Happy Monday...can you believe that tomorrow is October 1? I cant. Except for the fact that the weather is getting colder so I can tell winter is coming. I am seriously freezing all the time. But I am always freezing so I guess I should have expected it. But I will survive the winter...with layers and layers of clothing. This week has been a good week though.
Monday...we had FHE scheduled with a family in the branch but they called and cancelled on us at the last minute. So we decided to go check up on some potentials that we had found a few weeks ago just to see if they were interested. So we went to visit J and S. They let us in and were very nice. They fed us food and then we talked to them about the Book of Mormon. We shared some scriptures with them. They told us they werent interested. We asked them if they had anyone that would be interested and they told us that we should keep our books because no one they knew would want to read or learn about it. We were a little disappointed but at least we know that they arent ready now.
Tuesday...we read with B and then we had district meeting. During District Meeting we were talking about people that the Prestons needed us to go with to visit this week and they wanted to go out and visit N. So Sister Preston called him to ask if we could come visit him that week. H insisted that we needed to come right now because he needed help picking fruit. So we finished district meeting and headed out to his house. W picked fruit and talked with him. The fruit we picked is called Dunja in Croatian...it translates to Quince in English but it is nothing I have ever seen or heard of in my life. We ound out the hard way that you cant eat them plain but you have to cook them in a compote and add lots of sugar...they dont taste very good plain. But we seriously picked probably 100 pounds of Dunja. Ten we brought them back and gave them to the members because that is what N told us to do.
After we had an English lesson with a girl named P. She had called and asked us if we could do pivate lessons and since we were doing them with someone else we couldnt tell her no. So we told her the requirements and what they would entail and she agreed and we went out to her house. Her whole family was there and she has 4 siblings. We taught her English which was like banging my head on the wall. Sister Frampton had lost patience within five minutes...I was able to keep calm and finish it but it was difficult. She said that she has been taking English for 8 years but I am pretty sure I knew more Croatian when I entered the MTC than she knows English now. We told her to count for us and she couldnt make it to 20. Thn we went over question words...who, what, where, when and why. We would practice one for 5 minutes and then move on to the other one and then I would go back to the first one and she couldnt remember it. It was serious torture. She also needed some help with her homework so we did that and even when I explained it in Croatian she didnt understand it. Frustrating. Anyway...after we told her that we had a message to share with her family. So they all sat down and listened to us. We had a really good discussion with them but they told us they had their faith and they werent interested in learning about the Gospel. So we will see if we continue to do these English lessons. At one point the Dad wanted to talk but instead of just talking to us in Croatian he was trying to get her to translate it for us. She couldnt do it. But I could understand his Croatian. After that we had English classes at the church which went well. Our English classes are doing awesome! We have so many students and they love it. We have a new student almost every class which is great!
Wednesday we decided to try something different and we went around to local businesses and places all around Osijek asking them to put up flyers for English classes, etc. We talked to a lot of nice people and got a lot of people to put flyers up and we are hoping that they will help. We also had the Family History class which went really well. I was on a computer helping one of the members input his family information into family tree. He is the first member in his family so none of his information was on there. It was so cool to do it. The second he would enter a name in the little temple icon would pop up. The first time it did it I made him click on it and I was like see now you can go do all of that for them...I think I was more excited about it than he was. It really was making me so excited and it made me miss the temple. He has got a lot of work to be done and I am excited for him to be able to go to the temple and do work for his family members. It was a little interesting trying to type Croatian names in using an English keyboard because we were on the Prestons laptop but we used our good friend copy and paste and made it work.
Thursday...we went with the Prestons to translate a meeting for them at a care center where the church is donating appliances to some apartments so that some of the people living in the care center can be in their own apartments. Afterwards we went and visited L...she is a woman that let us into her house a few weeks ago and we have kept trying to meet with her again but she says that she is busy. So we decided to just go show up. She was really nice about it. She wouldnt let us in but she came out and talked with us. She said she has been reading the Book of Mormon but hasnt been able to read it how she really wants to because she is going through some difficult times in her life right now. She said that she thinks about us all the time and that her daughter asks about us often. We read a scripture with her and encouraged her to read from the Book of Mormon and that if she does it with a sincere desire it will help her through her trials in life.
Friday was a bit of a stressful day. We got transfer calls Friday morning. Nothing is changing here. Sister Frampton and I are both staying in Osijek and we arent getting another set of missionaries yet. We are happy about it. We also had to go with the Prestons to translate with them for a meeting and then Elder Preston gave me some papers that he needed translated for his lesson on Sunday. It kind of turned into a week of translating for me. I had one of our English students ask me to translate something for him and he asked really rude and said your Croatian isnt very good and you probably wont be able to translate this but will you try. So I had to do it just to prove to him that I could. And I did it. I think he was in shock.
Friday night we had Aktivnost. We did a bunch of brain teaser type games and it ended up being a lot of fun...I like those type of things though!
Saturday...we went with the Prestons to visit an inactive member who lives in Zupanija which is about an hour away from Osijek. We have tried calling her several times but she never answers so we decided to just go. We went out there and she wasnt home but we left a note so at least she knows that we tried and we are thinking about her. The mission right now is really focusing on finding and rescuing less active members so we are doing a lot of that. Sometimes we have success and sometimes we dont but we keep trying.
After we did Young Womens with A. We talked about Faith and the Atonement and read some scriptures. We brought nail polish so that we could paint her nails after but she didnt want us to paint her nails she just wanted to paint our nails. So we did. Saturday night we went tracting. We knocked on a door and a man answered so we talked to him for a few minutes. He told us that he wasnt interested in our religion but if we wanted to come in for a beer we could. Sister Frampton tried to tell him that we dont drink but instead she said actually we dont pee. He started laughing so hard.
Sunday I got to speak in church. Elder Preston had given me the topic of What the Hymns Teach Me. He gave it to me about 2 weeks ago and I was really struggling with it. It was a really hard topic and I didnt even know where to start. But I finally found a few stories and such that I could use for it and realized that it doesnt matter what I say as long as I have the spirit. It turned out to not be so stressful and ended up being good. I had a lot of people asking me about the stories and scriptures that I shared and I could tell that they had really paid attention and liked it. So it was good. We went tracting for a little bit and found a few people that said they were busy but that we could come back. And then the Prestons invited us for dinner so we went over there. Sister Preston had made Sarma which is a Croatian meal. It is cabbage filled with meat and rice and it is in like a tomato sauce. Sister Prestons Grandmother was actually born in Croatia so thats how she got the recipe. It was really good but after eating it neither me or my companion were feeling so great. We arent sure what it was. We are doing better though. We werent like sick sick it just didnt settle well. We then went with the Prestons to visit some less active members that live just a little outside of Osijek, the Kokorović. The Mom and her son were home. We had a really good visit with them and invited them to come watch conference with us this weekend. I had never met either of them so it was good to get out there and meet them. They were very nice. We then came home and put our organizing skills to use and organized and went through our area book. We wrote down names, numbers, and addresses of people that we want to go try to visit and made a map and a gameplan of how to visit them all in the most effective way. So we are going to try that this week and hope that we have some success with it. Because tracting and contacting are proving to not be as effective as we would like. And you cant do the same things and expect different results. So we are trying to use some new finding techniques as well as the things that we normally do and hope that it will help.
One day this week I had my pens out and Sister Frampton asked me if she could have my green pen. She didnt know what she was getting herself into when she asked that questions. I dont give people my pens. I like my pens.
This week was a good week...it was a little calmer than most weeks and we did some different things than we usually do which was good to have a little change of pace. We thought that we had some members mad at us because they wouldnt answer our phone calls but they came to church and were just fine...so we dont know why they wouldnt answer our calls but atleast they werent mad at us. We have already got a full week this week and we are really excited for it! We werent able to teach M this past week because he has had some health problems but he is doing better and we are hoping these health scares will give him a reason to quit smoking. :) We got some bad news yesterday in that our branch President got a permanent job in Zagreb so he wont be coming back to Osijek. We are happy for him and know that it will be a great opportunity for him but we are sad that he is not coming back to Osijek. And we dont really have anyone else that could be the branch president which means it will fall on Elder Preston. But we will push through and survive. I am excited for this transfer and am excited to still be in Osijek. Even though sometimes I get frustrated and feel like I need a change I know that this is where I need to be and there is a reason that I am here for at least another transfer. I hope that you all have a great week!
Love you lots!
Sestra Clark
Shoutouts!
Thanks for the emails form Dad, Mom, Carrie, Grandpa, Zach, and Allie
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