3 sessions of conference this weekend, which was more than i expected to be able to listen to. We listened to conference with Zoran on his laptop. I'm so grateful to have prophets today. The world is just getting worse and worse, and people are less and less happy, despite how many more gadgets they buy. A lot of the things the prophets said were just common sense, but if people actually applied them to their lives, it would solve most of their problems. It sort of makes you wish people would just live the basics so we could hear a higher law. but as always, it was so nice to be taught the gospel instead of being the one teaching. Every time that happens-- general conference, zone conferences, my week in slovenia where they have a real branch, the week president rowe came into town for the weekend, whenever we actually have a sunday school teacher or relief society teacher come to church-- I'm so grateful. I definitely will appreciate a lot more when i come home than i did when i left. I don't think the missionaries back home understand what they've got. I'm sure it's always greener on the other side though. I'm sure if i were serving in the states I'd be complaining about how people weren't doing their callings well and i'd rather just do everything myself. oh well. anyways, i didn't mean to get on that rant. I'm so excited to see the day when this branch is actually self-sustaining and has a local branch president and a complete family or two.

Let's see... what happened this week? On monday we were tracting and we got a plant from this nice old lady, and then we realized that we didn't have anywhere to put it while we tracted for the rest of the night, so we just took it around with us and put it by a tree, tracted a few houses, went and got our plant, repeat. it made the night a little lighter. We also found this guy that we happened to find out last night from an old potential sheet was tracted into about a year ago. Then he was given a Restoration pamphlet (the 1st lesson), and that day we gave him a Plan of Salvation pamphlet (2nd lesson). It just made me remember that God's orchestrating everyone's salvation, not us. Charissa sent me an email this week talking about that same principle, funnily enough. You know, when you're doing God's work, there are lots of coincidences. The more i see that, the more i believe that actually, none of them are coincidences. God has a perfect, intricate, but simple plan for every one of his children to hear the gospel and learn its principles. and each one of you are part of that plan for each of your neighbors. the question is: will you teach them by showing them and helping them understand God's love, or by helping them grow from opposition. You have to work with God's plan either way, either to your personal salvation or damnation. It's crazy how well God has all of these things worked out though. Tons of little ˝coincidences˝ go into every little thing I learn, or every little thing I teach someone else. It's silly to think that could all be by accident. Blocks don't fall on the ground by themselves in a tower. Order can't spontaneously come from chaos. but every little moment in my life builds on each other, to help me learn, and to help God's kingdom continue to grow.

On wednesday Sister Moody taught the first lesson with my assistance and support to a wonderful woman named Mirjana. She has a daughter going to school in Rochester, and she came to english sign-ups. She was very impressed with the ˝for the strength of youth˝ pamphlet that we put out with the church pamphlets during english sign-ups. The lesson went really well, and she said she would be baptized if she learns that it's true. Sister Moody did an awesome job leading the discussion, and giving commitments. The new training program is really inspired. It's geared towards having the new missionaries ready to train another missionary within 12 weeks. I feel like the new mtc program and this new training program make a huge difference. I feel like sister moody is already more ready to train-- language, teaching, finding, and everything else --than many missionaries under the old program were after serving for almost half a year in the field. it's pretty cool.

Here's an update on people who have/had baptismal dates, for those of you who have been following and are wondering where these people went:
Kristina is still doing well. She still hasn't come to church, and we still haven't been able to meet her family, but she got the courage to stand up to her friend to start investigating, so I think she'll stand up to her family as well. She knows it's true. We taught the word of wisdom, and she accepted it without any concerns. she has a lot of schoolwork right now, and she just got a new job, so we've had trouble meeting with her, but I think it'll go ok. she's been way prepared for the gospel. she'll work through the barriers.
We were finally able to meet with Suzana again. She still can't come to the church, but we went over while her fiance was at work, and we read the book of mormon with her.
Iris is doing ok. She isn't leaving for the coast as early as she thought, so we have more time to teach her. We tried to teach her that sometimes God's plan isn't our plan, but she didn't really want to hear it. she is slowly cutting down on cigarettes, and i think she's slowly progressing to baptism, but it's still a work in progress. She's been avoiding us for the past couple days though, which is annoying, but she'll come around. we've been praying for her.
Still haven't been able to contact Valentina. She hasn't been answering her phone, and she isn't often home, and she lives almost an hour from where we live. Still working on that. if nothing else, she has a great head start for next time the gospel reaches her.
Andrea is being difficult to schedule with too. We haven't met with her for about a week and a half. She's having some trials we'll need to work through. I'm a little worried about her.

Well, lots of other cool things happened, but i don't have all day, and i'm getting tired of writing this email, so just make up the rest with your imagination.
love you all
Sestra Ariana Black

hey everyone!

Hey Everyone! I hope your week was fantastic! Things are going great here in Osijek. We've been working really hard and learning lots. Sister Moody is a great missionary, and I'm learning lots from her. Guess what! have another baptismal date this week! Kristina Bronzović is about 23 and she's very sincere and wants to do what God wants her to. She accepted to work towards being baptized on the 21st of April. The biggest challenge right now is church attendance. She lives in a selo [village] about half an hour away, so she hasn't come. We talked about it a bit last time, and she said she'd try to come, but wasn't very committed. we still haven't met her family because she was meeting for english before, and she was meeting with a friend of hers, and I thought she lived much farther away and was only here for school during the week, not living with her family, but that was just a miscommunication mixed with just remembering the wrong person. anyways, I want to focus on that next. I think if her family knows more what's going on, she'll be more likely to come to church, and hopefully her family will accept the gospel too.

We're sort of at a stuck point with Iris right now. She's started to give up and go back to where she was before to believing that we can't help her and she won't receive answers. It's annoying because she was so close, and she's started to fall back and stop trying to get the answers she wants. She wants to believe what we're teaching her, but she's just given up that she can believe what seems to her like a fairytale.

We found a lot of way cool potentials this week. On tuesday, we found 7, which is my record for the day, and only 2 were people we thought probably wouldn't actually let us back or wouldn't be home when we came. unfortunately, none of them at all have let us back, and all the lessons we set up with them fell through, but we're still trying with the ones who haven't completely rejected us yet.

On wednesday, we went to zone conference. it was elder bell and sister moody's first time in serbia, so that was fun. I got on the tram to head to the bus station in the morning, and I just happened to sit in front of my neighbor, but i didn't recognize her. I just started talking to her, and it became apparent she knew me better than I knew her. You'd think after 6 months of living here I'd at least recognize my neighbors. That was a bit embarrassing. anyways, we had a great conversation, and she said we could come over and share more about her church. Zone conference was awesome. We talked a lot about ˝finding on the way˝, and I was glad I'd contacted my neighbor on the way there. We also talked a lot about teaching by the spirit and asking inspired questions. It was great. also, we had blue fanta as always, which you can't get anywhere except serbia. and bosnia i think. not sure.

for aktivnost, Zoran taught us to make pizza. It was the best pizza I've ever had in Croatia. I still have to get the crust recipe.

On Saturday, we contacted a cool couple who were evangelical/pentecostal-ish pastor type people from Đakovo. We had a good conversation with them, but it didn't really go anywhere. oh well. We had Seminary about David and Goliath and the rest of 1 Sam. It was pretty good. we had a good talk about sustaining leaders. It's hard to respect a branch president that's only a few years older than you.

On Sunday I gave my first non-written out talk in Croatian. Elder Bell told me on Friday night, so i didn't have all that much time to prepare, and Sunday morning I woke up to a text saying not to forget about daylight savings time, and that it was actually 7:30, not 6:30. It was nice to have our hour taken out of awake time, not sleeping time, but it meant I had an hour less to work on my talk. It was ok though. I was surprisingly able to talk a whole 20 minutes. Marijana, Zoran, and Marijana's grandma were the only people there. It was a bit disappointing, but part of that might have had to do with DST. I didn't even know until that morning. weird how it didn't match up with in america. Sister Moody had to lose 2 hours, one in america, and one here.

Anyways, this week was good, and next will be better. Love you all!
Sestra Black

ps. if i ever get sent to Bosnia and I have to get new Cyrillic nametags, I'm going to try to see if they'll let me have it say Sestra Crna (just literally sister black) or Sestra Crnković (the last name here that Black as a last name would translate to). because they don't have a character that matches up with the a in black anyways. which one should i go for? all theoretical though, because I might never go there, and they probably won't let me do it anyways. but it's worth a try)

It's a girl!

[ok, the odd subject line is apparently a reference to current missionary slang in which one is "born" in one's first assigned area, "dies" when he is released from the mission, etc. /kjb]

Hey everyone, How's it going in the states? The weather is very nice here now, maybe a little too hot. Marijana tells me it isn't going to get cold again either. I hope you're having a wonderful day today. It's a pretty important day of the year, my 3-months-until-my-birth day. I wish I was in the US to celebrate it. I think Alma 17:13 would be a good scripture for today. So far to celebrate, I've eaten a bowl of chocolate filled, chocolate covered sugar bombs, aka crunchy pillows. they're sweet enough that if i eat them too often, i feel sick. then we did some studies, cleaned the house, and came to internet.

Anyways, On Tuesday we met with Iris again for the first time in a week because of some horrible miscommunication. That's the worst part about not speaking or understanding croatian perfectly still. Things are going pretty well with her. She's been working on quitting smoking and making real progress. the sad thing is that she leaves on the 29th of this month to a city that isn't anywhere near missionaries.

So, Monday night we stayed up forever trying to get sister milius' bags under the weight limit so she could fly to bosnia, and in the morning, we had that lesson with Iris and deregistered her from the city police and insurance, and jumped on a train to Zagreb. On the way there we called people trying to set up more lessons, and one of our potentials said ˝I'd love to meet, but i'm in Zagreb˝ so, when we got to zagreb, we met up with her and she gave us a tour of the city and we talked about where she was gospel-wise, and we set up with her and the elders there for her to have lessons with the elders in zagreb, and invited her to FHE there, and she said she'd go. I hope that's going well. The new missionaries got stuck in france for like 7 hours because there was a problem with their previous flight, so they missed their connecting flight. so they didn't get to zagreb until pretty late. The sisters that came are Sister Moody, Sister Trumbo, and Sister Jolley, who said she's got some second cousins that have something to do with a pharmacy in salt lake... i don't know, it rung a couple bells. anyways, we slept the night at the rowe's house, and the new missionaries had interviews in the morning, and then he told us who would be our new companions. I'll be training Sister Megan Moody, from Mission Viejo California. She's small and cute and blonde and she's really outgoing, which will be good for me. I'm excited to be her trainer.

We had a lot of trouble keeping in contact with Suzana this week. She didn't show up for lessons for two lessons in a row, and her phone wasn't working, so we went to her house. We hadn't been before because she said her fiance didn't like talking about religion and didn't want us to come over. We were a little hesitant to go, but I realized that fear isn't from God, and that I should just do it. so, we went over, and she looked like she was in a lot of pain from her heart, but she was still smiling and happy to see us. We asked her fiance to sit in on the lesson and talk with us for a little bit, but he started talking about how he didn't like talking about religion, and then he went into the other room. so we taught suzana, and towards the end, he came in to get a drink or something, and he did not look happy that we were still there, even though we weren't there for very long. we left and arranged for us to meet at the church the next day. The next day, she came, and told us that she had to go back to the catholic church because her fiance had forbade her from getting baptized, talking to us, and going to church. When i asked why, she said he was mad because we came over. She said she'd still read the book of mormon and pray and hold to the truths we taught her, and pray for him to change, but that she didn't want to cause contention in their home. I think it's partly because he decided he didn't actually want to get married, but to stop her from even coming to our church or meeting with us is dumb. The second she left, I just shut myself in the kitchen and cried for a few minutes. It was really hard for sister moody too. she felt like it was her fault because she helped me have courage to go over to their house when she didn't show up. I tried to help her see that we did what we were supposed to, and it wasn't in any way her fault, but it was still hard for both of us. I feel like Satan's been working really hard to stop us in osijek for the past few weeks. i guess it just means we're going to have some miracles pretty soon.

Sister Moody is doing wonderfully. She's talking to tons of people, and she's not afraid to be bold. I'm going to learn a lot from her.

So, to sum up, this week has been way stressful preparing for a baptism that we weren't sure was going to happen, making sure we had a font and somewhat essential things like that, and just being senior companion for the first time, but it's been good. we've done a lot of hard work and miracles are coming.

love you all!
Sestra Black

Transfers!

Well family, just as I expected, the results of transfer calls was nothing I expected. Our final guess was that Sister Milius and I would stay here and co-train one of the 3 greenies, sister creager would train in Zadar, and sister lethco would train in zagreb. we were partly right. I get to join the select ˝8 months in Osijek club˝, and as of like last week, I have now spent more time in Osijek than any other missionary out now. Hey, maybe I'll spend my whole mission in the same city, like sister Powell in Ljubljana. Probably not, but either way, it'll be great. I love Osijek. Sister Milius, however, has finished her 1 transfer in Osijek, so she's moving on to bigger and better things. Sister Milius and her new ˝daughter˝ [trainee] will be among the first young missionaries in Bosnia. She and her new companion, [and] elder bishop, who was in the mtc with me, and elder chandler, who goes home the same time as me, are headed to Sarajevo, and elder hansen will also be training in banja luka. It's way exciting. When I got called on a mission, I didn't think I'd be a part of helping the very last country in all of Europe to hear the gospel. I feel like this transfer sister milius and i have really learned a lot from each other and we've both learned a lot about miracles and how we can be instruments in God's hands for them to happen. Oh, I forgot... so like I said, I'm staying in Osijek, and I'll be training. It'll be fun. I'm excited. I've been thinking a lot this week about what kind of goals I want to have as a trainer and how I can be a good example and help her learn what it means to be a missionary. Hey, if people reading this who went on a mission could e-mail me and say the best things their trainer did, or if anyone has suggestions for me, they'd be welcome.

This week was pretty good. Suzana is doing excellently. in one week (3 lessons plus 2 weeks at church), she's learned almost every single thing in all 5 lessons. When Elder Smartt set baptismal dates for everyone at church only 2 weeks away, I was pretty skeptical that it was even possible for someone to be ready that fast, but I feel like she'll be more ready than anyone who's ever been baptized in osijek, with maybe a couple exceptions. I knew it was technically possible, because God can do anything, but this has been a big miracle. Every time we have a lesson with her we just feel so blessed to have someone to teach who has been so prepared. it's crazy. For example, I asked her (before we'd really ever said anything about it) why the gift of the Holy Ghost was so important, and her answer was that when you have the gift of the Holy Ghost you can learn spiritual truths better because the Holy Ghost teaches you truths, and it helps you know when you start to stray from the right path, and then it guides you back to that path, and that when you do something wrong He can't be with you, but as soon as you repent He can come back, but he'll always be with you as long as you're doing what's right. have you ever heard such a complete answer from a non-member... one that had been an investigator for only a couple days? crazy. It just goes to show that God is preparing people to be baptized, and our job is to find them and just expose them to the truth so they can recognize it. God does the rest. So, on the schedule we've got a marriage and a baptism this saturday. what a great way to come in as a new missionary. My greenie is so lucky.

Seminary continues to be wonderful. The Taylors (a senior couple over seminary in the mission) came this week and they gave us some training about how to help our students learn from the scriptures, not just giving them cool insights. We're pretty lucky. Marijana always finds cool things in the scriptures, and did, even before we started teaching seminary. this week we did the book of Judges, and at the beginning, we had her share what she learned from her reading. what she shared with us was exactly what we planned to teach the most, that God will do miracles for us when we're doing what he's commanded (Gideon), but that we can't expect him to be with us when we're not keeping the commandments (Samson).

I'm pretty excited to be training this transfer. I loved this transfer, and I learned a lot, but i feel like i'll learn a lot more when I feel responsibility for someone else to learn from my example. I've got a lot to learn still in missionary work, and i'm excited to learn from someone who hasn't been influenced by the traditions/bad habits of the past. I feel so blessed to be a missionary now, when so many great things are happening here. Guess what? this week we had more baptismal dates this week than ever in the history of the whole mission. cool, huh? I told you things were happening here.

well, I'm pretty lucky to be God's servant here. I love you all. Remember that God has important things for each of you to do too. Look for those opportunities to be an instrument in God's hands.

love you!
Sestra Black

[05 Mar 2012]

Hey everyone, it's been an awesome week, despite lots of annoyances. We had 20 lessons cancel on us this week, and a lot of them were with our progressing investigators. On Tuesday we had a lesson with a woman named Iris. We'd called her every morning that week, reminding her to wake up, pray, and read from the book of mormon. She did that all week, and she could see that it blessed her life. We talked a little about how when we keep God's commandments, we're blessed and our life is better. Sister Milius asked her to be baptized, and at first, she said ˝no way, I'm not the type of person that gets baptized. i smoke, i drink, i don't keep God's commandments, etc˝. We talked a little about that, and she said that if she was prepared by the 17th, she'd get baptized on that day, and that she would do everything we asked her to to prepare between now and then. Only one problem-- she was out of town for the rest of the week, and she's moving to the coast for the summer at the end of the month, and not to Rijeka or Zadar, so nowhere near missionaries. Not sure what to do about that.

We also had seminary on that day. We talked about the book of Deuteronomy and keeping the commandments, following the prophet, scripture study, and tithing. We thought Andrea would come, but she couldn't, so it was just Marijana. but it was one of the best lessons we've had yet, i think because everything was simplified and tied really clearly to simple doctrine, even though Marijana knows more about the gospel than almost anyone in Osijek, what was powerful was the simple truths she was taught before baptism.

On thursday we had 5 lessons cancel, which was sort of discouraging, but as we were going home, a man stopped us and said he had a lot of problems right now, and that he wanted to find God in his life, and that he felt like the Catholic church just cared about money and he wasn't finding what he needed in church, so he asked if he could come to our church and meet with missionaries. Apparently Božo talked to him when he was in the catholic church, and he said to come to our church and read the book of mormon. He didn't end up coming to church, but the elders are going to start teaching him. but that wouldn't have happened if our last lesson wasn't cancelled.

On Friday at aktivnost Andrea was talking to Filip and asked ˝hey, why aren't you baptized yet?˝ He's slowly progressing, but he's got a lot of outside forces pushing him both ways. i think that's why he hasn't committed to be baptized yet.

On Saturday, Elder and Sister Smartt came into Osijek for the weekend. It was great. They're from Tennessee, and they came as our middle english class was finishing, so they started talking to our students, and some of our english students could understand them, but others who we can talk pretty easily with couldn't understand them at all. We had to translate for them into non-southern english or croatian. They took us to dinner and it was pretty much a training meeting, involving several role-plays with real people. it was great. We texted lots of random english students and former investigators and such telling them that we had special guests in town, and 2 people from that came. I translated for Sister Smartt, which was difficult. That was my first time translating for a meeting. I've probably got a lot more of that to go. Elder Bell translated for Elder Smartt, which i was very grateful for. Elder Bell speaks really fast, but Elder Smartt didn't give him almost any time to translate. He did really well though despite that. Luckily, everyone there could at least understand some english except for Lidia. For Sunday school, Elder Smartt taught the plan of salvation and invited everyone in the congregation (Lidia was the only member there, and we had about 7-10 investigators/guests). We talked to them afterwards, and Suzana, a woman who we've taught once, but we haven't been able to schedule with for weeks, accepted right off. at first i thought she just didn't quite understand what Elder Smartt was asking because of something she said, but she really did understand, and said she'd be baptized on the 17th. so we got a baptismal date, and pretty much all we did for it was sending her a text. we decided the Smartts should come to church every week.

We had seminary again on Friday because Marijana's a little behind, and Filip, Andrea, and another investigator named Andreja came. We talked about Joshua and how the priests had to put their feet in the river before the river stopped so they could cross on dry ground. We then talked about what was keeping each investigator from being baptized, and how they can ˝put their feet in the water˝ and show their faith. It was a pretty good lesson.

Earlier today we had a lesson with Andrea about tithing. she just got a divorce and has pretty much no money, so that was hard for her. she said she'd pray about it, and when she prayed to end the lesson, she asked God for a way to be able to pay tithing. we did an object lesson with candy for that that Emina loved for some reason.

So, baptismal dates:
Iris- March 17
Suzana- March 17
Valentina- March 24
Andrea- as soon as she will agree on a date. She's more decided on getting baptized and knows more what that means than the other three combined. I think she just doesn't want to pick a date and have to re-set it because she's not ready on time. She told us she wanted to make it a surprise. We told her to pray about the 17th. I think she'll settle on that date. We'll see.

In other news, transfers are on the 14th, so i'll let you know next week whether I'm transferred. there are 3 sisters coming, so my guess is either sister milius and i are co-training, or I'll move out of Osijek and train in Zagreb or something. We'll see though.

Love you all! have an awesome week!
love, ari

hey everyone!

This week has been awesome!

The weather's been warming up. A lot of the snow has melted.

Andrea is doing awesome. She hasn't smoked for a whole week, and when we had a lesson with her this week, we talked about Christ's life, and when we said that Christ was baptized, she said ˝just like i'm going to be baptized˝. She's seen how much this church changes people and makes their lives better, and she's already become a better mother and a better person because of the teachings of this church. We asked her if she would be baptized on the 10th. She's still not sure on the date, but she is determined to be baptized soon. On saturday we had a lesson with Valentina, and we talked about faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, an enduring to the end. When we talked about how baptism is a rebirth and that we can have the Holy Ghost with us always to help us make decisions and have comfort in life, we asked her if that was something she wanted. she said yes. We told her the way to do that was to be baptized by someone with authority. We asked if she'd do that, and she said yes. We asked her (after some quick math to figure out what day was a saturday) if she'd be baptized on March 24th. She looked around for something to write it down with, asked what day of the week it was, and said yes. She lives sort of far though, and has a 6 month old baby, so she had trouble accepting an invitation to come to our church, and not just the church one block away. She didn't end up coming to church, so we'll have to work harder to help her come next week. She's had lots of things humble her recently and prepare her for this. I'm excited for her. That day we also met with Lea, and we asked her to be baptized in pretty much the exact way as Valentina. She said she didn't want to change religions, but she was willing to read and pray about it to figure out if it's true, and to figure out what God really wants for her. That night we had a lesson with Mihaela and her husband Danijel. We did the Plan of Salvation with pictures, which their daughter, Antonija, loved. they're more curious than actually willing to figure out if it's true, but they enjoyed talking to us, and they gave us home grown elderberry juice. Things are taking off. This country is ready for miracles and starting to see them.

I love you all! have a wonderful week!

love, sister black

[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

Adriatic North Mission

Hey everyone, how's your week been? So, as the subject suggests, my mission once again has a different name. as of the 15th, our mission is now the adriatic north mission, and the albanian mission is the adriatic south mission. So, I get to be one of a few people who had their mission change names twice while they were out, and i haven't even been here in croatia for half a year yet. For the more exciting news, Bosnia is now officially a part of our mission, and young proselyting missionaries will be sent there ˝in the near future˝, so probably in march when we have transfers, but we'll see. also, for the first time i think ever, every single country in europe is now open for missionary work!!! It's an exciting time to be a missionary in europe. things are changing. pretty soon the assumption that you can't baptize people in europe will disappear. In our mission alone, we had more new investigators last week than may of 2008, when there were 31 companionships, compared to the 22 we have now. We also are teaching more lessons than we have for years. also, in the last 6 months, we doubled the mission's baptisms from the whole year before that. and we're still very much on the up-rise. it's exciting to see these things happen.

Sunday was awesome. Jelena has been out of town, so we haven't seen her, which was a little disappointing, but we had 2 other investigators at church, both of which had never come before. One of the elders' investigators came too. He's a boy named Miro, who has been coming to english for a little while, but hasn't been really interested in learning about the church before, but for some reason something changed, and he's been praying and reading the book of mormon. For church, I gave a talk about baptism and Zoran gave a talk about the holy ghost, so it was awesome. it was the perfect first sunday to have investigators there for. after that, since we didn't have any of our teachers there, we just watched the restoration movie for second hour, which we just got a couple weeks ago dubbed in croatian. we also just got ˝finding faith in christ˝. it's awesome. those are our first movies ever in croatian, so it's really exciting. we had a couple that were subtitled just on a home program or something, but now we have some actually made for us. After the movie, President Bell, Sister Milius, Marijana, and Zoran bore their testimonies of the restoration. I couldn't think of something better for Andrea and Lea, our investigators there. for various reasons, neither one had really even had a lesson on the restoration, so that was a good introduction for them. Lea is a 15 yr old we've been teaching english, and i think she's mostly just fallen in love with the feel of the church and the people connected to it. we had one english lesson, and then we invited her to aktivnost, and then to church, both of which she came to. We've gotten permission from her parents to teach her english, and they know we teach spiritual thoughts with it, but i want to go teach them too so they know what their daughter's been learning and don't freak out that we've been brainwashing her or something. The only problem is she's here for school and her parents practically live in hungary. Also, this week, Andrea committed to stop smoking, which was awesome. She went from lots to 4 cigarettes in one day to 2 to 1. she's realized that everything she does, her daughter looks at and copies (she's 2 and adorable. her name is Emina). She knows what kind of life she wants for her daughter, and we're trying to help her see that she can have that in her own life too, and that that's the way to help her daughter have that life too. She said she wanted her daughter to get baptized, but said she was too old. We pulled out Nicodemus' conversation with Jesus and talked about it a little and told her to pray about it.

To sum things up, things are good and getting better. love you all. thanks for your prayers. God answers them.
love,
Sister Black

Snijeg pada! It's snowing!

Hey everyone! we've had some crazy snow here this week. europe's got lots of records for temperatures and snowfall this week. on friday we had about 2.5 feet of snow, and it's been pretty much snowing ever since with a few small breaks since that. everywhere looks like an ant farm--lots of little pathways everywhere where people walk, but besides that, you can't see anything. that much snow is probably nothing to mom, but i don't think i've seen so much snow ever in my life. So, i'm writing today instead of yesterday because yesterday, when we got here for internet, a girl texted us asking where we were. to make a long story short, there was a miscommunication, so we ran off to the church so she didn't have to wait in the snow forever for nothing, so there went the rest of our internet time. so, we got permission to come back today. i'm very glad of that because lots of cool things happened this week. We taught Jelena a couple of lessons, and she's really searching for truth, but doesn't feel like she ever gets any answers when she prays, goes to different churches, etc. She's willing to do whatever it takes to get her answer, and she's been doing just that. In our first lesson, she prayed with us, and that was her first time praying aloud, and the first time using her own words. She was very hesitant to, but afterwards, she said it felt good, different than she's ever felt before when praying. She came to church this week, so that was the first investigator we've had at church that wasn't just there to say goodbye to missionaries in a long time. We only had 2 members there though because of the snow, which isn't the most fun on a fast sunday. so lots of just sitting and meditating, which i guess isn't a bad thing, it just tends to get uncomfortable for people. We started teaching a family with a 3 yr old (3.5, but she admits to 4 at social gatherings). We found them through english [classes], and at sign-ups, the mom, Mihaela, said she was interested in learning about the gospel outside of english class, so that's been good. She was listening very attentively while we taught... at least as attentively as you can with a 3 yr old begging for your attention. Her husband knew a lot about the bible, and asked interesting questions, but he wasn't just the type of person who tries to make themselves look smart by bringing up facts in the bible he knows. I like that family very much. last sunday, we met a couple while tracting. Their names are Milica and Drago. We taught a bit and then set up another lesson with them. we weren't sure how that would be the next time because they were a little tipsy when we came, but when we returned, Milica had read from the book of mormon and they were ready to learn from us. We had a lesson with Gordana on thursday. she was really closed at first, because the chapter was about baptism, and last time we came, we had asked her to be baptized, but we started talking about faith and repentance, and she relaxed a lot, and when we talked about baptism with authority and about receiving the gift of the holy ghost, her attitude changed, and she was actually trying to learn from us, instead of just being curious and passively collecting interesting information. She prayed with us for the first time, which was really cool. Right after that lesson, we went with Danaja to Evica and Jelica's house for visiting teaching. It was one of the coolest things ever, and it strengthened my testimony of visiting teaching a lot. They haven't seen each other since Evica and Jelica stopped coming to church, and Danaja visiting them did more for their desire to come back to church than years of them being visited by missionaries. It's been a good week, but it's just getting better.
Oh, and guess what! Osijek has its first baptismal date scheduled for about a half a year. It's exciting. it's someone the elders started teaching last week. Exciting things are really starting to happen in Osijek. It's on the brink of a lot of cool things. just you wait.

Lots of love,
Sestra Black

[30 Jan 2012]

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