October 24, 2016
Hello everybody! So it turns out that I'll be serving the
next 2 (or more?) months in Нови Сад, Србија! That is, Novi Sad, Serbia.
My companion is Elder Jex, who's been on his mission for just over a
year. I only understand maybe 40% of what natives say, depending how fast
they talk, but my companion, Elder Jex, can get it since he's been here a year.
I can speak fairly well if I just come up with something to say fast enough. As
a cool thing that doesn't fit anywhere else in this email, the keys here are
awesome. Some of them are huge, some of them look archaic, and some of them
look sponges. I'll have photos next week ;)
So, our last MTC P-day involved a lot of
packing. Also, I ran into a few BYU friends on my way to the temple, and
one of the temple workers had made some really tasty spaghetti for us, since it
was our last day there. That night was also our list time seeing each of our
teachers. Tears were shed, pictures were taken, and hands were shook. Good
stuff. We also read Alma 17, which starts off talking about the sons of Mosiah
and their missionary experiences. We all related to that stuff a lot.
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| Me with Brad Blackham, who was one of my roommates from BYU |
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| Elder Leach and I with one of our MTC teachers, Sister Watts |
Sunday was a little bit crazy. In church, I was one of the
people randomly selected to speak. The topic was The Book of Mormon, and I had
my general outline with a few quotes written down. I went up and mostly just
followed the spirit. "Oddly enough", I ended up talking a lot about
Christ, his Atonement, and how The Book of Mormon testifies of him. Christ is
the center of our church and everything we teach, so I guess it was only
natural that that's where I'd be led to focus my thoughts. At the end of the meeting,
our district (the departing missionaries) sang my translation of "A
Child's Prayer". It went quite well, I thought. I love how the song
emphasized that God, our Heavenly Father, loves and hears each and every one of
us. He cares about you.
That night Elder Leach and I watched "Open Your
Mouth" by Elder Holland. It was a devotional he gave at the MTC a few
years ago that talked about the importance of sharing this wonderful knowledge
which we have, and how words are really our only tool to help others come unto
Christ. one of my favorite things he said was something like "the
truth must be stated to be known". It seems kinda obvious, but it
emphasized the fact that we need to just tell people about Christ and
his love before they can come to know for themselves of his love.
Monday and Tuesday were a lot of travel. While in Germany I
tried legit German food. I got "Frankfurter mit brot" and it was
pretty good. 2 long skinny sausages, a hard little split-top roll thing, and a
pack of mustard-ish stuff. I don't usually like mustard, but I was in Germany,
so I put it on everything and it was awesome.
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| My travel itinerary: From Salt Lake to Chicago, then to Frankfurt Germany, and on to Zagreb, Croatia |
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| My Mission President, President Grant, and his wife, Judy Grant, posed for a picture with me right after I arrived. |
One of the cool things right off the bat when we got to the
mission office was that we got a temporary "mentor" (while they
picked our companions) and we just walked right out into the streets of Zagreb
for an hour to go find people to teach. While I was out, we did find one guy
who was willing to listen, and got his number for the Zagreb missionaries to
contact later.
On Wednesday we had some more training in the mission home,
and found out our companions and where we'd be going. That night we all
dispersed to our various cities. On Thursday, Elder Jex and I had a fairly
normal day. we had a lesson with a less active member. When we met up, he
wanted to play chess first, and promptly destroyed us about 6 times in maybe 8
minutes. We also went out into the streets trying to find more people to teach
(that's our primary activity so far). Got off a pamphlet to someone who was
willing to listen. While we were out, we got Gyros for lunch, and Elder Jex was
like "you're going to want to get that sauce back there. it's called
Грчка" and then we stepped up to order. When the lady asked me a question
I didn't understand, I just said Грчка, thinking she was starting to ask what I
wanted on mine. She laughed. Elder Jex later informed me that the discussion
went something like this: "will this be for here or to go?"
"Greek."
Friday, we got up at 3:30 to drive back to Zagreb for a
mission-wide conference where we heard from President Hallstrom from the 70,
and Elder Johnston. Their talks were good, but apparently I was too
tired to actually properly pay attention. I wonder why.
#jetLagPlusNoSleepAnyway. But now it's ok ;) I've gotten enough sleep since
then. In any case, it was super cool to get to see all the missionaries from
the whole mission all together. When Elder Jex and I got back to Novi Sad that
night, we met up with some local friends and got dinner together. That was some
good practice with speaking my Serbian, since they also spoke english and could
help me along with it.
Saturday was a whole lot of street contacting. It's hard to
get up the guts to just stop someone and start talking to them (in Serbian).
But, it works out. People are usually polite, even if they don't want to talk
about religion. We did find a few people willing to take some pamphlets or
give us their number. This city is pretty cool, btw. I like trying to read
all the signs written in Cyrillic. There were a few times the last few days
when there were fighter jets flying over the city really fast in some kind of
show. Apparently it's not a holiday, but it sure seemed like it.
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| The sights in Novi Sad |
Sunday, was when we had church, of course. Elder
Jex and I blessed the sacrament, and so I got to read the blessing
for the water from a card written in the Cyrillic alphabet. This is
was the Cyrillic alphabet generally looks, like, btw: Ја знам да је
Исус Христ наш спаситељ и да нас воли Он. I also had the opportunity
to start the meeting by introducing myself and bear my testimony
(Surprise! jk. Not a surprise at all). After me, Elder Jex was the other
speaker, and he talked about grace, and how we are enough right now, thanks to
Christ and his mercy. I only asks that we try to follow him and improve ourselves
bit by bit.
We also taught Sunday school, about Helaman 5. We focused largely
on how we need to build our foundation on Christ. I ended up mostly just
writing stuff up on the board, since it takes me a while to come up with
something to say which I can say in Serbian. But, I did contribute now and
then.
And today is P-day! So, we get to do our grocery shopping
and laundry. It'll be good.
Your homework this week is to read 3 Nephi 11, where Christ
first appears to the Nephites and begins teaching them.
Like always, I love you all! Stay awesome.
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