Week 67: Telekinesis, Tracting, and Thanksgiving

Hey everybody! Sorry the email last week got cut short. Here's the rest of what happened last week, starting with Saturday evening:

That evening we of course helped clean the church like we do on Saturdays, and then we had our game night. That was really good, again. One of the younger members brought a friend, and apparently they needed to practice for a performance they have coming up soon, so they performed a few songs for us. She sand, he played guitar, and they were both incredibly good. It was quite remarkable. After that, we all played Uno as they kept practicing.

Playing Uno at game night

On Sunday the district president was here from Belgrade with his family, and he spoke in church. After the meetings, we all had lunch together there at the church, and it was great. Once we got home, we of course did weekly planning.

Now onto this week! This week's weather has been pretty good. Most days have been relatively sunny, and even though it's cold, it's not awful.

So, on Monday morning we started off with a lesson from the area book that I'll call "Pete". He's fairly peculiar, but really nice. He's met with missionaries before, but I'm not sure how much he remembers since it was a number of years ago. He hasn't been baptized, even in the orthodox church, but he wants to. He also says that he has telekinesis and seems to honestly believe it.

After that lesson with "Peter", we headed out with the other Elders for Belgrade. They were headed up there already to start exchanges with the Zone Leaders, and we figured we'd tag along to go see other missionaries. So, we had lunch with all the Belgrade missionaries at a restaurant called Burger House that has really great burgers. Surprise. After emailing and exchanging some mail, we drove back to Sremska, but this time with Elder Sorensen and not Elder Jones. We immediately headed over to a member family's home for dinner. When we got there, they had balloons all over the place, since it was Elder King's birthday (happy birthday!) We had a great dinner, and since it was P-day, stayed to play some music with them and just talk. Then the Deckers wanted us to come over to give us some treats, and we of course obliged.

On Tuesday we started off by trying to go find the place where a potential investigator said she'd be at a certain time of day, and we discovered that the name she gave us is not a specific shop as we thought, but rather an entire suburb. She didn't answer our calls, so we didn't end up managing to find her. After lunch we had some studies and such, and then we had a lesson with a guy from the area book. Turns out he's the kind of person that agrees to meet up so he can try to prove us wrong. He pulled out a lot of the typical stuff, and we explained it all the best we could, but he has a fundamental lack of understanding about the role of modern day prophets, and he wouldn't listen to us trying to explain, so it went nowhere. Eh. After that we had ECG, and 2 church members came, plus another friend of ours. It was pretty good. After ECG I made some calls to make sure people turn in their numbers about church attendance and ECG, since I'm the "Data Master" now and it's my responsibility to make sure that that happens. So far it's been really great to get those excuses to talk to old friends from across the mission. I also get to occasionally do some computer programming to help stuff better stay in line.

On Wednesday we had district meeting, then the Deckers briefly came over to our apartment to get some pans to borrow to use for pies. After some studies and stuff, we went tracting: knocking on doors. Then we went contacting: talking to people on the street. Then we bought some food during our dinner time, met the other Elders at our apartment, and made some food together.

Thanksgiving Dinner

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!! So on Thursday we started off with some phone calls and such, then I made some good progress with a mini-project for the Data Master stuff. We had a mini-lunch, then had some studies before going contacting. After contacting we headed over to the Deckers' for dinner. If I haven't mentioned, Sister Decker's cooking is really good. Definitely a lot better than mine, haha. The other Elders were of course there, plus our dear atheist friend that comes to Sunday dinner with us all, and occasionally to church. He's great. After that we had ECG like usual, and only one person came. But that's ok. After that we had some time off because of the holiday, so we had the other Elders come over and we played some games for a bit to end the night.

Sister Decker is a great cook and made a wonderful Thanksgiving Feast.

Friday we made some phone calls, had comp study, did some contacting, got lunch, then went with the Deckers to visit a member family. Sister Decker talked recipes with them for a while, and somehow I didn't need to translate. Sister Decker has quite the food vocabulary in Serbian. More than me, definitely. I really only know how to say a few kinds of meat, sugar, flour, eggs, and a few fruits and vegetables. At the end we had a spiritual though about member missionary work, since that family actually has a son out on a mission, and it seems like they've got a friend that they're about ready to bring to a church activity. From there we rushed back to the church since we were running a bit late for a lesson, but thankfully our guy "Pete" was there waiting for us. He's a cool guy. Right as we unlocked the door to go in the church for our lesson, his brother showed up, and joined us for the lesson. Thankfully we had the first lesson planned, the Restoration. So, we did that, and we really drove it home with a lot of good scriptures, and they seemed to really understand it, and both of them agreed to read the Book of Mormon. Also, "Pete" talked more about his telekinesis and some government conspiracies involving televisions.

Learning more Serbian language skills at District Meeting

After that we had language study, then went tracting. A lot of tracting. Then we had this kind of "4th floor last door" moment when the very last door that we knocked on before we were gonna head home for the night was some guy that let us in. I can't remember the last specific time that someone let us in right from the door. But, the other funny thing is that these buildings have a lot more than 4 floors, and we always go top down. So, it's less "4th floor last door", and more like "4th building first floor". Weird. In any case, I think he had Mormons confused with Amish a bit, but we cleared that up and gave him a quick version of the Restoration. He seemed ok with it, but not convinced. He also said he'd never change faiths, since everyone is Orthodox. I asked him what he'd do if God himself came and told him to change faiths. He didn't give me a straight answer. I'm not sure he's going anywhere very soon, but we'll stop by again soon to give it a shot. That night we made tacos for dinner.

On Saturday we cleaned the apartment thoroughly for cleaning checks, some repair guys decided to come over on short notice, then we went for a quick round of contacting. Then we had comp study, our cleaning check got cancelled, and we went with the Deckers to visit another member family. This time when we got there it was only the grandmother and the young daughter that were there, not the whole family. So, we talked with them for a few minutes until all the rest of them showed up. They had been out helping with some construction stuff at the uncle's place (he's a church member too). They offered us some fried pig fat.

After we left, Elder Criddle and I had some language study, then I did a bit more of that Data Master stuff before we had our branch game night that is every Saturday now. It was good, like always, but with fewer people this week. A few new people did come for the first time though. After that was over, we cleaned the church before going home.

Playing ping pong at branch game night

Sunday was of course church, and Elders Criddle and Jones spoke. After church we had a mini-lesson with our investigator that came to church, and we answered some questions that he had about the Priesthood and such. It was good, and I think he's starting to understand stuff a bit better now. After church we had some lunch, did our weekly planning, then had dinner at the Deckers'. Like usual, the food was really good. A bit later we helped Elder Decker get some stuff set up on his computer, and then came home to finish planning.

Your homework for this week (and last week) is to read 1 Nephi 10-11 (yes, that's two chapters). They talk about Christ! Who doesn't like reading about Christ? Hopefully you do. (If not, you can start practicing now).

Well everyone, have a great week! Talk to you then.

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