Hello everyone! This week has been pretty good. The weather has been a bit
colder again, and yesterday it even started snowing! So now there's snow all
over. I like it. Anyway, on to the weekly adventures.
Last Monday, after emailing, we went to have dinner with one
of the members around here that used to be the branch mission leader, and then
we got ice cream after. It was a pretty good time. While we were over there in
that part of town, Elder Love decided that he wanted a jigsaw puzzle, since
he'd obviously seen my doughnut jigsaw puzzle, so he bought one too and did
that this week.
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| Elder Love's completed puzzle. |
On Tuesday, Elder Love and I went "former
hunting". That's where we try to find people that have met with the
missionaries in the past, whose addresses we still have. This time it took us
way over to the far north edge of Celje, near the church of the Holy Ghost. We
found the lady, but she said no. On our way back, we talked to a lady on the
street that started off with the response that her boyfriend had studied
theology and had been planning on being a priest, trying to imply that she
couldn't possibly be interested. But, I said, "Oh, then he'll love this
book!" and showed her the Book of Mormon and explained a bit about it. She
actually took a copy to show to him, and was amazed at how well we spoke
Slovene. Then around noon the Zone Leaders, Elders Jensen and Zimmerman, showed
up for us to start exchanges. But first we all got Kebab, and the zone leaders'
car got a parking ticket. Anyway, then Elders Zimmerman and Love left for
Ljubljana, and it was me and Elder Jensen here in Celje together again, just
like old times. Then we had a lesson with "Ender", who Elder Jensen
of course already knew. It went really well, and Elder Jensen was really
impressed with how he's changed since even last transfer, a few weeks ago. A
bit later we had a first lesson with that guy that we met just before New
Year's. He talks really fast. But, the lesson went really well despite me often
needing to rely on Elder Jensen to know what the guy was saying. Turns out he
knows a lot of random stuff from the Bible, almost like he's read it a number
of times. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's read it a number of times. Anyway, he
said he'd be busy for the next few weeks, so we'll see what happens. Then we had
ECG, and only our star student came, the 12-year-old. He really is great,
though. We played pictionary at the end since we had a few extra minutes. For
dinner, Elder Jensen and I made tacos.
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| Me and Elder Love. |
Wednesday morning we had district meeting with the Monsons, which
was good as always. Toward the end of that, we got a call from the APs asking
me to get them some special numbers, since I'm "the DataMaster". It's
pretty interesting what you can find out from writing down a lot of stuff, and
then putting it all in a spreadsheet and telling it to give you a graph.
Anyway, then we had lunch, paid the Zone Leaders' parking ticket, had studies,
had a lesson fall through, did some roleplays, etc. Then we tried visiting a
potential investigator that wasn't home, and went tracting. Since we were
pretty far from our apartment, but were getting really hungry, we decided to
just stop at a restaurant on the way home. The one we picked was called
"Gostilna Amerika". Believe it or not, they don't have American food,
but rather Serbian. It was some really good food.
On Thursday morning we packed up Elder Jensen's stuff, then
headed out to Ljubljana to finish the exchange. Somehow we ended up giving a
blessing to a member's friend before meeting up with Elders Zimmerman and Love.
Elder Zimmerman made grilled cheese/paninis, and I messed with their
Christmas-themed Rubik's cube that kept falling apart. From there, Elder Love
and I headed out to get his Visa card thing, but the problem quickly arose that
we didn't know where the government building is where we could do that, and
neither did the Zone Leaders. So, we tried calling the other Ljubljana Elders,
and then the Sisters after the Elders didn't answer, and to make a long story
short, we eventually got there, after about 9 U-turns. Then we go in and the
lady says that Elder Love can't get the Visa thing without his parent or legal
guardian there, "because he's only 17". I told her that he was in
fact 18, and then she checked her math with the years and realized that he
really is 18. So then we got the Visa thing, and couldn't figure out how to get
out of the parking lot. We did eventually get out, and then drove back to
Celje. For ECG that night, a whole 6 people came! That's a large change from
normal, and it was great. After that, we had a lesson scheduled with
"Ender" and he didn't come.
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| Sister Brown, Sister Crosby, and me. |
On Friday we went to stop by a member's place to pick up
something that she needed to get to another member, and it turned out that she
invited us in and fed us lunch, and we shared a spiritual thought, and it was
great. Then we went to give that paper to the other member, and then ran into
yet another member on our way to the library to use Google Maps. Once we got
into the library, we ran into "Ender", and so scheduled a lesson for
later that day. Time for the lesson rolls around, and he doesn't come. Darn.
Well, at least I got to practice piano while we were waiting for him. Then we
went and tried to visit another member, but they were sick. On our way back,
the streets were really empty, and I don't really know why. Maybe it was
because it got cold again. So, we went back to the church and got some other
work done that needed to happen at some point. After dinner and language study,
we went over to the Monsons' place (they're the senior couple here in Celje) to
watch President Monson's funeral services (that President Monson being the
prophet and most recent President of this church). It was really good. Everyone
that spoke seemed to talk about how service-minded he was. Always keeping an eye
out for a way to help someone, even if it might seem really small.
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| President Monson will be missed. |
On Saturday morning we did some calls and such, then
borrowed the Monsons' car to fill it up with gas, since we used it to go to
Ljubljana. The GPS promptly led us to a gas station that doesn't currently
exist, so we did some circles around town a bit trying to get to one that does
exist. Anyway, we eventually got it figured out, had lunch, a lesson didn't
show up, but we re-scheduled it for later in the day. We did some contacting,
and then the re-scheduled time rolled around, and they again didn't show up. A
bit later we went out to visit an older member, and we talked a bit with him,
then read a chapter together in the Book of Mormon. He really likes reading the
Book of Mormon. As we left, he gave us a little chocolate Santa. From there we
tried visiting some other members, but none of them were home, so we ended up
tracting a building. We met one really chill guy that was really friendly, but
said he wasn't interested. We also ran into a lady that the Sisters had
apparently met before, and so we're going to try to visit her sometime soon.
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| A very strange looking chocolate Santa. |
Yesterday, Sunday, we had church of course. Probably the
best part was that one member came that hasn't come to church in quite a long
time! I don't know how long it's been, actually. Thanks to Elder Love for
texting him and asking him to come. Everyone was very welcoming, of course, and
it was great to see. The rest of church was pretty normal. Though, for Elders'
Quorum, our Peruvian Elders' Quorum president taught the lesson in his
half-Spanish half-Slovene. I love it. He basically uses Slovene verbs, nouns,
and adjectives, but then Spanish prepositions and conjunctions. It's great.
After church, Elder Love and I took care of the usual business stuff, and then
had a meeting with that member who came again for the first time in a long
time. It was a good talk, and it seems like he's pretty well on his path back
to coming every week, but there are still some hang-ups. We'll figure it out,
though. We had weekly planning like always, then dinner at the Monsons' like
every Sunday, and it was wonderful like usual. That night in our weekly call
with the Zone Leaders, they were of course extremely excited to hear that the
previously-mentioned member came back to church finally.
As for today, so far we've gone to buy groceries, did a
bunch of phone calls, some Area Book work, emailed, heard about some hype for
the winter olympics, got approached by a guy that's in an Estonian band, and
now we're going to go visit a member.
Your homework is to read I
Have a Work for Thee. It's super good. Every one of us has a specific
purpose here on Earth in this life. And it's not necessarily some one huge
thing; it very well might be a series of small positive things every day that
really add up.
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| Scrabble on someone's door! |
Here's a photo of Elder Love's puzzle, plus the last name on
someone's door that I thought looked like Scrabble. Have a great week!
--
Elder Ryan Echols
Adriatic North Mission
Svačićev Trg 3/1
HR-10000 Zagreb
Croatia
Adriatic North Mission
Svačićev Trg 3/1
HR-10000 Zagreb
Croatia
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