Hello everyone! I'm going to tell you right off the bat right now that this
email is going to be shorter than normal. And probably not anywhere near as
detailed, since I don't have my journal with me. Hopefully I'll be able to
remember what even happened this week.
On Tuesday we started off with a lesson with a lady that was
baptized about 15 years ago, but who was never confirmed. It's kind of an odd
situation. In any case, it was a really good lesson, and we had the Monsons
there to help, and even though there are some problems with transportation so
she can come to church, she seemed determined to figure out a way to start
coming again. The rest of that day was kinda just the normal stuff until ECG,
when we again had a full 6 people come, which was great. After ECG finished, we
then put on the special broadcast/announcement from the church, in which we
found out that President Russel M. Nelson is the new President of the church,
and the prophet. It was a pretty cool broadcast, and he of course had some good
things to say. The biggest that that I noticed was him talking about "the
covenant pathway" and the temple. As followers of God, we ought to strive
to make and keep covenants, including especially those in the temple. If you
don't know what temples are for, feel free to ask. If you know what temples are
for but have never been, work towards being able to go! If you've been to the
temple before, figure out how and when you will go the next time.
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| The Paris, France Temple |
On Wednesday we had to take a trip to Ljubljana one more
time, but this time for my visa stuff, not Elder Love's we were supposed to
meet up with the guy who knows how all this stuff works at 1pm, plus 4 sisters
that also needed to show up for similar stuff. Turns out our friend who had the
forms and such couldn't make it on time because he had a doctor's appointment
that got delayed pretty badly. So, then the plan was to meet at the visa place
at 3pm. But, we were all already there. So, we found a restaurant nearby and
sat down to have lunch for an hour, and then all had language study together
for the other hour. But we didn't really have any books to study from, so we
had a nice long conversation in only Slovene, asking each other questions along
the way. There's no practice like real life, right? Anyway, we did eventually
get the visa stuff taken care of, and then came back to Celje. We kind of ended
up running in circles as the GPS tried to first take us to a gas station that
didn't exist, but we eventually got it to take us to a real one to fill up.
That night we had dinner with that member that came to church for the first
time in a while last week, and it was again good to get to know him better.
On Thursday we didn't really have anything special, but when
we had ECG for that evening, a whole 7 people came! This place suddenly came
alive, now that the holidays are clearly over. It's good.
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| Me and Elders Jensen, Hanks, and Crapo at Zone Conference |
Friday was zone conference! That means another trip to
Ljubljana. It was really good, like always. I really love getting to see other
missionaries at events like Zone Conference. Also, the lunch was catered by two
ladies from the Ljubljana branch, which means that it was all native Slovene
food. So, really good.
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| Me with Sister Squires and Sister Brown. The one photo bombing in the back is Sister Baker. |
Saturday, for lunch we went to a member's house with the
Monsons. So yet again, we had some really good native Slovene food. After that,
we helped her prepare some food for the big branch lunch for Sunday. For most
of the rest of the day we looked for members and did some tracting and nothing
really happened. We were originally planning on going to Ljubljana to attend
another baptism, but the investigator got sick and backed out and stuff, so we
couldn't go either. Oh well.
Yesterday, Sunday, we of course had church, which was
splendid. Yet another member that hasn't come to church in a long time, came
for the first time again. That was nice. He's from Serbia, and so I ended up
talking with him in Serbian about Sremska Mitrovica a bit. Then for Sunday
School I was the one teaching the lesson out of the book of Moses, which we
don't have translated into Slovene. So, we were using the old Croatian version
(we don't even have the new one here yet), and it was pretty fun. Though, the
lesson did end up going pretty well. At the end in my closing remarks I ended
up accidentally using a Croatian word, since I'd just had all that Croatian
influence in my head from the reading, and everyone thought that it was pretty
funny (including me). The lesson for Elders' Quorum was again taught by our
Peruvian member, who's learning Slovene. I'm pretty sure I've said this before,
but I really like hearing him speak his mix of Spanish and Slovene. Also, he
just teaches really darn good lessons! Then after church we had a big lunch all
together, which means even more traditional native Slovene food! Plus, one of
the members of Serbian heritage brought Sarma (meat and rice wrapped in cabbage
leaves, that has then been cooked/soaked for a number of hours), one of my
favorite foods from over here. It was really great. Later that night we had an
activity sort of thing where we watched the broadcast/devotional from Elder and
Sister Uchtdorf that they did about a week ago. Man, those were some good
talks. His talk seemed really applicable to real life, you know? He just really
answered pretty much any practical question that a young person can have. For
example, "I have no idea what career would be best for my future; what do
I do?" It may be one of my favorite talks ever. Then we had lemon bars
after and it just added onto to awesomeness.
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| The island in the middle of Lake Bled. It's so scenic! |
Today was a bit of an adventure. It's a bit of a long story,
but after doing some of our business stuff in the morning, we went with the
Monsons to Ljubljana for them to do some business type stuff, and then
continued on past Kranj and over to Lake Bled! I don't know if any of you have
seen postcard-photos from Slovenia, but if you have, then you've probably seen
a photo of Lake Bled. It's a really pretty lake, that has a castle up on a
cliff on one side overlooking the lake, plus an island right in the middle (the
only island in Slovenia, apparently) that has this cool church on it. It was
really cool. They also have a special kind of cake that's unique to that little
region, I guess, so we of course got ourselves some of that. Apparently the
Ljubljana sisters and Kranj sisters were there too, and we eventually found
them with Sister Kanell stuck in the bathroom in a pizzeria. I'd say it's a
long story, but it's actually quite short: they got lunch at the pizzeria,
Sister Kanell used the bathroom, and the door wouldn't open when she needed to
get out. Weird. On our way back to Celje, the four of us wandered our way into
Kranj and got some of their missionary-famous Doner Kebab. It was pretty good,
but I couldn't really tell a difference from the Celje Kebab that we have
(which is equally missionary-famous). But, turns out that Kranj is a super cool
city. That was the first time I'd ever been there.
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| A view of Kranj, Slovenia. |
Anyway, your homework for the week is to watch the
announcement about President Russel M. Nelson being the new president of the
church, including the messages that he and his counselors gave. Then, if you
want extra credit, you can watch the devotional from Elder and Sister Uchtdorf!
It's really really good, especially if you're wondering what to do with your
life or how to make big decisions.
Here are some photos! Enjoy! Have a great
week!
--
Elder Ryan Echols--
Adriatic North Mission
Svačićev Trg 3/1
HR-10000 Zagreb
Croatia
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