Week 94: Asian Food, a Concrete Block, and more Facebook

Hello everybody! I hope you're doing well. The weather here is really warm, but it's ok I guess, haha. The start of this week wasn't terribly interesting, but don't worry, it gets better toward the end ;)

So, Tuesday this week started with some phone calls to try to set up lessons, but then the rest of the day wasn't particularly interesting until the late afternoon when we went over to a member's place to see what we could do to help. They need a new fence, so we figured out a plan with that and helped clean some stuff up in preparation. That evening we of course had English, and a fair number of people came. That night for dinner, Elder Christensen and I tried a Chinese place that we hadn't tried yet. Novi Sad has a lot of places for Chinese food.

Wednesday started with our time doing work on Facebook, and then going to District Meeting at the Nields' place. Sister Marinković gave a great lesson on Christlike attributes. At this point the sisters were on exchanges again, so we had Sister Woolf from Belgrade temporarily instead of Sister Icke. Later on we re-met up with them to do some language study together, and then Elder Christensen and I did some more contacting and stuff and that was about it for the day.

On Thursday we did some contacting over to a place where Elder Bradshaw and I had met a guy that said we could come back to visit him, but he said he didn't have time right then. On our way back towards the main part of town, some guy on a bike started trying to talk to us, but he was speaking German. I tried communicating with him in German, but it wasn't really working. He asked if we spoke English, and we told him yes. Turns out he doesn't really speak English, though. Probably better than my German, at any rate. He didn't seem to know Serbian either. "What business in Serbia?" In any case, he seemed to want to tell us that Catholics like us shouldn't be preaching in Serbia. We told him that we're not Catholic. He also asked us if we were Jews. Nope. Then he told us, "Just tree religion: Katolic, Muslim, Ortodoks". Then he rode off. What an interesting guy.

A bit later we went to the church to help the Nields with some paperwork, did our own paperwork, did our Facebook work, and had language study. That evening we of course had English, but only 2 or 3 people came. It's interesting how that fluctuates so much. It was about then that the Sisters showed up from switching back, so now we have Sister Icke again.

Elder Christensen, Sisters Marinkovic and Icke, and myself

Friday wasn't terribly interesting until the evening when we got a call from Elder Nield saying we were going over to that member's house right then to help with the fence / gate. So, we changed and headed over there. We ended up moving a block of concrete that weighs something like 400 pounds, dug a spot for it, and pushed her car (temporarily out of order) into their driveway spot. Manual labor can be fun sometimes too. That night we went to another Chinese place and got some Sushi (yes, I know that Sushi is a Japanese dish, but that doesn't change the fact that we got Sushi at a Chinese place). Some of the pieces of Sushi were very small. I guess I've had mini Sushi now.

Mini sushi!

On Saturday morning we of course cleaned the church with the Nields and the sisters, which is always good. Then we got lunch at a traditional Serbian restaurant, which means that I had a cabbage salad, a lot of meat, and some potatoes. Good stuff. After some role-playing, we headed over to the church to do our Facebook work, and we discovered a swarm of Nields. That is, the Nields that we know have their 11 children + children-in-law here to visit, and all of them had just arrived at the church. That was pretty cool, actually. Then when we did our work on the Facebook pages trying to start good conversations with people, someone out of the blue sent a message to the page. They asked for a copy of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price, plus anything else we have about Joseph Smith. Long story short, we set up an appointment with him on behalf of the missionaries closest to him, and then told them about it as soon as possible and gave them his contact info. That's two big successes from Facebook so far!

Church on Sunday, June 3rd, 2018 in Novi Sad, Serbia

After that we translated a cool little document: the official announcement that the church will have a Serbian "triple combination" out in print by the end of October! That means we'll have the Doctrine & Covenants in Serbian, as well as the Pearl of Great Price! We've also discovered since then that they're on the internet! I'm excited for that. Then, for our language study we ended up attending the Sisters' first session of their new German Conversation Group! That means there were 3 participants, haha. It seems to be off to a good start, though. That evening we went to get dinner at a waffle place called "Waffle Boss" (kinda similar to "Waffle Love" in Provo UT), and that was great. The only sub-optimal part was when a lady in a nearby building was leaning out of her apartment window shaking out a rug. I think it must've been the rug that her dog sleeps on, since a giant cloud of dog hair came and landed on us (thankfully our waffles hadn't arrived yet, so they were safe). Those waffles were really good, though.

Sunday included of course going to church and having almost half of our congregation being of the Nield Clan. They're really cool people, btw. We watched the broadcast for the Europe Area, which was great, and included Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf speaking. After church, all of the many Nields departed to get on the road and start their adventures. The rest of the day included weekly planning, and all the other typical stuff.

Church on Sunday with the Nield clan and our usual attendees.

This morning started off with some more tennis (somehow this has turned into a pattern), and now emailing. We've been listening to the Be One celebration that apparently happened this week, and it had a really cool quote near the start: "The equality of God is not equal outcomes for all, but equal opportunity for all." -Dallin H. Oaks. I think that concept is really important. Each of us is responsible for our own decisions and how much work we put into something, and the outcomes are the result of those our efforts.

Your homework this week is to read Mosiah 27, which is the chapter when Alma the younger and the sons of Mosiah are visited by an angel. But, before that comes a verse that seems easy to overlook, verse 3. It states that there was a strict command that people not persecute each other. So, even if someone is different from you, don't be mean to them. Esteem thy brother as thyself.

I hope you have a great week! Here are some photos of our Sushi!

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