Week 56: Chinese Food, Stroller Moms, and Baptismal Dates

Hello friends and family! I forget if it was before or after I sent my email last week, but the weather has cooled off quite a bit. Suddenly people are wearing jackets and coats and gloves. I wouldn't say it's cold yet, but it's definitely not hot anymore, haha. Also, I forget which day it was, but there was one day this week when there was a parade of sorts with people dressed up in folk-type outfits, and playing folk music. #slovenia

A parade of folk music in Slovenia. So fun!

People dressed up in Folk costumes.

Last Monday while we were out doing some missionary work in a part of town called Lava, we went back to visit two houses who'd previously said that we could come back, and they both let us stay and talk! One was an older guy that gave us some cookies, and grapes from his garden. Turns out he's not really interested in hearing anything we have to say about religion, but he's definitely a nice person and it was a good visit anyway. As we left his house, we had a few grapes left to eat that we took with us, but we got to that second house that let us in before we finished the grapes, so I just awkwardly had this bunch of grapes the whole time at the second house (I couldn't eat them since they had seeds and I had no place to spit out the seeds). Anyway, this house was an older couple, and when we first got there the wife was making some peppers to freeze so she could use them later during the year. Slovenes really like their gardens, btw. Turns out that they'd met missionaries before, but never gotten a Book of Mormon or anything, so we gave them a copy and gave a very quick summary of the Restoration, how we got the Book of Mormon and why it's important. At the end of the night, we had dinner as a district (so with the Porters and the Sisters) at a chinese restaurant called "Dva Zmaja", which means "Two Dragons". It was pretty good. I've missed chinese food.

Tuesday we had lunch at the Porters' again (I guess that's been a regular thing for Tuesdays here?) and it was great. Especially the peach cobbler for dessert. Not much interesting stuff happened for the rest of the day, but ECG was a bit different. Only one person came, and it was someone that had never come before. It was fun, though.

On Wednesday we had district meeting, and I taught the lesson about working with members. My emphasis was mostly to serve them and help them strengthen their faith, since that will give them a greater desire to share the gospel with their friends. That afternoon and evening we did some tracting, and ended up running into a member. So, we gave a really quick message and let them get back to their studying. After that we had a lesson with "Mary" (that's not her real name), who has apparently been an investigator for a while, and we put her on baptismal date for the 23rd, so that was pretty cool. She seems to be doing really well. On our way home from that, there was a fashion show thing in the center of town, and all the ladies had strollers. It was notably peculiar. After dinner we had leftover peach cobbler for dessert.

Thursday was zone conference, and that was really good. The Maribor district of 4 drove through here, Celje, on their way there, and so we did some rearranging with seats so that our district of 6 could also get there without needing to use the train. Did I mention that they have trains here? It's cool. Anyway, zone conference was really good. The general theme was "finding", chapter 9 of Preach My Gospel, and one thing that was touched on notably was service and working with members, like I'd taught for district meeting. For lunch we had Chinese food, and I really appreciated it. And as always, it was really good to get to see other missionaries.

I got to see Elder Smith at zone conference, and his companion, Elder Sharp.

Me taking a selfie of Elder Hanks and Elder Mercer taking a selfie!

Friday morning we had a lesson with a guy that's been investigating the church for a year or so now, and he was really cool. He seemed to have a lot of really good questions. That afternoon we had another great lesson with "Mary" and we had a member on the lesson too. A few hours after that, during language study, my stomach started hurting really bad, and I don't know why, but the rest of the evening was gone.

On Saturday morning I felt better, so that was good. That morning when we went running we ended up running at a little track at a nearby school. I didn't see where it came from, but at one point there was a little kitten with a ribbon around its neck, just sitting on the track. Fairly unexpected. That afternoon we prepared some music stuff for the Primary Program, and then in the evening we had another lesson with that family that's a Bosnian husband and a Slovene wife. The language again was the same mix, of course, but it was fun. We re-taught the restoration, and I think they started to understand it a bit better. Why the restoration is important and what it should mean for them personally.

Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and got a personal answer to his prayer.

Yesterday at church we had the Primary Program! We the missionaries helped with it, and it was great. And even better, "Mary" came to church! She had to leave after sacrament meeting, but right then a different investigator of ours showed up, who I'll call "Ed". He stayed for the priesthood lesson, and even after church to spend some time with the members as everyone said goodbye to the Porters, the senior missionary couple here that's leaving today. After all that, we had a really good lesson with "Ed" and got him on baptismal date too! His is September 30th, so if they both go through on time, we might not even take down the portable font between baptisms ;) haha. Anyway, a bit later on in the afternoon we had another lesson with the same member who hasn't been to church for a long time. This week we had the lesson in the church, which is a big step for him. I think it was because of the rain. I think there's other progress that we're making with him really slowly. Since it was raining, for the rest of the night we mostly did Area Book work, calling people, and then played some Slovene Scrabble during dinner. As you might imagine, it was a pretty rough game, haha.

Today so far it's still raining. We went over to the Porters' to say goodbye and see if we could help them with anything, and played some music for them as a last sendoff. They've clearly done a lot for the Celje branch in the time they've been serving here.

Your homework assignment for this week is to study prayer. Why it's important, how we can better use it, etc. Some really good resources for that are "True To The Faith", and the Bible Dictionary. See if you can find something that you can apply to your own prayers to make them just a bit better.

Here are a few photos! One is the folk parade, one is a very absurd-sounding verse in the Slovene translation of the Book of Mormon, and the other two are from Zone Conference, of course. Have a great week!

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Elder Ryan Echols
Adriatic North Mission
Svačićev Trg 3/1
HR-10000 Zagreb
Croatia