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)

today only, quadruple the effect of your donation to Down syndrome research

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Thank you,
Kevin Black

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

Marilyn Sachs, A Pocket Full of Seeds

In this book supposedly written for children, a young Jewish girl and her family, living in France during World War II, discover that their being Jewish matters to others, to them, and to their safety. The book was OK. I don't know why I don't think it was great.

Rodman Philbrick, The Mighty

Originally titled Freak the Mighty, this short book turned into a movie. Apparently. Anyway, I liked it.

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

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

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

Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

Wow. This is a book!

I don’t think I’ve been this impressed with a novel since Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, which I hate to admit I first read sometime after I turned 45. I think I could find things to quibble over, but I don’t want to. Leading of course to the wannabe author’s key question, why do I like it so?

1. I suppose this is part of how I know I like it, not why I like it, but I couldn’t wait to finish it. If I meet the author, I’ll tell him how he ruined two nights of sleep. Two consecutive nights. That quality has to count in the final judgment of literature: if you write a book in a forest and no one reads it, does it make any noise? Or some such mixed metaphor.
2. I loved the diction. A novel that has a lot of words I don’t know is mostly just odd. That’s not this one. Low-frequency words that I’m prone to use tend to be Latin or Greek in origin—perhaps not surprising for a med school survivor. That’s not him. Here, every few pages, there are robust, healthy, but above all surprising, usually Anglo-Saxon or at least venerable English words that came by their Latin roots honestly, via the Normans. Minnesota words, you might say. North Dakota winter bar-the-door words, maybe. I’m thinking of "jeopardous." "Besmirched." "Bushwhacked." "Fictive." "Allegiant." Even "scapegrace," though that one was flung in by a precocious latency character who was showing off. The words themselves made you pay attention just for the taste of them ... but, strangely, not so much pay attention to the words, but to the message, like makeup so artfully applied that you notice the woman not the paint.
3. The perfectly knitted, quotable sentence was rare, but there were a few happy exceptions, most especially the last half page of the book. I also marked this one: "We supposed over that obituary for most of the day, Swede and I—mostly Swede, whose vaulting imagination revealed mine as miserly and torpid."
4. It has wonderful but not impossible characters; it has what I am surprised to keep noticing in books I like: a believable, not cloying, love story; it has at least a small story-within-a-story—sure, this one’s obvious, but I liked it anyway.
5. Not least, the author had some things to say, and (I checked on his bio page) his perhaps most obvious message was nevertheless a heartfelt one, a truth told with an understated passion that almost made it feel immanent.

Plus, it has a passage I want to quote Sunday for ward conference.

Definitely recommended.

Miscellanous

Lots of others in the past year that I was embarrassed or too busy to list given everything else going on my life. Here are a few, to catch up.

• Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind: that rare thing in scifi world, the end of a series that really ends it well. The literary ending, anyway, not the sales ending, but the guy has to eat and you sell what people buy. More importantly, the quality of the writing and of the messages are OSC at his best, inducing me to forgive his books I hate and again conclude that he’s the most skilled LDS author I’ve ever read.
• Jorge Luis Borges, El Aleph. I’m about halfway through this book of essays in Spanish (and Portuñol, sometimes), mostly as an airplane book. Short stories that take effort to read may be perfect for the 20 minutes or so at a time when you can’t turn on anything electronic. Plus it is a small pocket edition. Don’t know what to say about the actual writing. I suppose I don’t usually actually enjoy reading the stories, but they are almost all terribly thought-provoking, and you can’t help but respect his ability to tell a short story that is short and a story, and I am suitably cowed by his expansive grasp of philosophy and literature, or at least it seems that way to this dude who has read some things but whose eyes cross at most philosophy discussions.
• All the Ranger’s Apprentice books. Frankly, I loved them. Character development, unvarnished exciting plots, love found and lost by a teenager—you’ll have to read them yourself. Made me smile and cry at the right moments.
  
• All the Garrett, P.I. books. Gumshoe meets fantasy. Opinions in this household differed as to how appropriate these were for this household. OK, the first few books were all plot, one of them was cringingly, well, somewhere between outdated and non-PC and hateful, and there was always a surfeit of nubile redheaded women chasing him for unclear reasons. The actual detail was generally in the PG range verging toward PG13. According to some in this household. But they were very fun reading and gradually had better mysteries and became more thoughtful. By the last one, I think Our Hero’s words about himself—"Mama Garrett’s boy done growed up"—could have referred just as well to the author.
  
• Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed. A former college roommate recommended this (via Facebook). I was surprised to like it since I remember disliking one of her books. Several interesting passages that made me think.
  
• Charles Dickens, The Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. "Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster." I had seen movies and plays but I had never read the original. With apologies to a friend who loves to read Dickens, I had never much loved what I had thought of as his ponderous, prolix prose. I had mostly been proud of his perspicacious insights into neuropsychiatric illnesses in his characters. The Christmas Carol, however, was delicious fun to read at every page (or, actually, phone screen).
  
• G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Knew Too Much. Enjoyed this.
  
• Alexandre Dumas pere, The Count of Monte Cristo. Loved it!
  
• Stephenie Meyer, the Twilight books. OK, I don’t care if she used to look like Jen Purvines. This chick is weird! Meaning Mrs. Meyer. Of course this is not a professional diagnosis, just a total guess based on the weirdness in her books. Not the obvious weirdness that’s supposed to be weird (vampires, whatnot), I mean the relationship weirdness and the suffering-in-silence weirdness and ... oh well, if you read these books, you know what I mean.
  
• Henry Rider Haggard, The People of the Mist. Well, it was a free page-turner.
  

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