Hello everyone!
This week it has been raining even more than last week.
Thankfully it's not too heavy of a rain usually, but it just doesn't stop. My
umbrella has been pretty useful recently.
In any case, Tuesday was kinda uneventful. Just some lessons
that didn't show up, and a pretty good ECG. After that, while it was raining,
we went contacting, but there was definitely no one out. So, we figured out
something useful to do for the benefit of our area book. That is, we wrote down
some house numbers at certain intersections. So, we were walking around in the
rain, white shirts and ties, with umbrellas, writing down house numbers in a
little notepad. I felt like we were Google Maps, but before cars or the
internet got invented.
Wednesday, we had a district meeting with the Monsons there
for the first time. I had a short bit of time to use on programming to help
with stuff that keeps the mission office's statistics running, so that was
great. Later on, while we were tracting, there ended up being a guy sitting in
his car right outside his apartment building, with practically no pants.
Apparently he'd gone to get something from his car, but forgot his keys and
phone, so he was kinda stuck there. We let him use our phone to let his wife
know to come home from work as fast as she could.
On Thursday we had lunch and the Frankfurter stand right on
the corner, since we found out that it was closing down forever at the end of
the day. Just went out of business. So, we had the last 2 sausages that the
place sold. They were actually pretty darn good. A bit later as we were walking
by again, we saw that the guy was cleaning out the dippin-dots (ice cream)
stand attached to the frankfurter stand, and stopped to talk to him again. He
ended up giving the leftovers for free. I guess that amount that we got
normally would've cost 7 Euros each, even though the cups were about the size
of a normal American portion. For a little bit of reference, that much money in
Sarajevo would get you a full nice meal with fries and a drink. Good thing it
was free. Anyway, ECG that night was combined with the sisters'group since we
each only had 1 participant come. I think it's really interesting how much the
attendance fluctuates for ECG. When we were contacting at the end of the night,
we found a cool young guy that agreed to meet up with us, and he even asked if
he could bring friends! (no one ever asks that, so it was cool.)
The next morning, Friday, we were contacting, and Elder
Jensen contacted another young guy that was walking behind us a bit, and he
ended up being super cool and agreed to meet up with us. When we asked if he
knew of anyone else that might be interested, he said he could see if he could
bring some friends when we meet up. Later on in the day, we went to visit the
family of the Elders' Quorum President, the guy from Peru. Man, what a great
family. Since they live in a different little town pretty close, we had to get
there by train, including a transfer. While we were at their place talking with
them, there was some switching back and forth between Spanish and Slovene.
There was one part when it was in Spanish and I was whisper-translating for
Elder Jensen, but then it quickly got switched to a very Spanish-y Slovene that
Elder Jensen could definitely understand, but I didn't notice the switch and
just kept translating into English for a second until Elder Jensen told me that
it was in Slovene. Oops, haha. At the end we had to run out the door and be
quickly driven to the train station to catch our train back. On our way out the
door, we got handed a napkin full of cookies, and it was great.
Saturday was when we had that lesson with the first cool
young dude that asked if he could bring friends. Turns out he was just a little
bit too cool, and even though he did show up and brought a friend, they
definitely weren't taking anything seriously, and it was a waste of time. They
might have even come just to mess with us. In any case, life moves on, and we
continue searching for those prepared to hear the word of God.
Sunday was pretty crazy. We got up at 3:30am so we could get
ready and catch a train to go to Ljubljana for district conference (it's like
Stake Conference, but there's no actual stake, just a district). I really hate
early mornings, and I couldn't sleep on the train, so that was kinda rough, but
the conference was really good. We started of with Priesthood session for the
men, then the general session, lunch, and the "adult" session (but in
a place this small, that's the same thing as another general session). A lot of
really good things were talked about, and we had someone visiting from the
Europe Area presidency (I think that's who it was... I don't feel very informed
on these things), and it was pretty great. After that, since our whole
missionary zone of 12 was there, we went into Center (downtown) to do some
group contacting. We sang as a group, and had some of us go split off and talk
to people. That was pretty great. There was one point when there was a guy
basically preaching against us, and that was interesting. Nothing crazy,
though. After that we all had dinner together at the Monsons' aparment there in
Ljubljana (they're still somewhat transitioning between there and Celje), and
it was some great food and great company.
On our way over to the Ljubljana
Elders'apartment with them as we were walking through the city, there were
dozens of people with Slovenia flags (and various things like that) gathering
at cafés and bars and giant outdoor projector screens to watch sports. Turns
out last night was Slovenia vs Serbia in the finals of the European basketball
thing, and people were getting hyped. Based on the cheering we could hear from
the Ljubljana Elders'apartment, I think Slovenia won.
If you all are keeping up with these emails, you might
remember that we had two investigators with dates planned for their baptisms.
As an update on that, it's looking like neither will go through on the days
originally planned. We haven't been able to meet up with them, since one hasn't
been answering their phone and the other doesn't have a phone. The one without
a phone also has memory problems, so that doesn't help much. We'll figure it
out eventually, haha.
One thing that's been on my mind since we were singing
yesterday has been "grace vs works". That guy that was preaching
against us was mostly saying that our religion preaches too much about works,
and not enough about the Grace of God. Saying that we're trying to earn our way
to heaven, and discounting Christ's role in it all. But we know, like he does,
that no one but Christ has ever earned their way to heaven. We're just
imperfect people that fall short, no matter what. That's why we need grace. A
point that we disagreed is where we go from there. I know that I've assigned
you this homework before, but like I recommended to that man, you should go
listen to His
Grace Is Sufficient, by Brad Wilcox. He talks about the proper relation
between Grace and our works. Also, go ahead and read this talk by By
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, The
Gift of Grace.
Enjoy the pictures...just some shots of what Slovenia
looks like. Have a great week!
--
Elder Ryan EcholsAdriatic North Mission
Svačićev Trg 3/1
HR-10000 Zagreb
Croatia
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