Week 100: Subotica, Chalking, and People talking about Sports

Hey everybody!

So, this week has had quite a bit less rain. It's nice to have sunshine again. Last Monday, after emailing, it did end up raining in the evening. It's been good since then, though.

On Tuesday we called people to try to set up lessons, and had a meeting with Elder Nield to go over how things were while they were gone on the mission's annual temple trip. That evening before English, that same member that had cooked for us on Saturday showed up to again cook a meal for us, since she felt like she'd messed up the other meal (even though it was totally fine and we told her so repeatedly). So, we had a nice soup, and then Gibanica, too.

Wednesday started off with a trip to the MUP (police station?) to get some forms that we'll need for Elder Bird's visa when we finally find time to do that. The MUP is kinda far away, and it has very restricted working hours, so it's hard to get over there. That afternoon we had a great district meeting at the Nields' place with them and the sisters, and some guests! That is, the sisters from Belgrade, Sisters Livingston and Roberts, were down here for exchanges, so they joined us for district meeting. That evening we had another Book of Mormon class scheduled for branch members to attend, but no one came except for the 4 sisters. Oh well. After that, the 6 of us went together to get dinner at a place that has traditional Serbian food (most of which is meat). Pretty good stuff.

In the morning on Thursday we got picked up by the Nields and went out to Subotica! That's a town in Serbia that's extremely close to the Hungarian border, so almost all the signs have both Serbian and Hungarian written on them. The reason for our little trip was to visit some members that live all the way out there, since there isn't a branch in Subotica. What great people. That afternoon, after we'd come back to Novi Sad, Elder Bird and I had some studies and did our Facebook finding, and then English Conversation Group of course rolled around. For dinner after that, we tried to get Sushi, but the place where we went had totally run out of sushi, and then it took forever for our food to come out, so we just took it to-go. But, while we were waiting for our food, we ended up drawing various missionary lessons on our paper throw-away place mats.

Friday started off with some paperwork stuff at the church, and then we went to get lunch at a place near the church that we walk past all the time but have never tried. It's called "Bajka", which means "Fairytale", and it turns out that they have reeeeeeally good pizza. We're definitely going to go back there sometime. Later that afternoon/evning, we went over to the river with the sisters to do some big chalk drawings. We drew out the Plan of Salvation with some labels and scriptures. We did it in a place that's pretty busy at night because of Exit, which is a huge music festival that happened this last week. On our way home, we noticed that all of the TVs in the city were set to a certain tennis match with Novak Đoković.

Chalk Drawings we did of the Plan of Salvation

On Saturday morning we cleaned the church with the Nields and the sisters, and it was good to have the whole group of us 6 back together, since the Nields had been gone on the annual mission temple trip to Switzerland. After that, Elder Bird and I had lunch at Gyros Master, and then had some studies. That evening, like every Saturday, the sisters had their German class, and then we went to get waffles for dinner.

Sunday of course started with church, and there were a lot of people there. We had 6 investigators at church! Since there were 19 non-missionaries there, that means we had over 30% nonmember attendance! There was an interesting moment with the sacrament when we were passing the water, too. It turned out that we were one cup short, so Elder Bird and I went and filled one up and re-blessed it so the last person could take the sacrament too. It's kinda a cool teaching moment when stuff like that happens, since sometimes people think you can just fill up another cup without re-blessing it. In any case, the sisters performed a special musical number, singing and playing Ukulele, and that was wonderful. At the end of the day we had dinner at the Nields' with the sisters and some other German visitors, so I got to practice more German! I don't remember my original missionary call letter saying anything about learning German... anyway, we also heard that Novak Đoković won Wimbledon (tennis), and that Croatia got 2nd in the World Cup (soccer, if you don't know). Cool.

As for today, we did some emailing, etc., had a lesson with "John" (he asks really good questions, btw), and then played some games with him. Fairly uneventful day.

Your homework this week is to read 3 Nephi 12! That has the Book of Mormon version of what are often called the "Beattitudes". We talked about that as part of our lesson with "John" and the question came up of how meekness is a positive attribute. Isn't meekness the same as being submissive? Just letting people walk all over you? Perhaps in some sense of the word, but I think what was intended here is submitting to the will of God with patience. What do you think?

Thanks for reading these emails! You'll only be getting a few more. Here are some photos! One is a sign in Subotica that has the days of the week in both Serbian and Hungarian. Another one is a panoramic of part of our chalk diagram of the Plan of Salvation. It's in two parts.

Have a great week!

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