You know what is weird, he doesn't even know it is Halloween since they don't celebrate it over there. Just saying.
Um.... Cool week? Inflection? No. Cool Week. Sure of it. Here we go, round the Mulberry bush once again:
Last Monday was basically the longest day of my life. I kid you not. Man, oh man. It's no wonder mom gets all worried. I feel much better this time around, though. Sometimes I just get lazy and drink the water that the nice people here offer me, you know? Bad plan. Just a bad bad plan... Either way, better today.
Um... I can't actually remember the exact order of things, so this could get a little scattered. Today. Today is easy. I'm in an internet cafe in a town called Osijek which is in Croatia. I've just been to the MUP (Croatian Policeish Station) trying to change Elder Schouten's registration. Why would we spend our pday doing such things? I'll tell you why: he's now my companion and living in SM. On our exchange which was only supposed to last a week, on Wednesday morning as we tried to a catch yet another bus going to Belgrade we received a call from President. He asked us how we were, told us that we were now companions and that was that. Apparently due to increasing legal compexities with having Elder Jacobsen in Serbia (as he never officially unregistered from Zagreb where he'd been living because his stay was apparently only meant to be a transfer at most) the opportunity was too prime to pass up and so we've been pulling the switch these last couple of days. We're Dead. Šalim se.... I hope.
So we had a sleepover in Beograd from Wednesday to Thursday (we worked a double shift Wednesday and the morning Thursday), a sleepover with the now Osijek Elders (Jacobsen and Genther) Thursday to Friday, and a sleepover in Beograd from Friday to Saturday (did the same thing in the bookfair again). Not to mention the fact that we got in last night at around 10 and spent the night here in Osijek! Maybe someday we'll all be settled again, though I doubt it. President sure keeps us on our toes! So, C. Schouten and I have SM which is terrifying because it means that I have the best working knowledge of the city and the people who live in it. (Elder Jacobsen doesn't count. Too far away.) AAAAHHH! I'm cool, man. I'm cool.
Saturday: Novi Sad Elders were late to exchanging shifts at the book fair so we missed our bus. That made us two hours late to our lesson that we had. You'd think that our lessonee would be mad, right? Eh, not really.... Our lesson went good. Except for the part where her JW brother in law started to whip out all of these WatchTower quotes and bible bashing us. Ah well, she did kind of prepare us for that. Whatever. Outside of that, I mean the baptismal date that she has is kind of cool. I'm gonna do that one more time. HER BAPTISMAL DATE IS COOL. JS. There is now officially somebody getting baptized in SM on the 19th of November. Um, what? I have NO IDEA what just happened to me. We walked out of that lesson, where she basically just told us all the logistical problems that there might be with being baptized. No doctrinal issues, you know, just whatever. She's read the BoM like 15 times AND IT SHOWS. When we told her about Mosiah 18 she was like 'uh huh. Oh, and here in Third Nephi is the prayer that you'll say when you baptize me, right?' AAAAAHHH! itskindofcoolbutwhatever,youknow? So that was kind of a cool part of my week. Elder Schouten and I butchering the Serbian language. Tell you what, there is a God and he loves me because there is no possible way for that sort of thing to occur without Him. Jel tako? Which is to say, isn't it like that?
Sunday: Gave another talk. Blessed the sacrament (much better this time as I wasn't dying of a fever of like 112 degrees... jk mom). Taught Sunday School. Saw a pig being slaughtered. Drove to Osijek. Cool Day.
Once more: someonesgettingbaptizedinSremskaMitrovicawherethathasn'thappenedforabout3orsoyears. Ahh, gets better every time. :)
The Characters
President Vučenović
Really cool guy. Played basketball in high school. Used to be the District President over Serbia. Used to live across the river in Maćvanska Mitrovica. 56 years old. Craziest accent for me to practice my understanding on. Knows like everything about the people living in our area. Really helpful.
Duška Vučenović
Used to be a head cook at a classy restoraunt before the war. It shows. She makes the best punina paprika I've ever had. For some reason always is baking things whether she is expecting somebody or not. Speaks super fast but ennunciates so it's okay. Translates for General Conference. Currently translating for the Doctrine and Covenants team (There were guys from Salt Lake here in Beograd the other day to talk about its progress. Gives me hope.)
Ada and Milica Vučenović
Best singers together that I have ever heard. 12 and 15.895 respectively. Come to English, really cool if somewhat dramatic. Ada's in love with my MTC teacher Brother Morris. It's pretty funny.
Mama.
Jovanka Osterman. Really nice lady who leases her apartment behind her house. Early fifties. Loves the missionaries and has housed very very many of us. Calls us her children and demands that we call her mama. Only uses first names. Funniest lady ever, if you can understand her. Darn serbian language....
President
International lawyer for some huge law firm. Has lived in Bosnia, Belgium, Azerbaijan, and everywhere else cool in the world as far as I'm concerned. Married to a wonderful woman who he met in High School (also in Provo). Have 5 kids ranging about 5 to 17. Best gravelly laugh in the world! Basically the next new apostle...
The Missionaries (Serbian Zone)
Elder Freeman
Zone Leader. Novi Sad. From Lehi, UT. Really good at contacting and talking with people. Served for 5 months in Rijeka, HR before being transferred to be with Elder Beaument in Beograd due to the February Fiasco. Really excited about the work, really laid back kind of guy.
Elder Defreitas
Newbie with me. Originally called to Serbia, switched to Croatia, switched to Slovenia (studied their weird frenchie language for a month in the MTC), switched back to Serbia. In Novi Sad being trained. From Virginia Beach area, Virginia. Good with the language. Likes to laugh and eat Banjalućki čevap.
Elder Hansen
District Leader. Beograd. From Provo, UT. Funny as all get out. The single best Palačinke maker in the world (has bought a professional style palačinke maker. It's great for district meetings....
Elder Armond
Came out with me. In training. Beograd. From (you guessed it) Provo, UT. The best smile the world has to offer accompanied with the best prayer-scripture-reading voice in the world. It's wonderful. Loves Beograd. Never wants to leave.
Elder Schouten
My new trainer. Sremska Mitrovica. Been out 4 months at this point. (One transfer ahead of me). From Orem, UT (we really branch out, you know?). Is probably gonna be my best friend and worst enemy in the world pretty quick here. Way cool guy but he wants me to do this whole work-out thing that we're supposed to do. What a dumb idea.... Quiet, reserved. Nervous about the language. Happy to be in Serbia.
Elder Adams.
Yours truly.
The Beaument
Returned Missionary. Our idol. Served for 22 months solid in Beograd. Had 2 in SM and about 4 days in Novi Sad before the February thing happened.... Has many, many quotes up on the walls of the Beograd apartment. Pričaj Srpski, bre!
Elder Genther
Branch President. Osijek. Funniest guy you will never meet in your life. Bottom one of 7 brothers and 8 sisters. From UT somewhere... Not sure where. Loves to eat palačinke. to je to....
Elder Jacobsen
Pops. New DL in Osijek. Almost dead. Trunked. Šalim se.
Sister Creager
Training. Osijek. Same 'age' as Genther. Blonde.
Sister Black
Trainee. Osijek. Currently en route to Slovenia for the week. Same age as me. Way cool. From Saint Louis, Missouri.
That's about all I've got for right now and stuff but whatever... Hope everything is going well for you all.
I do get Tio's snail-mail and absolutely love it! I will probably at some point reciprocate.... Time. Not enough time...
Čiao.
С. Адамз
Croatia
Monday, October 31, 2011
Monday, October 24, 2011
10/24/2011
This one is kind of hard to follow...put your thinking caps on.
Okay, so we're writing a little late today. I'm actually writing a little later than late today as I've basically just been staring at the screen in a stupor for the last ten minutes. It's been a longweek. I'll try to be coherent but honestyly today I'm just not gonna worry about it too much. Man that indicative spelling of honestly right up there is bugging me. But I'd have to grab the mouse if I was going to fix it. Too much work.
Well, World Traveler C. Adams is once again not at home in dear Mitrovica. We are currently sitting in the awesome internet cafe of Beograd from a few weeks before. Why, do you ask, would our intrepid darers attempt to brave the black city of Gotham otherwise known as the White City of Communism lest their purposes and needs exceeded the very earths temperament and mettle?
That's COMMAND form of do you ask, by the way.
Books. The great culminating answer of answer which resounds across the flowing waves of babbling conversations diluted with the pall of chewable-thickness cigarette smoke can only be: Books. Yes, here we are at the world's second largest book fare in all the world and (i refuse to touch the mouse until I am done with this) selling copies of the book of mormon. The weird word that I hope our audience has abstracted from this sentence is, of course, selling. Why would the Lord's Missionaries dare to sell the word of God?! oh, idk. it's like the peeps hur dont bes spectin' til theyz gotsa pay fer it yuh fil me brah? lawlz? No, the people here just attribute more worth to a 100dinar book than to a priceless treasure printed in Italy (for Serbian). BOOKS. Ah the halls are rank with them. Old books, new books, invisible books, cook books, hebrew books, anti-american books, american books, books of mormon. It's fun. Books.
BOOK! Okay, um. Read a book this week that altered my life for the millionth time. That is, for the millionth time my life has been altered, with this first experience with that book being one in a million. ha. oh i'm witty... Um.... Problem is: the plan is for it to be Christmas back home. Um, what? Problem: finding in English. Problem: Time. Problem: Time. Problem: Redundancy. Solution:
WONDERBOY CHASE SAVES THE DAY! <----- 4th dimensional headline Um, so we can all be giggly girls and talk about it while we gulp tea (of course gulp, this is the 21st century, dang it!) and check our twitter followers for our gulp party. Cool? Cool. (M.S. anyone else who's interested in knowing the book may freely e-mail me. Just... um Mom can't. JS) Well, I can't rightly be with my обично companion today, can I? (Okay, not a swear-word. I couldn't think of the word for "normal" fast enough. Cyrillics was obviously the only expresative means of getting it out. It's artistic. dealwithit. Looks like President Rowe doesn't like us to be getting complacent and falling into routines. Either that, or Father-dearest sold his Dakovo pictures to go back to Osijek, the city of his love. He's there with Elder Genther and here I am with Elder Schouten! They're both in our Zone, and actually C. Schouten was called to serve in Serbia but due to the *ahem* mishap this last February, was unable to serve here. He's been in Osijek for four months dying to come home. His Croatian-Serbian switch is doing well, though. Either way, just with him until Thursday. We mad the switch on last Thursday at Zone Conference. Man, but I feel like this could read as a bad cartoon.... Zone conference was pretty cool. It wen't much smoother than the last one that we had because (why did I use an apostrophe on went?) well basically S. Genther remembered his passport. That's basically about it. Oh, and we had the most divinely supreme food because we asked Dushka Vuchenovich to "help" us. She basically prepared a multicourse meal with actual garnish on our sandwhiches (that's sad) and the most amazing Russian Honey cake thing that I've ever had. (First in my collection of recipes which i've just started. js. Any takers? If you can read Serbian, they're great. But it was cool. LONG. Pres. Rowe basically told me what we're doing isn't working. Do something else. Um, harsh but fair? The Something Else: APPARENTLY there's this thing called the Area Book that we're SUPPOSED to use in missionary work.... шалим се We've been going through ours cleaning it up and finding everybody who's just been "dropped" due to the pull-outs in Serbia or due to negligent missionaries. Too harsh? Problem is, it's been few and far between that people have either been in Mitrovica or used the book. We've got records going back to '02, a bunch from '07, and a few from '08 and '09. It's.... Slow. I think there's a theme here. BUT! We've found people. Like actual, living, breathing people who know who we are and don't hate us! It's kind of cool. Just gonna say. We've had lessons even. Heck, technically we have a new investigator (by virtue of having a follow-up appointment this thursday. (She's apparently read the book of mormon upwards of 15 times and has the most comprehensive list of missionary names that I've ever seen. She's got 'em back to '92. I kid you not. Yeah, she'll prolly get baptized.)) <--Cool. Double duty. It's been.... a LOT of walking. But it's been worth it. We know people, I have more numbers in our phone.... It's been fun. I'm a little sick. What do you do for aching kidneys? kind of kidding.... I think I definitely just had some tap-water on accident. NEWS: I DEFINITELY BLESSED THE WATER IN CHURCH THIS SUNDAY. (Read in Cyrillics, btw. One mess up right at the beginning...) I love my camera. Just so you know. Can't wait for you to get all these shots. Got the package. TP. For real? Alright.... Thanks for the Mapleine tho. Should be really good. PB - divine. Important: I'll prolly be here (okay, transfer rumours aside, I HOPE I'll be here) next transfer. Mama says that anything sent to her address makes it. Please feel free to send me things straight here. (Only the beginning parts of transfers which last 9 weeks if you're scared.) She also says to "pozdrav" you. So this is me saying for her "according to your health". She says hi, that is. List of sketchy Beograd happenings I've seen today: Definitely saw a drug trade. Like 15 year olds! Definitely saw a 7 year old puffin' away. Asked me for dinars.... Teens selling postcards for "needy children" I'm pretty sure that the grandpa on the comp right next to me is telling the teen he's skyping with that he's her father and where her siblings are? Idk. This darn language.... Definitely saw the Mafia drive by. Police forces and riot police holding small bats. Some sort of demonstration, I guess.... List of cool things that I've seen today in Beograd: Freaking communist-style post office! Biggest post I've ever seen in my life. fo real. Inside of TWO Pravoslav churches. (Orthodox) THE TEMPLE is one of these. It's great. They've been working on it for 200 years + and are just starting the inside. It's BEAUTIFUL Pravoslav girl quietly worshipping. Really touching. 2nd Biggest Book Fair in the World (Curse you, Germany! shallim se) 6 of the Lord's missionaries in the Capital City of form Communist Jugoslavia. Word of the Week: Љубичаст Ljubicast - Lj (kako?! No idea how to pronounce this....) ooh, bee, chahst. meaning: Purple Direct translation: Love honour. Favourite word? You betcha. neighbour. colour. and other british spellings too! Done. Pizza Hut time. Yay for American style pizza! If only they'd serve us more water!.... ah well. LOVE YOU Старешина Адамз
Okay, so we're writing a little late today. I'm actually writing a little later than late today as I've basically just been staring at the screen in a stupor for the last ten minutes. It's been a longweek. I'll try to be coherent but honestyly today I'm just not gonna worry about it too much. Man that indicative spelling of honestly right up there is bugging me. But I'd have to grab the mouse if I was going to fix it. Too much work.
Well, World Traveler C. Adams is once again not at home in dear Mitrovica. We are currently sitting in the awesome internet cafe of Beograd from a few weeks before. Why, do you ask, would our intrepid darers attempt to brave the black city of Gotham otherwise known as the White City of Communism lest their purposes and needs exceeded the very earths temperament and mettle?
That's COMMAND form of do you ask, by the way.
Books. The great culminating answer of answer which resounds across the flowing waves of babbling conversations diluted with the pall of chewable-thickness cigarette smoke can only be: Books. Yes, here we are at the world's second largest book fare in all the world and (i refuse to touch the mouse until I am done with this) selling copies of the book of mormon. The weird word that I hope our audience has abstracted from this sentence is, of course, selling. Why would the Lord's Missionaries dare to sell the word of God?! oh, idk. it's like the peeps hur dont bes spectin' til theyz gotsa pay fer it yuh fil me brah? lawlz? No, the people here just attribute more worth to a 100dinar book than to a priceless treasure printed in Italy (for Serbian). BOOKS. Ah the halls are rank with them. Old books, new books, invisible books, cook books, hebrew books, anti-american books, american books, books of mormon. It's fun. Books.
BOOK! Okay, um. Read a book this week that altered my life for the millionth time. That is, for the millionth time my life has been altered, with this first experience with that book being one in a million. ha. oh i'm witty... Um.... Problem is: the plan is for it to be Christmas back home. Um, what? Problem: finding in English. Problem: Time. Problem: Time. Problem: Redundancy. Solution:
WONDERBOY CHASE SAVES THE DAY! <----- 4th dimensional headline Um, so we can all be giggly girls and talk about it while we gulp tea (of course gulp, this is the 21st century, dang it!) and check our twitter followers for our gulp party. Cool? Cool. (M.S. anyone else who's interested in knowing the book may freely e-mail me. Just... um Mom can't. JS) Well, I can't rightly be with my обично companion today, can I? (Okay, not a swear-word. I couldn't think of the word for "normal" fast enough. Cyrillics was obviously the only expresative means of getting it out. It's artistic. dealwithit. Looks like President Rowe doesn't like us to be getting complacent and falling into routines. Either that, or Father-dearest sold his Dakovo pictures to go back to Osijek, the city of his love. He's there with Elder Genther and here I am with Elder Schouten! They're both in our Zone, and actually C. Schouten was called to serve in Serbia but due to the *ahem* mishap this last February, was unable to serve here. He's been in Osijek for four months dying to come home. His Croatian-Serbian switch is doing well, though. Either way, just with him until Thursday. We mad the switch on last Thursday at Zone Conference. Man, but I feel like this could read as a bad cartoon.... Zone conference was pretty cool. It wen't much smoother than the last one that we had because (why did I use an apostrophe on went?) well basically S. Genther remembered his passport. That's basically about it. Oh, and we had the most divinely supreme food because we asked Dushka Vuchenovich to "help" us. She basically prepared a multicourse meal with actual garnish on our sandwhiches (that's sad) and the most amazing Russian Honey cake thing that I've ever had. (First in my collection of recipes which i've just started. js. Any takers? If you can read Serbian, they're great. But it was cool. LONG. Pres. Rowe basically told me what we're doing isn't working. Do something else. Um, harsh but fair? The Something Else: APPARENTLY there's this thing called the Area Book that we're SUPPOSED to use in missionary work.... шалим се We've been going through ours cleaning it up and finding everybody who's just been "dropped" due to the pull-outs in Serbia or due to negligent missionaries. Too harsh? Problem is, it's been few and far between that people have either been in Mitrovica or used the book. We've got records going back to '02, a bunch from '07, and a few from '08 and '09. It's.... Slow. I think there's a theme here. BUT! We've found people. Like actual, living, breathing people who know who we are and don't hate us! It's kind of cool. Just gonna say. We've had lessons even. Heck, technically we have a new investigator (by virtue of having a follow-up appointment this thursday. (She's apparently read the book of mormon upwards of 15 times and has the most comprehensive list of missionary names that I've ever seen. She's got 'em back to '92. I kid you not. Yeah, she'll prolly get baptized.)) <--Cool. Double duty. It's been.... a LOT of walking. But it's been worth it. We know people, I have more numbers in our phone.... It's been fun. I'm a little sick. What do you do for aching kidneys? kind of kidding.... I think I definitely just had some tap-water on accident. NEWS: I DEFINITELY BLESSED THE WATER IN CHURCH THIS SUNDAY. (Read in Cyrillics, btw. One mess up right at the beginning...) I love my camera. Just so you know. Can't wait for you to get all these shots. Got the package. TP. For real? Alright.... Thanks for the Mapleine tho. Should be really good. PB - divine. Important: I'll prolly be here (okay, transfer rumours aside, I HOPE I'll be here) next transfer. Mama says that anything sent to her address makes it. Please feel free to send me things straight here. (Only the beginning parts of transfers which last 9 weeks if you're scared.) She also says to "pozdrav" you. So this is me saying for her "according to your health". She says hi, that is. List of sketchy Beograd happenings I've seen today: Definitely saw a drug trade. Like 15 year olds! Definitely saw a 7 year old puffin' away. Asked me for dinars.... Teens selling postcards for "needy children" I'm pretty sure that the grandpa on the comp right next to me is telling the teen he's skyping with that he's her father and where her siblings are? Idk. This darn language.... Definitely saw the Mafia drive by. Police forces and riot police holding small bats. Some sort of demonstration, I guess.... List of cool things that I've seen today in Beograd: Freaking communist-style post office! Biggest post I've ever seen in my life. fo real. Inside of TWO Pravoslav churches. (Orthodox) THE TEMPLE is one of these. It's great. They've been working on it for 200 years + and are just starting the inside. It's BEAUTIFUL Pravoslav girl quietly worshipping. Really touching. 2nd Biggest Book Fair in the World (Curse you, Germany! shallim se) 6 of the Lord's missionaries in the Capital City of form Communist Jugoslavia. Word of the Week: Љубичаст Ljubicast - Lj (kako?! No idea how to pronounce this....) ooh, bee, chahst. meaning: Purple Direct translation: Love honour. Favourite word? You betcha. neighbour. colour. and other british spellings too! Done. Pizza Hut time. Yay for American style pizza! If only they'd serve us more water!.... ah well. LOVE YOU Старешина Адамз
Monday, October 17, 2011
10/17/2011
Greetings, Mortals.
First thing's first: It took me about 3.59801 after I'd signed off that it was the very important week of which includes the date of October 12th. JESSICA BREANNE ADAMS I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! ican'tbelievethatyou'
rereally18yearsoldbecauseitmeansthatdad'salmostfiftyandthati'mbasically20andallthiscrazystuffisjustwaytoomuchformeandsotheregoesmybrain.brainexplosm.....
Anyways. Oh, and happy birthday to you, too, Dad! Yay for added days which make months which make years! Oh, math....
Sooo.... You know how in Rocky and Bullwinkle when dawn breaks over the horizon? Yeah, you know how winter breaks over Serbia? Roughly equivalent. It's been a pretty fun last little week and a half. Scarf time, gloves are out. Layers, baby. <---- I'm pretty sure that this is a Wendy Adams quote, but I could be wrong.... No snow, yet, but the nights are frigid (we've got this boss heater in our room which is pretty sweet, but it only heats our room....) and the tiles in our apartment are gonna give me frostbite, I'm sure. Ah well, all things in the service of our God. :P Our gazda (landlady) suggested boots, so I may look around a little for some of those. idk. People just keep referencing this ridiculous amount of snow that was here last winter (though for some reason or another this backward language has NO word for "ridiculous" which has been causing me to basically trip and stumble every 4th word as that is .25 of my vocabulary in English....) (Math again! yay me) and that just kind of freaks me out a little? Inflection?
I'm gonna work backwardsish.
Yesterday I had a talk in church! I was assigned this on Saturday evening at about 9:23 so there wasn't much time to prepare. Oh, mormons.... Anyways, got up early in the frigid apartment air and planned it out. I talked about hope (patterned after the spiritual thought further down). The culminating part of it was the horribly translated lyrics of Disney's Hercules - the song "Go the Distance". For all you English majors out there, I know that MLA says that I'm not supposed to do songs in quotations, but come on, give me a break! Basically the worst translation in the world, but there you have it. What a great song. I just talked about how we all have this hope in gaining an eternal life with God after all this is said and done and how we need to share that. Decent, though towards the end I just kind of threw out the window cases and clitic word order. No big deal.
Still Sunday. We walked all the way to Lacarak (pron. Law-chaw-rock) looking for a referral and decided to try and find (again) a less-active who was on the way. As we're sitting outside in the frigid Serbian air she rides up on her bike behind us at her door and invites us in. REALLY cool lady. Jelenica or something like that. She said to come back whenever and it was okay to bring like a spiritual thought or something. Awesome stuff. She works as a popcorn maker along the river and had brought some home. We just shared some of that amazingness and talked. It was really nice. Just a normal lady. :)
Saturday we had district meeting (first of Serbia for a long time!) in Beograd. Elder Jacobsen and I woke up at like 5 so that we could catch the bus at 6 (in the frigid air, mind you) so that we could be there at 7 so that we could have palacinke (Serbian crepes - WAY better than that frenchie crap... and pronounced pal-uh-cheen-kay) at 8 and district meeting at 9. We were running late - so we ended up running to the bus station. Funny how that works out. No bus at 6. Stood in the frigid air for an hour and then still beat Novi Sad elders to Beograd. Palacinke were amazing (Elder Hansen has like a professional palacinke maker. It's WONDERFUL.) The district meeting itself was pretty cool. We talked about investigators (and ones that Sremska will soon have, I'm sure *nadamsenadamsenadamse* <--- I hope I hope I hope) and the book fair coming up in Beograd. It's 8 days long and requires people at the booth from 10 to 9 every one of those days. Should be fun. Sremska's definitely down for help. We're all just taking a shift on next p-day and then the other two companionships will hit the town on the off shifts. Should be sweet.
We drove down on Wednesday with President, Sister Rowe, Sister Turner (our mission nurse) and Mama Rowe (Grandma Rowe who is companions with sister Turner). Elder Defreitas and I had a terrifying moment or two at the border where we realized (as soon as President started speaking to the Serbian borderlady in English - crazy guy) that we had the most language experience in the car. No problems though. Dodged a bullet there. Perhaps literally? Just kidding... maybe. Said our goodbyes in Dear Sremska Mitrovica and then it was back to the old drawing board in Sremska. Just been trying to figure things out and what we want to do with the rest of the transfer. English class was fun on Thursday. All Thursday, however, I was in constant remindership? of the importance of NOT eating week-old bread that Elder Harris didn't end up eating on the exchange as apparently this whole preservatives thing has not yet found Serbia. (Though I don't in any way blame them because of the quality and overall amazingness of their bread. Mom, if you want a challenge, try making some potato burek - which is wonderful, btw) Anyways, I was pretty sure I was following father-dearest's (Elder Jacobsen's) example of discovering giardia water, but it was just like a 24 hour bug. Grozno. (Gross)
We talked to Mama for a while. She's such a cool lady, and if I could every understand what she really means then I'm sure we'd just be best of friends... Ah well. Just falling in love with her, home here in Sremska, Serbia, burek, the constant smell of campfire, and smoke-filled internet cafes. It's the greatest.
Something that's really been giving me comfort though has been this Churchill quote that I vaguely mentioned last time. Thanks to Bethany for sending it to me: “We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all our strength that God can give us: … That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be” This has kind of summed up my hopes and fears and dreams and doubts. If you ever have a quote that you think would help, I'm always thirsty for more. Send 'em right along! :)
Anyways, looking forward to this week. We're going to have Zone Conference again on Thursday and then a mini exchange thing over the weekend where rumour says I may either be with Elder Defreitas (same age as me mission-wise) or Elder Schouten (Osijek. One transfer older....) for a couple of days. Then on to the Book Fair! Yay! Anyways, hoping that you are all well.
Word of the Week:
Љубав
Ljubav
Pronunciation: Lj (face it, kid, you're never gonna make this sound right) - ooh (as in for fireworks) - baav
Definition - Love.
Све љубав и нада
All Love and Hope,
Старешина Адамз
First thing's first: It took me about 3.59801 after I'd signed off that it was the very important week of which includes the date of October 12th. JESSICA BREANNE ADAMS I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! ican'tbelievethatyou'
rereally18yearsoldbecauseitmeansthatdad'salmostfiftyandthati'mbasically20andallthiscrazystuffisjustwaytoomuchformeandsotheregoesmybrain.brainexplosm.....
Anyways. Oh, and happy birthday to you, too, Dad! Yay for added days which make months which make years! Oh, math....
Sooo.... You know how in Rocky and Bullwinkle when dawn breaks over the horizon? Yeah, you know how winter breaks over Serbia? Roughly equivalent. It's been a pretty fun last little week and a half. Scarf time, gloves are out. Layers, baby. <---- I'm pretty sure that this is a Wendy Adams quote, but I could be wrong.... No snow, yet, but the nights are frigid (we've got this boss heater in our room which is pretty sweet, but it only heats our room....) and the tiles in our apartment are gonna give me frostbite, I'm sure. Ah well, all things in the service of our God. :P Our gazda (landlady) suggested boots, so I may look around a little for some of those. idk. People just keep referencing this ridiculous amount of snow that was here last winter (though for some reason or another this backward language has NO word for "ridiculous" which has been causing me to basically trip and stumble every 4th word as that is .25 of my vocabulary in English....) (Math again! yay me) and that just kind of freaks me out a little? Inflection?
I'm gonna work backwardsish.
Yesterday I had a talk in church! I was assigned this on Saturday evening at about 9:23 so there wasn't much time to prepare. Oh, mormons.... Anyways, got up early in the frigid apartment air and planned it out. I talked about hope (patterned after the spiritual thought further down). The culminating part of it was the horribly translated lyrics of Disney's Hercules - the song "Go the Distance". For all you English majors out there, I know that MLA says that I'm not supposed to do songs in quotations, but come on, give me a break! Basically the worst translation in the world, but there you have it. What a great song. I just talked about how we all have this hope in gaining an eternal life with God after all this is said and done and how we need to share that. Decent, though towards the end I just kind of threw out the window cases and clitic word order. No big deal.
Still Sunday. We walked all the way to Lacarak (pron. Law-chaw-rock) looking for a referral and decided to try and find (again) a less-active who was on the way. As we're sitting outside in the frigid Serbian air she rides up on her bike behind us at her door and invites us in. REALLY cool lady. Jelenica or something like that. She said to come back whenever and it was okay to bring like a spiritual thought or something. Awesome stuff. She works as a popcorn maker along the river and had brought some home. We just shared some of that amazingness and talked. It was really nice. Just a normal lady. :)
Saturday we had district meeting (first of Serbia for a long time!) in Beograd. Elder Jacobsen and I woke up at like 5 so that we could catch the bus at 6 (in the frigid air, mind you) so that we could be there at 7 so that we could have palacinke (Serbian crepes - WAY better than that frenchie crap... and pronounced pal-uh-cheen-kay) at 8 and district meeting at 9. We were running late - so we ended up running to the bus station. Funny how that works out. No bus at 6. Stood in the frigid air for an hour and then still beat Novi Sad elders to Beograd. Palacinke were amazing (Elder Hansen has like a professional palacinke maker. It's WONDERFUL.) The district meeting itself was pretty cool. We talked about investigators (and ones that Sremska will soon have, I'm sure *nadamsenadamsenadamse* <--- I hope I hope I hope) and the book fair coming up in Beograd. It's 8 days long and requires people at the booth from 10 to 9 every one of those days. Should be fun. Sremska's definitely down for help. We're all just taking a shift on next p-day and then the other two companionships will hit the town on the off shifts. Should be sweet.
We drove down on Wednesday with President, Sister Rowe, Sister Turner (our mission nurse) and Mama Rowe (Grandma Rowe who is companions with sister Turner). Elder Defreitas and I had a terrifying moment or two at the border where we realized (as soon as President started speaking to the Serbian borderlady in English - crazy guy) that we had the most language experience in the car. No problems though. Dodged a bullet there. Perhaps literally? Just kidding... maybe. Said our goodbyes in Dear Sremska Mitrovica and then it was back to the old drawing board in Sremska. Just been trying to figure things out and what we want to do with the rest of the transfer. English class was fun on Thursday. All Thursday, however, I was in constant remindership? of the importance of NOT eating week-old bread that Elder Harris didn't end up eating on the exchange as apparently this whole preservatives thing has not yet found Serbia. (Though I don't in any way blame them because of the quality and overall amazingness of their bread. Mom, if you want a challenge, try making some potato burek - which is wonderful, btw) Anyways, I was pretty sure I was following father-dearest's (Elder Jacobsen's) example of discovering giardia water, but it was just like a 24 hour bug. Grozno. (Gross)
We talked to Mama for a while. She's such a cool lady, and if I could every understand what she really means then I'm sure we'd just be best of friends... Ah well. Just falling in love with her, home here in Sremska, Serbia, burek, the constant smell of campfire, and smoke-filled internet cafes. It's the greatest.
Something that's really been giving me comfort though has been this Churchill quote that I vaguely mentioned last time. Thanks to Bethany for sending it to me: “We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land, and air, with all our might and with all our strength that God can give us: … That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be” This has kind of summed up my hopes and fears and dreams and doubts. If you ever have a quote that you think would help, I'm always thirsty for more. Send 'em right along! :)
Anyways, looking forward to this week. We're going to have Zone Conference again on Thursday and then a mini exchange thing over the weekend where rumour says I may either be with Elder Defreitas (same age as me mission-wise) or Elder Schouten (Osijek. One transfer older....) for a couple of days. Then on to the Book Fair! Yay! Anyways, hoping that you are all well.
Word of the Week:
Љубав
Ljubav
Pronunciation: Lj (face it, kid, you're never gonna make this sound right) - ooh (as in for fireworks) - baav
Definition - Love.
Све љубав и нада
All Love and Hope,
Старешина Адамз
Monday, October 10, 2011
10/10/2011
This is a great letter. I could tell that he had been down about things, but he is so excited now. Yay!!!
Ah, Zagreb, citz of bigness and Croatianness and well.... nessess. You know how it is. This is where we's be right now! I'm in Croatia battling a weird keyboard in the Nacionalna I Sveučilišna Knjižnica. That's a mouthful right there, I'll tell you what! Anyways, been up here since Tuesday night and just been loving it. Here's the story:
Got the call Monday evening that since there would be a Zone Leader council in Ljubljana and since Elders Freeman and Defreitas had to drive up anyways, why not the rest of us? So we came up and crossed the border - yet again - and ate in Slavonski Brod and then got into Zagreb. I've been hanging out with Elder Sherman - the ZL up here in Croatia - and it's been quite the ride. Linguistical differences aside, the countries are roughly similar in many aspects... People are super nice once you get to know them and they talk super quick too. Ah well, it's all in a days work.
Okay, so the city is huge and (okaz, Ićm done fighting this kezboard and Ićm not going to be able to tzpe anzthing if I keep having to backspace all over the place, so the three main things that it switches are the y, z and č which is an apostrophe. So, sorrz, but Ićm gonna be layz and zoućre going to get so much more information, if somewhat garbled...) Ićm lost everz time we drive around - oh zes, drive. We have a car up here in Yagreb, in fact a couple of them. Itćs prettz ridiculous. Itćs absolutelz beautiful too especiallz out in the hills where we had a lesson with a guz named Martin who just moved out there. We also had a lesson basicallz straddling the border into Slovenia we were so close to it - also in the middle of the woods. It was prettz great... I definitelz can now describe to zou what it means for a hill to roll. :)
The coolest part about this whole experience has been that wećve basicallz just been teaching lessons. So great. Itćs not that we havenćt reallz had lessons in Serbia, itćs just that we havenćt zet had lessons in Serbia where Ićm serving... Soooo itćs been reallz nice. Elder Sherman is absolutelz wonderful and Ićm learning a lot about what I need to do in order to turn things around on the home front in Sremska. Thatćs basicallz been the overarching theme in mz mind this whole time and itćs been verz enlighting. Anzwazs, though, the lessons! Oh, itćs been great! Itćs like Ićve had a purpose doing this whole missionarz thing - at least a more obvious one - and wećve reallz just done some good work is what it comes down to.
Mz Favourite Lesson:
Okaz, so we met with a guz named Marko (less active who hasnćt come in like 3 zears) this week. Twice, actuallz. The first time we just had some sok and hung out and talked about the church and missionarz work and stuff. He seemed kind of down, so we just cheered him up and set up for another appointment. At the second appointment, we were running a little late and so as we walked up the stairs to his apartment Elder Sherman calls out, "oh zeah, what should we teach him?" And we're like, ummmmmm obedience? Zeah, wećll plaz Simon sazs or something! (Wećve basicallz just been the biggest walking comedz act ever this week - so fun to just throw it around with him...) So we ended up talking about sports. That is to saz, THE sport - Futbol. We talked about out of bound rules and throw ins and keepers and defenders and all of the weird little rules. We also talked about how bz keeping the rules there is in no waz less fun. We were just the guzs, during this lesson, who saw him run out of bounds and just called him back in to plaz. I shared how hard it was to understand the rules of rugbz the first time I plazed and how it hurt sometimes. But, with practice, I got the rules and then the game became verz, verz fun.
We also shared with him a big quote thatćs been going and around in mz head for the last little while and Ićve actuallz no idea who said it but here it is - "The best time to plant a walnut tree was 20 zears ago. The second best time is todaz." So, we invited him to come and plant a walnut tree at church, to come back into the boundaries and plaz bz the rules. He and I get along reallz well and so we just made it fun, and I think that helped oh so much. I know that he rememebers and knows whz itćs true. Ićm sure of it.
Oh, P.S.? He came to Church zesterdaz. :)
Branch Conference
So it was Branch Conference this week in Yagreb. (Oh mz gosh thez have a huge branch - like 30-35 people were there!! - and a reallz reallz beautiful church and everzthing.) President Rowe talked and pulled up some reallz good points that I needed to hear. He just basicallz talked about the historz of Croatia and the Church and related it to the storz in Luke 18? about the rich guz who couldnćt give up his monez to follow Christ. I wondered and recogniyed what mz monez was and realiye now that Ićve just got to give it up in order to see miracles. Heaven knows this land, people, and missionarz need miracles. Oh so badlz. Itćs gonna suck, but itćs gonna be soo much better in the end.
Anzwazs, thatćs it for now. I maz or maz not have some more time at the office later. But, I hope that zou are all doing well and that zoućre remembering to live everz daz. Look up this Holland talk that I told Bethanz about and listen to it. Blew mz mind. It was great. Thanks for doing all that zou can to help me out here on the miš. Temporal and otherwise. Zou rock. Love, and all that jayy.
Starješina Adams (This weekćs appelation) :)
Ah, Zagreb, citz of bigness and Croatianness and well.... nessess. You know how it is. This is where we's be right now! I'm in Croatia battling a weird keyboard in the Nacionalna I Sveučilišna Knjižnica. That's a mouthful right there, I'll tell you what! Anyways, been up here since Tuesday night and just been loving it. Here's the story:
Got the call Monday evening that since there would be a Zone Leader council in Ljubljana and since Elders Freeman and Defreitas had to drive up anyways, why not the rest of us? So we came up and crossed the border - yet again - and ate in Slavonski Brod and then got into Zagreb. I've been hanging out with Elder Sherman - the ZL up here in Croatia - and it's been quite the ride. Linguistical differences aside, the countries are roughly similar in many aspects... People are super nice once you get to know them and they talk super quick too. Ah well, it's all in a days work.
Okay, so the city is huge and (okaz, Ićm done fighting this kezboard and Ićm not going to be able to tzpe anzthing if I keep having to backspace all over the place, so the three main things that it switches are the y, z and č which is an apostrophe. So, sorrz, but Ićm gonna be layz and zoućre going to get so much more information, if somewhat garbled...) Ićm lost everz time we drive around - oh zes, drive. We have a car up here in Yagreb, in fact a couple of them. Itćs prettz ridiculous. Itćs absolutelz beautiful too especiallz out in the hills where we had a lesson with a guz named Martin who just moved out there. We also had a lesson basicallz straddling the border into Slovenia we were so close to it - also in the middle of the woods. It was prettz great... I definitelz can now describe to zou what it means for a hill to roll. :)
The coolest part about this whole experience has been that wećve basicallz just been teaching lessons. So great. Itćs not that we havenćt reallz had lessons in Serbia, itćs just that we havenćt zet had lessons in Serbia where Ićm serving... Soooo itćs been reallz nice. Elder Sherman is absolutelz wonderful and Ićm learning a lot about what I need to do in order to turn things around on the home front in Sremska. Thatćs basicallz been the overarching theme in mz mind this whole time and itćs been verz enlighting. Anzwazs, though, the lessons! Oh, itćs been great! Itćs like Ićve had a purpose doing this whole missionarz thing - at least a more obvious one - and wećve reallz just done some good work is what it comes down to.
Mz Favourite Lesson:
Okaz, so we met with a guz named Marko (less active who hasnćt come in like 3 zears) this week. Twice, actuallz. The first time we just had some sok and hung out and talked about the church and missionarz work and stuff. He seemed kind of down, so we just cheered him up and set up for another appointment. At the second appointment, we were running a little late and so as we walked up the stairs to his apartment Elder Sherman calls out, "oh zeah, what should we teach him?" And we're like, ummmmmm obedience? Zeah, wećll plaz Simon sazs or something! (Wećve basicallz just been the biggest walking comedz act ever this week - so fun to just throw it around with him...) So we ended up talking about sports. That is to saz, THE sport - Futbol. We talked about out of bound rules and throw ins and keepers and defenders and all of the weird little rules. We also talked about how bz keeping the rules there is in no waz less fun. We were just the guzs, during this lesson, who saw him run out of bounds and just called him back in to plaz. I shared how hard it was to understand the rules of rugbz the first time I plazed and how it hurt sometimes. But, with practice, I got the rules and then the game became verz, verz fun.
We also shared with him a big quote thatćs been going and around in mz head for the last little while and Ićve actuallz no idea who said it but here it is - "The best time to plant a walnut tree was 20 zears ago. The second best time is todaz." So, we invited him to come and plant a walnut tree at church, to come back into the boundaries and plaz bz the rules. He and I get along reallz well and so we just made it fun, and I think that helped oh so much. I know that he rememebers and knows whz itćs true. Ićm sure of it.
Oh, P.S.? He came to Church zesterdaz. :)
Branch Conference
So it was Branch Conference this week in Yagreb. (Oh mz gosh thez have a huge branch - like 30-35 people were there!! - and a reallz reallz beautiful church and everzthing.) President Rowe talked and pulled up some reallz good points that I needed to hear. He just basicallz talked about the historz of Croatia and the Church and related it to the storz in Luke 18? about the rich guz who couldnćt give up his monez to follow Christ. I wondered and recogniyed what mz monez was and realiye now that Ićve just got to give it up in order to see miracles. Heaven knows this land, people, and missionarz need miracles. Oh so badlz. Itćs gonna suck, but itćs gonna be soo much better in the end.
Anzwazs, thatćs it for now. I maz or maz not have some more time at the office later. But, I hope that zou are all doing well and that zoućre remembering to live everz daz. Look up this Holland talk that I told Bethanz about and listen to it. Blew mz mind. It was great. Thanks for doing all that zou can to help me out here on the miš. Temporal and otherwise. Zou rock. Love, and all that jayy.
Starješina Adams (This weekćs appelation) :)
Monday, October 3, 2011
10/03/2011
Hey all you blog followers...I repent for not posting on a more regular basis. I will be sure to post every Monday....so tell your friends and neighbors to check out the latest and greatest. Also, if you are wanting to send something (letter, gift, chocolate) to Chase, get it to me and I will include it in the next care package.
Thank you for your continued prayers on his behalf...you are all a blessing to him.
This one goes out to all the people who have ever been loved. So, All of you.
The China Shop.
Here's the thing. There are China Shops (places with ACTUAL asian people - crazy) and then there's THE China Shop. This is how Serbian Elders spend their time in Beograd. They go to the most incredibly insane shops on the sketchy side of town where they sell 300 Dinar ties and switchblades and ninja stars by the bucketful. No big deal, though. No big deal. This is where we got to go last P-Day. We saw the bombed-out embassy building in downtown, missed our bus, and saw the American Embassy which is basically just a bunker in the middle of the Capital, just in case, you know?
The Buba (Bug)
We spent about a half an hour of our week watching the absolute stupidest bug run into a lamp in our kitchen, get caught in a spider's web, almost die, escape, and then walk straight into a BIGGER spider's web, almost die, escape, etc. It took him about half an hour to get up the energy after all this to fly around and run into the lamp again. He's probably dead, or at least I hope he is and that Natural Selection is running it's course.... Oh, Darwin.
The "Workout Plan"
We decided to be good and do something with our bodies but fill it with the most disgusting, amazing cereals known to mankind this week. Here's how it went. I'll quote my journal from Tuesday: "This morning we went running. Probably only did about 3-4 km, but wtill. It was nice. His giardea started kicking in, or whatever it is he has. Tricky. So we just walked back and talked. It was kind of nice. The River Sava looks absolutely gorgeous in the foggy haze of dawn. There is beauty, if I just look." We didn't do anything else all week. We ROCK at consistency.... Yay, goals.
Ракиа Which is to say, Whiskey.
We ran into a man in one of the residential areas who was rank with it. He wanted a hand-out of money so that he could buy more. We tried to teach him how he could have a better life and pull himself up by means of his bootstraps, but to no avail. Best thing I could give him was a Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet. I want you all to look up the word "rank" and then multiply it by the word "sewer". Welcome to that expository moment of my life. :/
The Ruma Files
We've received the information of a nearby town called Ruma and all that the missionaries that were there have deigned to give to us. There are wonderful finding ideas such as "American Football Contacting" in which I believe a football is thrown around until someone asks when they can be baptized.... It's incredibly useful information.... Allow the sarcasm to build up and swell..... Yeah. Apparently they missed something. Ah well, there's some good stuff about the people that they talked to. Could, at some point, be getting bikes and heading over there. Idk. We'll see. That's a lot of cornfields to cut through....
English Class
Beginners. It's going well. Mama (our gazda/landlady) is coming which is way cool. She probably at this point speaks about as much English as I can Serbian, but whatever. They're an interesting class, but we're excited and hopeful about a few of their members of being interested. Either way, we're just in service stage right now. So, spiritual thoughts it is until they are more open and questionative. Is that a word?
Middle Level. Pretty young class. Some guy we ran into on the street named Boris is coming and he's 25ish. But the others are the Vucenovic girls and their friends. And Zlata, our one referral which hasn't really been a referral and who we have yet to really contact in that way. Nervous about being wrong about anything, all of them. A very prevalent mentality is that you must know everything and be perfect in all your endeavours. Tricky. Tricky.
Advanced. We have Emilija, who is an English teacher in Elementary school. Totally conversational class. We just have it at her home with her husband there and it's nice. We're working through an online class with her on how to teach better. Pretty fun. Oh, Serbian Custom. Guests are served Rasberry Preserves (just like how we make jam) and water. Then coffee. Then Rakia for the men. Well, we had preserves. It was fun. Very hospitable once you get to know them....
?
We don't really know what it was. We were cleaning the church and got invited to something unintelligible over the phone by Zlata. It ended up being a kind of Toast of the Town thing for CM at the Roman Ruins. We met people who were displaying their art, and saw a really cool firedance thing in the middle of the ruins to an amazing song. Pretty cool, but we don't really know why or how or anything about our being there.... It was... cool? Very cool, yes. Just... hmm.
The Attempted Planning Session
We took a LONG time to plan for the week, this week. Like, several companion study sessions. Shouldn't have been that way, I know, but it was. I just couldn't see the purpose of all these numbers that we throw on the page every day and week and how that's somehow supposed to help us feel better and help us to achieve our goals here.... It was very frustrating as I have absolutely no testimony of those types of goals. It's something that doesn't work with my head. I still don't get it, and am only hoping upon hope that maybe something good will happen because of them. We'll see. I just can't translate that in my head....
The Smartt
Elder Smartt who lives in another country was up this week. He met with us and, well, taught by example. He kept telling us to be bold in everything we do, and he's well, quite simply from the South. He was very bold in our meeting with the Branch Priesthood whilst we talked about Home Teaching and very bold as he told us how we should do things in Sremska. Some good information, though I'm unwilling - for silly, inconsequential reasons - to implement some of his tactics.
General Conference
I could understand the beginning! That is, when we heard the first 7-8 words in English... Outside of that? Not a thing. Okay, not true. I did get something about Храброст (courage) on Sunday Morning. That's where I directed my personal study today, actually.... It was very interesting to listen in a different language. My comprehension capacity was taken back down to being 6 or 7 years old but I was actually trying to listen, though I wasn't then. I'm sure they were good messages. We saw both the morning sessions with the Vucenovic's, at around 6 at night. We're going to watch Priesthood for FHE tonight. I won't be able to understand... I could REALLY use an Ensign with all the talks as soon as they come out? That would be fantastico.
Randoms
Happiness = What you get/What you Want.
That is to say 2 Палачинке/ 1 палачинке = 200% happy. But who in their right mind just wants one? ^That's a Serbian Crepe, btw.
"Often the ones who need our love most are the most unlovable." -Cecil O. Samuelson.
"We Relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody, too." -Helen Hayes (Quote contributed by Ms. Kyra Nelson of Billings Montana to whom I am eternally grateful for letters which cannot be read in under 7.69 minutes).
Study Journal Excerpt
"When President Monson got up to speak I heard the first few words and was sure that I knew what they meant - that he was talking about Temples and where the new ones would be. I was sure of this and so was listening for specific vocabulary only - i.e. city names. Because I was trying to listen to what I wanted to hear, I missed entirely his message and did not grow from it at all. Too often I try to fit other people's words and thoughts into my pre-calculated, pre-supposed paradigm that I've set up for them and so miss out on the truly important messages in this life."\
Word of the Week
Породица
Porodica
Pronunciation: Po (Kung fu Panda) Rod (Road) i (Spanish "y") ca (hissy sort of sa with a "ts" almost.)
I appreciate your continued prayers and love and all that jazz. Sun's shining, music's jamming, Jokovic is winning at that tennis thing. Yay Serbia!
Vazi, vazi, ciao.
Старешина Адамз
Thank you for your continued prayers on his behalf...you are all a blessing to him.
This one goes out to all the people who have ever been loved. So, All of you.
The China Shop.
Here's the thing. There are China Shops (places with ACTUAL asian people - crazy) and then there's THE China Shop. This is how Serbian Elders spend their time in Beograd. They go to the most incredibly insane shops on the sketchy side of town where they sell 300 Dinar ties and switchblades and ninja stars by the bucketful. No big deal, though. No big deal. This is where we got to go last P-Day. We saw the bombed-out embassy building in downtown, missed our bus, and saw the American Embassy which is basically just a bunker in the middle of the Capital, just in case, you know?
The Buba (Bug)
We spent about a half an hour of our week watching the absolute stupidest bug run into a lamp in our kitchen, get caught in a spider's web, almost die, escape, and then walk straight into a BIGGER spider's web, almost die, escape, etc. It took him about half an hour to get up the energy after all this to fly around and run into the lamp again. He's probably dead, or at least I hope he is and that Natural Selection is running it's course.... Oh, Darwin.
The "Workout Plan"
We decided to be good and do something with our bodies but fill it with the most disgusting, amazing cereals known to mankind this week. Here's how it went. I'll quote my journal from Tuesday: "This morning we went running. Probably only did about 3-4 km, but wtill. It was nice. His giardea started kicking in, or whatever it is he has. Tricky. So we just walked back and talked. It was kind of nice. The River Sava looks absolutely gorgeous in the foggy haze of dawn. There is beauty, if I just look." We didn't do anything else all week. We ROCK at consistency.... Yay, goals.
Ракиа Which is to say, Whiskey.
We ran into a man in one of the residential areas who was rank with it. He wanted a hand-out of money so that he could buy more. We tried to teach him how he could have a better life and pull himself up by means of his bootstraps, but to no avail. Best thing I could give him was a Gospel of Jesus Christ pamphlet. I want you all to look up the word "rank" and then multiply it by the word "sewer". Welcome to that expository moment of my life. :/
The Ruma Files
We've received the information of a nearby town called Ruma and all that the missionaries that were there have deigned to give to us. There are wonderful finding ideas such as "American Football Contacting" in which I believe a football is thrown around until someone asks when they can be baptized.... It's incredibly useful information.... Allow the sarcasm to build up and swell..... Yeah. Apparently they missed something. Ah well, there's some good stuff about the people that they talked to. Could, at some point, be getting bikes and heading over there. Idk. We'll see. That's a lot of cornfields to cut through....
English Class
Beginners. It's going well. Mama (our gazda/landlady) is coming which is way cool. She probably at this point speaks about as much English as I can Serbian, but whatever. They're an interesting class, but we're excited and hopeful about a few of their members of being interested. Either way, we're just in service stage right now. So, spiritual thoughts it is until they are more open and questionative. Is that a word?
Middle Level. Pretty young class. Some guy we ran into on the street named Boris is coming and he's 25ish. But the others are the Vucenovic girls and their friends. And Zlata, our one referral which hasn't really been a referral and who we have yet to really contact in that way. Nervous about being wrong about anything, all of them. A very prevalent mentality is that you must know everything and be perfect in all your endeavours. Tricky. Tricky.
Advanced. We have Emilija, who is an English teacher in Elementary school. Totally conversational class. We just have it at her home with her husband there and it's nice. We're working through an online class with her on how to teach better. Pretty fun. Oh, Serbian Custom. Guests are served Rasberry Preserves (just like how we make jam) and water. Then coffee. Then Rakia for the men. Well, we had preserves. It was fun. Very hospitable once you get to know them....
?
We don't really know what it was. We were cleaning the church and got invited to something unintelligible over the phone by Zlata. It ended up being a kind of Toast of the Town thing for CM at the Roman Ruins. We met people who were displaying their art, and saw a really cool firedance thing in the middle of the ruins to an amazing song. Pretty cool, but we don't really know why or how or anything about our being there.... It was... cool? Very cool, yes. Just... hmm.
The Attempted Planning Session
We took a LONG time to plan for the week, this week. Like, several companion study sessions. Shouldn't have been that way, I know, but it was. I just couldn't see the purpose of all these numbers that we throw on the page every day and week and how that's somehow supposed to help us feel better and help us to achieve our goals here.... It was very frustrating as I have absolutely no testimony of those types of goals. It's something that doesn't work with my head. I still don't get it, and am only hoping upon hope that maybe something good will happen because of them. We'll see. I just can't translate that in my head....
The Smartt
Elder Smartt who lives in another country was up this week. He met with us and, well, taught by example. He kept telling us to be bold in everything we do, and he's well, quite simply from the South. He was very bold in our meeting with the Branch Priesthood whilst we talked about Home Teaching and very bold as he told us how we should do things in Sremska. Some good information, though I'm unwilling - for silly, inconsequential reasons - to implement some of his tactics.
General Conference
I could understand the beginning! That is, when we heard the first 7-8 words in English... Outside of that? Not a thing. Okay, not true. I did get something about Храброст (courage) on Sunday Morning. That's where I directed my personal study today, actually.... It was very interesting to listen in a different language. My comprehension capacity was taken back down to being 6 or 7 years old but I was actually trying to listen, though I wasn't then. I'm sure they were good messages. We saw both the morning sessions with the Vucenovic's, at around 6 at night. We're going to watch Priesthood for FHE tonight. I won't be able to understand... I could REALLY use an Ensign with all the talks as soon as they come out? That would be fantastico.
Randoms
Happiness = What you get/What you Want.
That is to say 2 Палачинке/ 1 палачинке = 200% happy. But who in their right mind just wants one? ^That's a Serbian Crepe, btw.
"Often the ones who need our love most are the most unlovable." -Cecil O. Samuelson.
"We Relish news of our heroes, forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody, too." -Helen Hayes (Quote contributed by Ms. Kyra Nelson of Billings Montana to whom I am eternally grateful for letters which cannot be read in under 7.69 minutes).
Study Journal Excerpt
"When President Monson got up to speak I heard the first few words and was sure that I knew what they meant - that he was talking about Temples and where the new ones would be. I was sure of this and so was listening for specific vocabulary only - i.e. city names. Because I was trying to listen to what I wanted to hear, I missed entirely his message and did not grow from it at all. Too often I try to fit other people's words and thoughts into my pre-calculated, pre-supposed paradigm that I've set up for them and so miss out on the truly important messages in this life."\
Word of the Week
Породица
Porodica
Pronunciation: Po (Kung fu Panda) Rod (Road) i (Spanish "y") ca (hissy sort of sa with a "ts" almost.)
I appreciate your continued prayers and love and all that jazz. Sun's shining, music's jamming, Jokovic is winning at that tennis thing. Yay Serbia!
Vazi, vazi, ciao.
Старешина Адамз
09/29/2011
Dobro Jutro!
Okay, we're doing this in a two part type deal today because we're going to go and travel over to Beograd in like an hour. So if it seems like bipolar or something like that, it's because I'm obviously going to be a totally different person when in the BIG CRAZY BIG MCBIGG BIG CITY OF BEOGRAD. Okay, so Sremska is a little small.... But anyways.... Just excited. Maybe just a little bit. :)
P.S. Sorry about all the cyrillics in the last letter. If you don't want me to speak my mission language... okaydokay, I guess! Haha, just kidding. It's one part wanting to show off and one part being able to actually spell the names of the people and places which I am referencing. Saying "Vucenovic" just doesn't quite tell you how to pronounce their name as well. And seriously! You all should just learn to read cyrillics! Way easy. Bash lako... :)
The weather is just barely starting to turn here as well. Like, by that I mean that we've turned off our fan in the middle of the night and maybe have closed one of the windows so that we don't get mildly cold. It's pretty warm, especially for a NW boy, you know? It's been like 32 degrees the whole time I've been here! Okay, okay, more like 28, but who's counting? Oh celsius.... So, when the time comes I'll definitely be finding a coat. I think I'm probably gonna be pretty set, except for socks. As Albus Percival Wolfric Brian Dumbledore once said, "One can never have enough socks..." Or something like that... (illi neshto tako (Или нешто тако))
Our address here is
Шећер Сокак 2 Secer Sokak 2
Сремска Митровица 22000 Sremska Mitrovica 22000
Сербиа Serbia
The "Secer" part of that is an S nasty and a c nasty, but only half nasty. That is to say, accented. If you catch my drift. Silly Serbian computers can't do the croatian nasty letters, only Serbian cyrillics. sry.
My companion is Elder Jacobsen. He's from San Diego, CA and has been in the country for a year and a half. I've kind of refrained from talking about him much because I just didn't know much about him but we've really been getting to know eachother a lot as we're really the only people that we see on a regular basis. That is to say, ever. He's a trumpet performance major at BYU, or at least he was, we don't really know what it is that he's going to do now, maybe media music? Idk. He's got one brother and seven sisters all of whom are older than him (By leaps and bounds, too). He is incredible in the language even though it's much more different from Croatian than I had originally hoped. Okay, exaggeration. He's very firm and resolute in his opinions about the gospel and very factually based in it. Kind of a strong, silent type at first, but now we talk a lot. Really good teacher. He's my dad! :)
Our trip to Croatia was WAY fun. We had to hop the border because of our gross illegality here. Okay, not so bad, but still. We ended up staying the night in Osijek with Elders Genther and Schouten. It's nice to know some more of the people that we work with. They're actually with us in the Serbian Zone along with their Sisters (Creager and Black) in Osijek. We talked and talked. Got to see their town which is huge compared to Sremska (What isn't?). They have a really cool cathedral and a tram! So great. Anyways, we just rode back to Serbia after that and now we're home. Just a quickie. No real touristy stuff, though I did see Vukovar (The town that got DESTROYED during the Serbian campaign) through a bus window. Tons of bullet holes. Way sad.
Our apartment is quaint. It's exactly what Fram would love to live in. In fact, our gazda (landlady) reminds me a lot of her sometimes even though I've NO idea what she's saying ever.... We have a big red door along the street and then pass by her part of the house (it's a long one split into two living areas). There is a bistro area with trees and plants and cutesy wheelbarrows full of planters and things. Inside is pretty small. A couple of rooms - bedroom, study, kitchen, bathroom - and a hallway I guess. We hang our laundry up back in the yard kind of by the dog kennels. She has two - Jipa (something like Gypsy) and Crna (Blackie). Quaint.
We get together with our district EVERY day. No lie. Okay, so our district is Elder Jacobsen and me, but whatever. Districts in our mission just mean towns. So only Rijeka, Osijek, Zagreb and I believe Zadar have districts. Idk about Slovenia... Some maybe? Our Zone which is Beograd, Novi Sad, Osijek and us has only been together once. I guess that happens maybe once a transfer. Could be as sporadic as once every quarter though. I don't really know....
Serbian is coming along very nicely. We're doing okay in speaking our language, but it's hard. The biggest thing for me has been trying to determine where the stops and beginnings of words are, because it just usually sounded like a blur. But now that I've been hearing their filler words and how they say things, it's definitely getting easier. My speaking is pretty slow comparatively, and I don't actually know if it will ever really be up to par, but they understand. We taught again in Sunday School yesterday, and I got fewer confused looks. Just bored ones because of the simplicity of what I say, I think. But, I am understanding when people swear, when people are telling funny things, and when people are parroting what they have heard and aren't thinking for themselves (a real problem here, though I'll save that for another time). My vocabulary has been staying roughly the same, but I've been learning how to use it. It's coming along. I'm making enough mistakes, that I figure I must be on the right track to learning what this stuff means.... :)
We did see some futbol the other week! There's a stadium in SM and so we were just walking by it. Watched some 30 somethings play. Crazy good.
Talked to some Christian kids from America last night. Lost, but trying to do good. A little antagonistic, but not bad. It was nice to talk to some people who actually care about what they believe and well, believe it.
I called a girl a gypsie this week. Ooops. Far worse than many racial slurs in America. Bad greenie mistake. Well, I won't be making that mistake again.
I don't know if we'll e-mail more in Beograd. Maybe. We'll see.
Ciao
Whoa. Beograd is crazy huge. Like oh my gosh I have no idea where I am, but I'm in the fifth story of some bookstore. Like, a bookstore with at least five stories. This is ridiculous. Anyways, I was thinking about it as I was sleep/riding on the bus here that there are really two ways that we can do this. You can ask me questions, and I will definitely respond to them in detail, or I can tell you about my week. It's usually pretty difficult to do both... Anyways, I'll try to do the latter right now.
In Novi Sad last week we looked at a really cool fortress thing that must have been built in like 1300AD or something like that. We hung out, had McDonalds and life was good. Later on Monday we had FHE with the Vucenovic family as we will again tonight. Dushanka, the mom, has been translating for General Conference and I swear is going to have a heart attack from stress. I guess it should be good or something like that. Anyways, that was fun.
We made the border run. I didn't have a visa. Croatia was curious. They took my passport off the bus for a LONG time... I made it. End of story
English class started this week. On Tuesday we had a bunch of people show up for beginners level and everything, but on Thursday not so much. Middle level is pretty cool. Basically just a bunch of kids who want to practice for school and so they can communicate as they play World of Warcraft. (Crazy rage here). We give spiritual thoughts and pray at the beginning and end of each. It's pretty fun, though I'm often a little stuttery while teaching. We'll see.
Had an exchange with Elder Freeman this week. Way cool guy. He's our ZL in Novi Sad. So I got to spend a day contacting with him in their huge city and it was really cool. It's interesting to see the different ways that people do the work. I learned a lot from him and hope to be able to apply it. After that, we had a little English party thing put on by the Vucenovic girls and Ljubica their friend. Pretty fun, and in Sremska. Food, Ping-pong. English. Way cool.
Really, that's about it. Time to hit the city and see what Serbia has to offer! :)
Love you all.
Старешина Адамз
Okay, we're doing this in a two part type deal today because we're going to go and travel over to Beograd in like an hour. So if it seems like bipolar or something like that, it's because I'm obviously going to be a totally different person when in the BIG CRAZY BIG MCBIGG BIG CITY OF BEOGRAD. Okay, so Sremska is a little small.... But anyways.... Just excited. Maybe just a little bit. :)
P.S. Sorry about all the cyrillics in the last letter. If you don't want me to speak my mission language... okaydokay, I guess! Haha, just kidding. It's one part wanting to show off and one part being able to actually spell the names of the people and places which I am referencing. Saying "Vucenovic" just doesn't quite tell you how to pronounce their name as well. And seriously! You all should just learn to read cyrillics! Way easy. Bash lako... :)
The weather is just barely starting to turn here as well. Like, by that I mean that we've turned off our fan in the middle of the night and maybe have closed one of the windows so that we don't get mildly cold. It's pretty warm, especially for a NW boy, you know? It's been like 32 degrees the whole time I've been here! Okay, okay, more like 28, but who's counting? Oh celsius.... So, when the time comes I'll definitely be finding a coat. I think I'm probably gonna be pretty set, except for socks. As Albus Percival Wolfric Brian Dumbledore once said, "One can never have enough socks..." Or something like that... (illi neshto tako (Или нешто тако))
Our address here is
Шећер Сокак 2 Secer Sokak 2
Сремска Митровица 22000 Sremska Mitrovica 22000
Сербиа Serbia
The "Secer" part of that is an S nasty and a c nasty, but only half nasty. That is to say, accented. If you catch my drift. Silly Serbian computers can't do the croatian nasty letters, only Serbian cyrillics. sry.
My companion is Elder Jacobsen. He's from San Diego, CA and has been in the country for a year and a half. I've kind of refrained from talking about him much because I just didn't know much about him but we've really been getting to know eachother a lot as we're really the only people that we see on a regular basis. That is to say, ever. He's a trumpet performance major at BYU, or at least he was, we don't really know what it is that he's going to do now, maybe media music? Idk. He's got one brother and seven sisters all of whom are older than him (By leaps and bounds, too). He is incredible in the language even though it's much more different from Croatian than I had originally hoped. Okay, exaggeration. He's very firm and resolute in his opinions about the gospel and very factually based in it. Kind of a strong, silent type at first, but now we talk a lot. Really good teacher. He's my dad! :)
Our trip to Croatia was WAY fun. We had to hop the border because of our gross illegality here. Okay, not so bad, but still. We ended up staying the night in Osijek with Elders Genther and Schouten. It's nice to know some more of the people that we work with. They're actually with us in the Serbian Zone along with their Sisters (Creager and Black) in Osijek. We talked and talked. Got to see their town which is huge compared to Sremska (What isn't?). They have a really cool cathedral and a tram! So great. Anyways, we just rode back to Serbia after that and now we're home. Just a quickie. No real touristy stuff, though I did see Vukovar (The town that got DESTROYED during the Serbian campaign) through a bus window. Tons of bullet holes. Way sad.
Our apartment is quaint. It's exactly what Fram would love to live in. In fact, our gazda (landlady) reminds me a lot of her sometimes even though I've NO idea what she's saying ever.... We have a big red door along the street and then pass by her part of the house (it's a long one split into two living areas). There is a bistro area with trees and plants and cutesy wheelbarrows full of planters and things. Inside is pretty small. A couple of rooms - bedroom, study, kitchen, bathroom - and a hallway I guess. We hang our laundry up back in the yard kind of by the dog kennels. She has two - Jipa (something like Gypsy) and Crna (Blackie). Quaint.
We get together with our district EVERY day. No lie. Okay, so our district is Elder Jacobsen and me, but whatever. Districts in our mission just mean towns. So only Rijeka, Osijek, Zagreb and I believe Zadar have districts. Idk about Slovenia... Some maybe? Our Zone which is Beograd, Novi Sad, Osijek and us has only been together once. I guess that happens maybe once a transfer. Could be as sporadic as once every quarter though. I don't really know....
Serbian is coming along very nicely. We're doing okay in speaking our language, but it's hard. The biggest thing for me has been trying to determine where the stops and beginnings of words are, because it just usually sounded like a blur. But now that I've been hearing their filler words and how they say things, it's definitely getting easier. My speaking is pretty slow comparatively, and I don't actually know if it will ever really be up to par, but they understand. We taught again in Sunday School yesterday, and I got fewer confused looks. Just bored ones because of the simplicity of what I say, I think. But, I am understanding when people swear, when people are telling funny things, and when people are parroting what they have heard and aren't thinking for themselves (a real problem here, though I'll save that for another time). My vocabulary has been staying roughly the same, but I've been learning how to use it. It's coming along. I'm making enough mistakes, that I figure I must be on the right track to learning what this stuff means.... :)
We did see some futbol the other week! There's a stadium in SM and so we were just walking by it. Watched some 30 somethings play. Crazy good.
Talked to some Christian kids from America last night. Lost, but trying to do good. A little antagonistic, but not bad. It was nice to talk to some people who actually care about what they believe and well, believe it.
I called a girl a gypsie this week. Ooops. Far worse than many racial slurs in America. Bad greenie mistake. Well, I won't be making that mistake again.
I don't know if we'll e-mail more in Beograd. Maybe. We'll see.
Ciao
Whoa. Beograd is crazy huge. Like oh my gosh I have no idea where I am, but I'm in the fifth story of some bookstore. Like, a bookstore with at least five stories. This is ridiculous. Anyways, I was thinking about it as I was sleep/riding on the bus here that there are really two ways that we can do this. You can ask me questions, and I will definitely respond to them in detail, or I can tell you about my week. It's usually pretty difficult to do both... Anyways, I'll try to do the latter right now.
In Novi Sad last week we looked at a really cool fortress thing that must have been built in like 1300AD or something like that. We hung out, had McDonalds and life was good. Later on Monday we had FHE with the Vucenovic family as we will again tonight. Dushanka, the mom, has been translating for General Conference and I swear is going to have a heart attack from stress. I guess it should be good or something like that. Anyways, that was fun.
We made the border run. I didn't have a visa. Croatia was curious. They took my passport off the bus for a LONG time... I made it. End of story
English class started this week. On Tuesday we had a bunch of people show up for beginners level and everything, but on Thursday not so much. Middle level is pretty cool. Basically just a bunch of kids who want to practice for school and so they can communicate as they play World of Warcraft. (Crazy rage here). We give spiritual thoughts and pray at the beginning and end of each. It's pretty fun, though I'm often a little stuttery while teaching. We'll see.
Had an exchange with Elder Freeman this week. Way cool guy. He's our ZL in Novi Sad. So I got to spend a day contacting with him in their huge city and it was really cool. It's interesting to see the different ways that people do the work. I learned a lot from him and hope to be able to apply it. After that, we had a little English party thing put on by the Vucenovic girls and Ljubica their friend. Pretty fun, and in Sremska. Food, Ping-pong. English. Way cool.
Really, that's about it. Time to hit the city and see what Serbia has to offer! :)
Love you all.
Старешина Адамз
09/19/2011
Okay, so here's the deal. We started out the day planning on going to a town in Croatia called Илок but the silly Нови Сад elders decided that it would be a good idea to throw a tank full of Euro diesel into the car. So here we are sitting in their city hanging out in this totally sketchy internet cafe. But, there's always a silver lining - they definitely have a McDonalds here. Ah, such horrible, greasy, american food! :P Anyways, now I've seen about a million times more of Serbia than I'd done heretofore. No big deal though.
Okay, about Сремска Митровица и Храна тамо: It's a tiny little town with a very European feel. Everyone rides on bikes with baskets or on mopeds in flip flops and shorts. There are probably 4 Orthodox cathedral deals and whatever. Our diet consists of rice with which we use this stuff called Vegeta (basically a bullion) and pasta. We eat a lot of pasta. I splurged this week and got a little bit of meat, which was nice. There's a wonderful thing called бурек which Брат Морис says is actually best in сремска, in this little place down some back alley. We will see. Everyone who talks to us (actually talks to us) offers us something. Usually сок (they are crazy about it here. It's just juice, but they have literally EVERY flavour imaginable. NBDeal) or like grapes that they grow themselves. There was also a man who we talked to the other day who pulled some смоква off of his tree and gave it to us. I guess they're figs, but I'd never had them before. Really good, just tasty and stuff. The people here, on the other hand, just basically eat паприке и парадаизе which I think is strange. We talked to this one man for a second time the other day and he had this stuff called салина, some homemade хлеб and (of course) парадаизе. It was really good (of course, he had to share it with us) and also this nummy сок.
Normal Sunday:
6:30 - "Arise" bahaha. Jk. We actually do get up on time.
8:00 - Personal Study
9:00 - Companionship Study
10:00 - Language Study
11:00 - Sacrament. This usally actually starts at around 11:05 or 11:10 which is just whenever the Вученовић и Ивановић families show up. Actually, grandpa Вученовић has been there for two weeks now in a row. We sing, led by Ада Вученовић and have a prayer and then do the sacrament which usually takes about 3.257 seconds to get through. It's pretty funny. About two weeks ago, Преседник Вученовић asked C. Jacobsen to give a talk, but has apparently forgotten about it. Yesterday, then, he just handed out some parts of a talk given by I think President Ballard, and had members come up and read it. Сестра Ивановић got to the end and was like, "И све то сам прочитала у име Исуса Христа, амен..." which is to say, "all this I read in Jesus name... amen..." Too funny. Then for the rest of the time Преседник Вученовић just talks.
12:00ish - Sunday School or Priesthood/Relief Society (depending on the week). Somebody gets up and talks for an hour. I assume good things are said? Idk. Apparently now, though, we are going to be teaching out of PMG every other week in Sunday school which should be fun. I don't know if I told y'all about the disaster that was my part of our Sunday School lesson given that first Sunday, but I'm definitely going to be prepping a little more material for that. Dang, I just can't wing things here! Sheesh.
1:00 - Lunch of Blue Fanta and Rice, etc. (P.S., whatever it is that America has been telling us is "Fanta" is a lie. They have the nectar of the gods here and it is the most wonderful thing EVER)
1:30/2:00 - Second Companionship study for гуштери (newbs).
After that - Kind of depends on the day. Sometimes we've just gone contacting and tracking, but some other times we've had appointments and the like. I don't know, we'll see.
9:00ish - Home, dinner (if we feel like it. Oh what healthy children we aren't....)
10:30 - Sack time. AND! Pedak the next day. So, good times.
Anyways, that's what it looks like on a Sunday. Pretty standard. So fun. Oh, and I've no calling outside of missionary. No assignment that is. Our branch has 3 priesthood holders (which is almost more than the rest of Serbia jk) and so we don't have to worry about it. But, there are tons of places in Croatia where Elders are.
I had no idea that they were doing the I'm a Mormon thing in Seattle! So cool! We definitely just sat around and watched like ALL of those videos about the people on Sundays in the MTC. There's this one army guy who spins a cat at the beginning, which is SO funny!!! Can you tell we were cooped up? Anyways, have fun with that! They are so cool and a really good way to get out the word that we're not a crazy sect like everyone thinks that we are.....
JB. For real, gurfrend. For real. You're the girl who's the crazy mormon at school now. Hold up that pride and stick it to 'em. Seriously, though, just answer their questions and don't just brush it off. I think one too many times in school I just went along with the prevailing trend of poking fun at myself and my religion in order to get by. There are tons of times now that I wish I would have just told people what we believe. I mean, we believe it, right? Why not? You go gurl.
I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT JOSH GARDNER IS IN OUR AREA. Okay, nvm, I can believe it. Basically predicted it as soon as he got his call. As you will remember, he was my roommate (or Scott's, anyways) during our first semester at the Y. Funny kid. WAY excited about, well everything. And I mean, like lugnuts could do it for him on certain days... Really funny kid. Just love him up when you see him and stuff. Sheesh. What a kid. I don't know what you remember, but he's the egg kid. From Arizona, so he doesn't actually understand rain or cold.... When he and Riley (the other Arizonan) saw snow for the first time it kind of freaked em out. As we approach winter, help 'em out and let him know that jackets and umbrellas are okay.... He just won't understand it.... :P
Go something classy with the room. Idk about coloration. Something that the summer sunsets will hit well with on the wall. And maybe paint a mural reminiscent of the Sistine Chapel on my closet or something. or do some cool sort of tagging. Idk. Have fun! But yes, wood beds rule. Js.
Tape recorder thing. I just want to be able to record like stories. I'm writing every day in my journal, but it's not the same as when I speak. You know how I am. I just want to be able to like compile some stories onto a card or something and send them home for you to store and listen to. That would be way cool. Sestra Izatt in the MTC had a tiny little digital one which took cards which would be nice for just putting onto the computer and stuff. Don't really know cost on that. Let me know. Just would be fun to be able to listen to you all a little too, when you sent back the cards. Oh, speaking of which, the internet cafes that we go to never really have capabilities for anything other than internet. So, yeah. Not really gonna be able to drop pictures into the file there. C. Jacobsen has a harddrive type thing filled with pictures and then he sends cards back home (so that he won't lose them and stuff). Still waiting to hear about that card I sent home, btw. Anyways, may do something like that.
Anyways, too many and simultaneously too few stories to dish out from this week. Had our first zone conference here which was great! Our zone is Serbia and also Osijek which has elders AND sisters. The sisters almost died en route to Сремска Митровица but we saved them from the sketchy bus with a sketchy cab. Conference was good, but didn't really meet the people much. The Serb missionaries are tight, but we don't really know the Croats. Well, Jacobsen does, but whatever. The work is slow, but it's coming along. Thank you so much for your prayers and advice and hope. Thanks so much for everything!
Oh, and hello to Elder Freeman's mom, who apparently reads this. I'm looking at him right now. What a dork. :P He says, "and by the way, Elder Freeman loves you." Oh, and he wants Betty Crocker stuff in his package. And you could send me some mapleine extract or something for палачинке... That is all. :)
Which reminds me, mom, I got your package you sent. Got it on Thursday? Yes thursday. That was nice. Thanks so much! No idea what to do with all this pancake mix without Syrup in this forsaken country, but nbd.:P C. Defreitas is definitely jealous of my granola though, I'll tell you that right now. Oh, and definitely send me General Conference magazines when you get them. Could definitely use some of that. Apparently Душка Вученовић translates and already knows about the October session talks. Lucky dog...
Okay, I'm peaceing out. Latuhs.
Старешина Адамз
Okay, about Сремска Митровица и Храна тамо: It's a tiny little town with a very European feel. Everyone rides on bikes with baskets or on mopeds in flip flops and shorts. There are probably 4 Orthodox cathedral deals and whatever. Our diet consists of rice with which we use this stuff called Vegeta (basically a bullion) and pasta. We eat a lot of pasta. I splurged this week and got a little bit of meat, which was nice. There's a wonderful thing called бурек which Брат Морис says is actually best in сремска, in this little place down some back alley. We will see. Everyone who talks to us (actually talks to us) offers us something. Usually сок (they are crazy about it here. It's just juice, but they have literally EVERY flavour imaginable. NBDeal) or like grapes that they grow themselves. There was also a man who we talked to the other day who pulled some смоква off of his tree and gave it to us. I guess they're figs, but I'd never had them before. Really good, just tasty and stuff. The people here, on the other hand, just basically eat паприке и парадаизе which I think is strange. We talked to this one man for a second time the other day and he had this stuff called салина, some homemade хлеб and (of course) парадаизе. It was really good (of course, he had to share it with us) and also this nummy сок.
Normal Sunday:
6:30 - "Arise" bahaha. Jk. We actually do get up on time.
8:00 - Personal Study
9:00 - Companionship Study
10:00 - Language Study
11:00 - Sacrament. This usally actually starts at around 11:05 or 11:10 which is just whenever the Вученовић и Ивановић families show up. Actually, grandpa Вученовић has been there for two weeks now in a row. We sing, led by Ада Вученовић and have a prayer and then do the sacrament which usually takes about 3.257 seconds to get through. It's pretty funny. About two weeks ago, Преседник Вученовић asked C. Jacobsen to give a talk, but has apparently forgotten about it. Yesterday, then, he just handed out some parts of a talk given by I think President Ballard, and had members come up and read it. Сестра Ивановић got to the end and was like, "И све то сам прочитала у име Исуса Христа, амен..." which is to say, "all this I read in Jesus name... amen..." Too funny. Then for the rest of the time Преседник Вученовић just talks.
12:00ish - Sunday School or Priesthood/Relief Society (depending on the week). Somebody gets up and talks for an hour. I assume good things are said? Idk. Apparently now, though, we are going to be teaching out of PMG every other week in Sunday school which should be fun. I don't know if I told y'all about the disaster that was my part of our Sunday School lesson given that first Sunday, but I'm definitely going to be prepping a little more material for that. Dang, I just can't wing things here! Sheesh.
1:00 - Lunch of Blue Fanta and Rice, etc. (P.S., whatever it is that America has been telling us is "Fanta" is a lie. They have the nectar of the gods here and it is the most wonderful thing EVER)
1:30/2:00 - Second Companionship study for гуштери (newbs).
After that - Kind of depends on the day. Sometimes we've just gone contacting and tracking, but some other times we've had appointments and the like. I don't know, we'll see.
9:00ish - Home, dinner (if we feel like it. Oh what healthy children we aren't....)
10:30 - Sack time. AND! Pedak the next day. So, good times.
Anyways, that's what it looks like on a Sunday. Pretty standard. So fun. Oh, and I've no calling outside of missionary. No assignment that is. Our branch has 3 priesthood holders (which is almost more than the rest of Serbia jk) and so we don't have to worry about it. But, there are tons of places in Croatia where Elders are.
I had no idea that they were doing the I'm a Mormon thing in Seattle! So cool! We definitely just sat around and watched like ALL of those videos about the people on Sundays in the MTC. There's this one army guy who spins a cat at the beginning, which is SO funny!!! Can you tell we were cooped up? Anyways, have fun with that! They are so cool and a really good way to get out the word that we're not a crazy sect like everyone thinks that we are.....
JB. For real, gurfrend. For real. You're the girl who's the crazy mormon at school now. Hold up that pride and stick it to 'em. Seriously, though, just answer their questions and don't just brush it off. I think one too many times in school I just went along with the prevailing trend of poking fun at myself and my religion in order to get by. There are tons of times now that I wish I would have just told people what we believe. I mean, we believe it, right? Why not? You go gurl.
I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT JOSH GARDNER IS IN OUR AREA. Okay, nvm, I can believe it. Basically predicted it as soon as he got his call. As you will remember, he was my roommate (or Scott's, anyways) during our first semester at the Y. Funny kid. WAY excited about, well everything. And I mean, like lugnuts could do it for him on certain days... Really funny kid. Just love him up when you see him and stuff. Sheesh. What a kid. I don't know what you remember, but he's the egg kid. From Arizona, so he doesn't actually understand rain or cold.... When he and Riley (the other Arizonan) saw snow for the first time it kind of freaked em out. As we approach winter, help 'em out and let him know that jackets and umbrellas are okay.... He just won't understand it.... :P
Go something classy with the room. Idk about coloration. Something that the summer sunsets will hit well with on the wall. And maybe paint a mural reminiscent of the Sistine Chapel on my closet or something. or do some cool sort of tagging. Idk. Have fun! But yes, wood beds rule. Js.
Tape recorder thing. I just want to be able to record like stories. I'm writing every day in my journal, but it's not the same as when I speak. You know how I am. I just want to be able to like compile some stories onto a card or something and send them home for you to store and listen to. That would be way cool. Sestra Izatt in the MTC had a tiny little digital one which took cards which would be nice for just putting onto the computer and stuff. Don't really know cost on that. Let me know. Just would be fun to be able to listen to you all a little too, when you sent back the cards. Oh, speaking of which, the internet cafes that we go to never really have capabilities for anything other than internet. So, yeah. Not really gonna be able to drop pictures into the file there. C. Jacobsen has a harddrive type thing filled with pictures and then he sends cards back home (so that he won't lose them and stuff). Still waiting to hear about that card I sent home, btw. Anyways, may do something like that.
Anyways, too many and simultaneously too few stories to dish out from this week. Had our first zone conference here which was great! Our zone is Serbia and also Osijek which has elders AND sisters. The sisters almost died en route to Сремска Митровица but we saved them from the sketchy bus with a sketchy cab. Conference was good, but didn't really meet the people much. The Serb missionaries are tight, but we don't really know the Croats. Well, Jacobsen does, but whatever. The work is slow, but it's coming along. Thank you so much for your prayers and advice and hope. Thanks so much for everything!
Oh, and hello to Elder Freeman's mom, who apparently reads this. I'm looking at him right now. What a dork. :P He says, "and by the way, Elder Freeman loves you." Oh, and he wants Betty Crocker stuff in his package. And you could send me some mapleine extract or something for палачинке... That is all. :)
Which reminds me, mom, I got your package you sent. Got it on Thursday? Yes thursday. That was nice. Thanks so much! No idea what to do with all this pancake mix without Syrup in this forsaken country, but nbd.:P C. Defreitas is definitely jealous of my granola though, I'll tell you that right now. Oh, and definitely send me General Conference magazines when you get them. Could definitely use some of that. Apparently Душка Вученовић translates and already knows about the October session talks. Lucky dog...
Okay, I'm peaceing out. Latuhs.
Старешина Адамз
09-12-2011
Hey kids.
So we've found a different internet cafe here in our BEAUTIFUL town of Sremska Mitrovica and it plays the best mix of like everything. Okay, so it's like soulful music that's usually from the States or Britain or something, but it also plays Serbian. WAY better than that rank bar that we were in last week. Suffice it to say, my heads a little clearer this time around for e-mail and stuff. So great.
I'm just going to describe my town here first off because it's great. We live very close to the Centre area and that is really nice. Our road is (kind of transliterated) Shecher Sokak - which translates to Sugar Lane. That I actually found out from an atheist guy who let us into his home for some chat and some of his low-budget Serbian rap to share. It was pretty funny.... Anyways, there are like 3 cathedrals in this town and then our little chapel which pales in elegance but abounds in Spirit. The streets are windy, the lanes pot-holed and dusty, and the walls covered with all sorts of grafiti in both languages - neither of which I can read which is probably a good thing.... Still, provides Cyrillic practice while we're walking along - and the people gruff and still horribly post-communistic. The town is right next to the River Sava which is very brown, but where all the city inhabitants go and swim and hang out in the evenings. We see the most brilliant hues over that water and the flat land past it in the evenings which is really nice. AND, since our city is so small, we get to see stars! Real stars! Like not the blackness that is the covering over Provo! Ah, to be away from the MTC. There are huge communist-style apartment complexes whose lights turn off every 45-100 seconds in the stairwells which is actually usually perfect for the amount of time that we're talking to people at their doors... The facades that face the streets are usually the backs or sides of houses, and first you must gain entrance through huge metal doors that connect them all. Everything is in huge blocks with people's living space going into the middle of the block, and not lengthwise, if that makes sense. The roofs are red-tiled, though covered in moss and the larger buildings of crumbling brick. It is so perfectly wonderful, and my camera has been thirsting in order to get at some of these visions. So great.
Mom, I got the package that you mentioned, at least I'm pretty sure that I did. I definitely got a bunch of little letters from the people in your Sunday-School class (of which Jason Pynn's was very helpful and I play that advice over in my head quite often). However, I got that the last-ish week of the MTC, so I doubt that you sent that one to the mission home? I don't know. We have yet to receive any post here in Sremska, but it's only been two weeks. We are actually going to have a Zone Conference (Our Zone consists of Sremska Mitrovica, Novi Sad, Beograd, and Osijek - a Croatian city near to us) and President is coming down, so he may have some letters or something.... Nadam se. Nadam se. Nadam se..... :P
Serbian is really fun, actually. The Cyrillic is coming pretty easily, but that just means that now I can understand as much Serbian as I can Croatian, which is practically zero. JK. Basically, there is a large handful of words that I've had to throw out and re-learn, and the "ije" is gone because the predominant dialect here is ekavian and not ijekavian which is cool. So I've just dropped all the many Js from my speach and it's fine. C. Jacobsen has actually been having some issues with that, though, because he's been out for about a year and a half and so all the habits are really formed in his head for that. But, my comprehension is coming up for quickly. Those first few days I just had absolutely no idea what people were saying and couldn't really differentiate the beginnings and ends of words, but now it's coming along quicker. People just speak so darn fast! Yrgh. Suffice to say, I'm learning, albeit never to the extent that I would like and expect of myself. Either way, as they always tell me here - Polako, polako. Uredu je. :)
So sorry to hear about Art! So happy simultaneously, though. I'll say it once, and probably a thousand times, but I just can't get over how lucky some people are to go back home. Ah well, I've got stuff to do. Later, then. I was excited that you all got to see some of the old gang though, especially Bro Reed! So great. 4th dimensionally say hi to him for me! Okay, okay. Good job. :)
Oh, and M.S. (that's a new term that I've just coined today actually - Meridian Script. Okay, so maybe it needs work, because I just think of, well, MS) somebody needs to tell me about all the horrible things you're doing with my room. Something about a bed, hmmm? Okay, okay, let's have it out.
I miss Bear, too. The Vucenovici here just rescued a dog and I told them to name him Bear, but I don't know if they will. Probably some silly Serbian name like Grgun or something like that. Such good memories. Sad, but good. Love you, mom. You'll be fine. I actually talked to a lady from Ottawa on our flight to Chicago and we talked about dogs for a long time. Such attachments there! Ah well, never really gone. He's imprinted on my heart.
This week was mainly spent in telling people about our English class for which we will have sign-ups tomorrow evening. We're hoping for a big turn-out, but we will see. We may actually get called in to help out the Beograd Elders who I guess usually get like 200 people to show up for those, which would be incredible if we were overwhelmed to that extent. I think their sign-ups are either Wednesday or Thursday. Anyways, we're hoping to do some good service by offering this free class and by maybe introducing some people to the Gospel through it. However, we also have our area book now and so are trying to find those less-active members that still live in the area, but that's tricky because the last time that people were in Sremska was like almost 2 years ago. We've got quite a bit of work to do with that.
Pricha: On Saturday it was late but we decided to go and see if we could find one more less-active and invite her back. She wasn't home, but on our way back from her place somebody cat-called us in English and I decided to invite him to English class or something like that. It took about 3.569 seconds for Branko (a man who we street-contacted the first day we were here) to recognize us and stand up. Long story short, we clarified some things, and set up an appointment with his family for Sunday. Yesterday, we went there and taught him and his wife about faith and the action that we need to take when we believe. Their neighbours were also there for most of it. It was really nice. They're a family of gypsy-descent or something like that so basically the dregs of society, but so loving and so nice. They accepted my poor Serbian and I think learned something. Spirit was definitely there. We've a follow-up with them on Wednesday, and we've assigned them 2 Nephi 31, so we want to talk to them about the importance of baptism and such. Funnily enough, they were actually prepared for like lesson outlines and commitments by the JWs that they had been receiving lessons from until recently. Should be good, I'm really hopeful about this family.
Other than that, the work is progressing, though slowly in my eyes. We study, we find, and now we've taught. Time to repeat. Serbia is great, people are great, the gospel is great. I wish you all well this week and hope you'll find joy AND fun in the things you do.
All Love and Hope,
C. Adams
P.S. In the next package that you send I could really use a USB stick. It's seeming to be a prevailing trend in order to print flyers and posters and to store information. That would be great.
P.P.S. Also, did you ever get that envelope with my memory stick in it? Or how about the package that I sent from the MTC?
'Dgenia. CMA
So we've found a different internet cafe here in our BEAUTIFUL town of Sremska Mitrovica and it plays the best mix of like everything. Okay, so it's like soulful music that's usually from the States or Britain or something, but it also plays Serbian. WAY better than that rank bar that we were in last week. Suffice it to say, my heads a little clearer this time around for e-mail and stuff. So great.
I'm just going to describe my town here first off because it's great. We live very close to the Centre area and that is really nice. Our road is (kind of transliterated) Shecher Sokak - which translates to Sugar Lane. That I actually found out from an atheist guy who let us into his home for some chat and some of his low-budget Serbian rap to share. It was pretty funny.... Anyways, there are like 3 cathedrals in this town and then our little chapel which pales in elegance but abounds in Spirit. The streets are windy, the lanes pot-holed and dusty, and the walls covered with all sorts of grafiti in both languages - neither of which I can read which is probably a good thing.... Still, provides Cyrillic practice while we're walking along - and the people gruff and still horribly post-communistic. The town is right next to the River Sava which is very brown, but where all the city inhabitants go and swim and hang out in the evenings. We see the most brilliant hues over that water and the flat land past it in the evenings which is really nice. AND, since our city is so small, we get to see stars! Real stars! Like not the blackness that is the covering over Provo! Ah, to be away from the MTC. There are huge communist-style apartment complexes whose lights turn off every 45-100 seconds in the stairwells which is actually usually perfect for the amount of time that we're talking to people at their doors... The facades that face the streets are usually the backs or sides of houses, and first you must gain entrance through huge metal doors that connect them all. Everything is in huge blocks with people's living space going into the middle of the block, and not lengthwise, if that makes sense. The roofs are red-tiled, though covered in moss and the larger buildings of crumbling brick. It is so perfectly wonderful, and my camera has been thirsting in order to get at some of these visions. So great.
Mom, I got the package that you mentioned, at least I'm pretty sure that I did. I definitely got a bunch of little letters from the people in your Sunday-School class (of which Jason Pynn's was very helpful and I play that advice over in my head quite often). However, I got that the last-ish week of the MTC, so I doubt that you sent that one to the mission home? I don't know. We have yet to receive any post here in Sremska, but it's only been two weeks. We are actually going to have a Zone Conference (Our Zone consists of Sremska Mitrovica, Novi Sad, Beograd, and Osijek - a Croatian city near to us) and President is coming down, so he may have some letters or something.... Nadam se. Nadam se. Nadam se..... :P
Serbian is really fun, actually. The Cyrillic is coming pretty easily, but that just means that now I can understand as much Serbian as I can Croatian, which is practically zero. JK. Basically, there is a large handful of words that I've had to throw out and re-learn, and the "ije" is gone because the predominant dialect here is ekavian and not ijekavian which is cool. So I've just dropped all the many Js from my speach and it's fine. C. Jacobsen has actually been having some issues with that, though, because he's been out for about a year and a half and so all the habits are really formed in his head for that. But, my comprehension is coming up for quickly. Those first few days I just had absolutely no idea what people were saying and couldn't really differentiate the beginnings and ends of words, but now it's coming along quicker. People just speak so darn fast! Yrgh. Suffice to say, I'm learning, albeit never to the extent that I would like and expect of myself. Either way, as they always tell me here - Polako, polako. Uredu je. :)
So sorry to hear about Art! So happy simultaneously, though. I'll say it once, and probably a thousand times, but I just can't get over how lucky some people are to go back home. Ah well, I've got stuff to do. Later, then. I was excited that you all got to see some of the old gang though, especially Bro Reed! So great. 4th dimensionally say hi to him for me! Okay, okay. Good job. :)
Oh, and M.S. (that's a new term that I've just coined today actually - Meridian Script. Okay, so maybe it needs work, because I just think of, well, MS) somebody needs to tell me about all the horrible things you're doing with my room. Something about a bed, hmmm? Okay, okay, let's have it out.
I miss Bear, too. The Vucenovici here just rescued a dog and I told them to name him Bear, but I don't know if they will. Probably some silly Serbian name like Grgun or something like that. Such good memories. Sad, but good. Love you, mom. You'll be fine. I actually talked to a lady from Ottawa on our flight to Chicago and we talked about dogs for a long time. Such attachments there! Ah well, never really gone. He's imprinted on my heart.
This week was mainly spent in telling people about our English class for which we will have sign-ups tomorrow evening. We're hoping for a big turn-out, but we will see. We may actually get called in to help out the Beograd Elders who I guess usually get like 200 people to show up for those, which would be incredible if we were overwhelmed to that extent. I think their sign-ups are either Wednesday or Thursday. Anyways, we're hoping to do some good service by offering this free class and by maybe introducing some people to the Gospel through it. However, we also have our area book now and so are trying to find those less-active members that still live in the area, but that's tricky because the last time that people were in Sremska was like almost 2 years ago. We've got quite a bit of work to do with that.
Pricha: On Saturday it was late but we decided to go and see if we could find one more less-active and invite her back. She wasn't home, but on our way back from her place somebody cat-called us in English and I decided to invite him to English class or something like that. It took about 3.569 seconds for Branko (a man who we street-contacted the first day we were here) to recognize us and stand up. Long story short, we clarified some things, and set up an appointment with his family for Sunday. Yesterday, we went there and taught him and his wife about faith and the action that we need to take when we believe. Their neighbours were also there for most of it. It was really nice. They're a family of gypsy-descent or something like that so basically the dregs of society, but so loving and so nice. They accepted my poor Serbian and I think learned something. Spirit was definitely there. We've a follow-up with them on Wednesday, and we've assigned them 2 Nephi 31, so we want to talk to them about the importance of baptism and such. Funnily enough, they were actually prepared for like lesson outlines and commitments by the JWs that they had been receiving lessons from until recently. Should be good, I'm really hopeful about this family.
Other than that, the work is progressing, though slowly in my eyes. We study, we find, and now we've taught. Time to repeat. Serbia is great, people are great, the gospel is great. I wish you all well this week and hope you'll find joy AND fun in the things you do.
All Love and Hope,
C. Adams
P.S. In the next package that you send I could really use a USB stick. It's seeming to be a prevailing trend in order to print flyers and posters and to store information. That would be great.
P.P.S. Also, did you ever get that envelope with my memory stick in it? Or how about the package that I sent from the MTC?
'Dgenia. CMA
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