11/07/2011

Gang!

Actually we do have Daylight Savings in Serbia, thank you very much! In fact, that happened last weekend, which means that we're not only 10 hours ahead of y'all (as well as hundreds of years culturally :P) but now a week! Oh, goodie! :)

In regards to Elder Gardner - AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! WHAT?! Ohmygoshthat'ssocrazycoolI'msuperexcitedforbothmembersofthatpartyandcan'tevenbelievemycrazyawesomebrainrightnowohmygoshholycrap! And all that other stuff too.... I'm so proud of Elder Gardner too, I tell you what, he really is meant for the land of cold and wet! Don't let him ever go back to nasty Arizona, if he's going to keep bringing my friends into this goodness. So cool. In fact, if it's in his jurisdiction just aim him at Morgan, and have done with it, dang it. js.

Oh, hey mama. I just want to let you know that your package made it to Serbia. That's great, right? Cool, and all and yeah, I'm a believer of the Postal System. Um.... Here's the thing: My freaking Zone Leader decided it would be a funny idea to have it within 40 feet of me at our district meeting, not give it to me (along with letters!!! >[ ), and then has the GALL to call me and tell me about it later that day. *Okay, for all of you righteous people in the audience, yes, the White Handbook says "Do not talk negatively about missionary leaders to other missionaries or members at any time"p. 56, BUT..... okay. No excuses.* Actually, he had a perfectly legitimate excuse - he was busy "sealing the deal" AKA signing and buying another apartment in Beograd with our old District Leader Elder Hansen right after our Bomb District Meeting on Friday which leads me to my next point:

MORE ELDERS IN SERBIA! That's right, gang. We're moving up in the world. We're all the way up to 8 of us here now. Transforsures (not even just Transfer Rumours) were given to us on I believe Wednesday. The new guys are coming in on either today or tomorrow, which makes me no longer the lizard (Гуштер - pronounced gooshtair), which is the way that they say "greenie" or new guy". We're getting two more into Serbia (one in Novi Sad, and another in Beograd) which means that Elders Armond and Defreitas who came out with me will be together in Beograd, and the two old Serbs will be training once more. Elder Schouten and I will be staying in Dear Sremska Mitrovica until the year is out at least, working crazy hard and baptizing tons dang it. :D Father Dearest (Elder Jacobsen) is going up to be Assistant to the President in Zagreb, and Elder Bishop is training in Karlovac! Can you believe it?! I can. He's such the perfect guy for it. Okay, I get a little goo goo for transfers but come on, it's way cool. I'm just excited to see Serbia growing again. Apparently there used to be like 30 or 40 missionaries here back in the day, though I'm pretty sure that member was exaggerating... Still. Here we go, onward and upward!

Speaking of baptizing (as is kind of important to our job here...) no we did not baptize anybody this last week. What I meant was that there is somebody in our area who has a baptismal date (now moved to Saturday the 26th of November) who has decided to take that covenant upon herself. Here name is Biljana Biberovic. She has read the book of Mormon roughly 15 times, alongside a myriad out of the Bible and the Doctrine and Covenants. She has met with missionaries for the last 15 years and actually attended Church for about 8 of those consistently but was never baptized because of an addiction to smoking and to drinking alcohol. I'm under the impression that in the last 3 or so years she has been breaking herself of that and waiting for the missionaries to find her again as they always have, I guess. She's a way nice lady and we're excited to baptize her on the 26th and confirm her on the 27th. Way excited. She also just wrote for us a list of about 10 names of her close friends who she wants us to invite to her baptism who we're probably going to teach and baptize and well, just no big deal! :) Big plans for Sremska. Big plans for Serbia.

We went to 7th Day Adventist Church on Saturday, which was pretty fun. I really agree with a lot of their teachings as basically they've got the most accurate interpretation of scripture that I've seen out of a Protestant Church. Way cool. In their kind of Sunday School deal we just broke off into little discussion groups (and I actually participated a little!) and talked about Galatians 4 an kind of the Spirit vs. the Letter of the Law idea. They brought up the two commandments that Jesus gave while he was here (Love your God, and Love your Neighbour) and how that will lead us to follow all the others. Way cool. We sang, we prayed, I felt the Spirit, it was nice. They're just missing the authority, you know. Ah well. Anyways, we were looking to use their font for our baptism because they baptize by immersion (see? Totally correct interpretations) and we'll probably talk to their preacher who was out of town on Wednesday. Anyways, way cool. One of their members is a student in our English class and is a really great lady. Like her family. Want to teach her. We'll see! :)

Okay, my Area Book addiction: I feel the need to explain. The first month and a half we kind of spent figuring out how we were going to run Sremska, what we needed to do to get the branch back to where it was (used to have 60 members here!) and small chores. Kind of boring, but very necessary. We tracted a lot, which I basically compare with WWI carpet bombing style of missionary work - expensive (time-wise) and not accurate whatsoever. There was also a lot of "contacting" done, though that's basically like Vietnam idea of "walkabout". We basically just waited to get "shot at" and that was our success.... Not a big fan. Anyways, I present unto you the heat-seeking, laser-guided missile system known as the area book. We've been basically finding anyone and everyone who used to be an investigator, or who used to be a potential, or friend or whatever and finding them again. A lot of pull-outs in Serbia have led to a lot of dropped investigators who didn't really know why they got dropped. It's been really great. We have also created the "Go Box" in the which we hold information and addresses of said people and whenever we have a little bit of time between meetings and tasks we just pull that out and go right to them. In fact, we had two lessons just last night because of that! So cool. Okay, so I'm in love with it and all, but what can I say?

Um.... What else? We just cleaned our apartment, all the leaves are falling, we've got basically the busiest week that I've ever seen as a missionary lined up (okay, not crazy, but more lessons set up than we have in a long time - like 5!) and I feel like we're just on the brink. It's so cool. Oh, I love to be a missionary. For your consideration, Alma 31: 5 which reads,
"... as the preaching of the word had a great tendency to lead the people to do that which was just - yea, it had hadmore powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword, or anything else, which had happened unto them - therefore Alma thought it was expedient that they should try the virtue of the word of God."
Been trying this one out. Just doctrine. I believe that the knowledge of who we really are and what we need to do really will change and shape people. Really. Compare this with the quote by President Packer in PMG on p. 19 which says,
"The Study of the doctines of the gospel will improve behaviour quicker than a study of behaviour will improve behaviour."

So that's all for now, folks. Except below I've written out the "Our Purpose" in Serbian for your enjoyment. It reads in English: Our purpose as missionaries is to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them to receive the Restored Gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving of the Gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. Much easier for me in Serbian at this point. Cool, that.

Love you all! Pozdrav!
Старешина Адамз

Наша сврха кау мисионари је да позовимо друге да дођу Христу тако што им чемо да прихвате обновљено јеванђеље кроз веру у Исуса Христа и Његово помирење, покајање, крштење, примање Дара Светог Духа, и да издрже до краја.