Week #13

Rain, Rain, Rain then Dry So last week there was rainfall like crazy with finding people and literally!!! We found a bunch of people to teach and we set up appointments. We tracted into this woman about 2 weeks ago and finally were able to meet last week. While we were talking to her, she said she already had a Book of Mormon from missionaries last year, read half of it, and knows its a book from God and that Joseph Smith must be a prophet. I didn't understand this at the time, but for some reason we didn't ask her to be baptized! But we're meeting with her today, and we will invite her. You'll see next week what happened! After our excitement of getting all these appointments, we went through a dry spell with the weather and all the appointments either fell through or everyone we talked to wasn't interested :( But we're still holding strong! Our mission president gave us the goal to have 40 baptisms by June starting now! If we do, we can go to Zagreb to celebrate the 40th anniversary! So we'll get it done! All that we need to do is testify, testify, testify, and invite, invite, invite like thousands of times so we can get those 40 people who are ready :)

So the reason why I'm e-mailing on a Tuesday instead of a Monday is because of Easter! They celebrate Easter for two days, so pretty much everything was closed down. It was weird being down town on a Monday that looks like it's supposed to be Sunday. It reminds me of my dad's version of Easter. On Saturday, we have 'pagan' rituals (Easter egg hunts, gifts, etc) and on Sunday we celebrate the real reason we have Easter and talk about Christ. So that's kind of what they do but depending on the family depends on when they do Easter egg hunts and stuff. On Sunday, we went to Trsat for Catholic Mass. I gained a love from Jerusalem of Religious Envy where I love watching other people worship. This time it was interesting though, because I understood more of why I love how I worship. I feel more connected with my Lord and I kept watching others and saw the love God had for these people. I wanted to just go up to every single one of them and just express this love to them and tell them how they can feel this love all the time. They will...in time.

The funny story of this week happened one night during tracting. I don't know what I would do if I wasn't trying to learn a language. It seems like all my funny stories come from that. So while Sestra L. and I were tracting, we knocked on this door and this woman opened the door. But as soon as she opened the door she crossed herself and said something. Right after, Sestra L. said Žao mi je which means I'm sorry. So I thought someone had died because the lady seemed really sad. I was preparing myself to ask questions about the plan of salvation and how to quickly but effectively explain. But the conversation went elsewhere and so I just dropped it. I came to find out later that the woman just said that we scared her. Oh wow. I take things a little dramatically.

My scripture of the week is 3 Nephi 18:16. We make sure we are around people who lift us up a lot so we have the strength to keep going when others are not around. I see this strength every Sunday with members, new members, and investigators. It's hard being 1 of 20ish members in a city. Especially if you had smoked before and see EVERYONE else smoking or the butts on the ground. But Christ has showed us the way, and He keeps showing us the way. We're going to share this scripture with the woman I mentioned in the first paragraph and then ask her to follow Christ and be baptized. Bah! Pray for us :) I know you do, so keep it up! We need the strength to keep going and doing the right things! Volim vas puno!!!