Yes, it’s August 1st, but we can’t forget about July.  I knew I was nearing the end of my mission, but I felt like I was right in the thick of it and really didn’t want to think about going home yet.  My companion may not agree with me, but I really tried not to let the upcoming departure affect my day to day work.  That may have changed a bit once we hit August, but we’re not there yet.

There are so many of our friends that I am missing pictures for.  I’m not sure where they got lost along the way, but I’m so sad about it.

 

 

3 July 1996

This is a very strange day.  It’s p-day. Yay! I slept in until about 10:30.  It felt so good. I’ve just been having major headaches and it felt way good to lay in bed.  So then I woke up and convinced Sister Penfield to go down to the torture chamber, I mean mailbox, with me.  A miracle happened! I opened the box and it was so full, things fell out onto me. i’ve never seen anything like that before.  It was amazing!  I got a letter from the mission home saying I’m ending soon. I think it was a little soon for that letter.  I still have 2 months left. Then I got a letter from Merilee saying that she had Boston. He was born June 16, 1996. It was so cool to hear from her.  Then a letter from Mom with pictures of Boston and others. The flash was messed up though, so the heads of people were chopped off. Then a really cute picture of Mom and Dad with their tandem bike, and the new van in front of our house.  It looks like a car commercial.

Man, I’m writing like I used to.  I mean my fingers are holding the pen that way, but it feels way too weird, plus my finger still doesn’t want that much pressure, so I’m switching back.  Ok, this feels better.

There’s been so much that I haven’t written about.  I don’t remember if I wrote that our mission changed.  As of 1 July 1996 we have a new mission president. His name is President Wondra.  He’s either from Germany or Austria, I’m not sure. But not only that, the mission is different too.  We are now part of the Austria Vienna South Mission, which doesn’t really include any of Austria at all.  It is all of Former Yugoslavia. That is so dang cool. Anyway, we have interviews with him on Saturday. I’m excited but at the same time we will have to cancel some appointments that I was looking forward to.  Well, we can reschedule.

I have to write the coolest story from about 2 weeks ago.  Sister Penfield and I were walking down the street, actually we were going to get some bread and coming home, and like always, we were walking by the flower shop.  Well this time, the lady that works there stopped us and asked if she could ask what we were here for. I said of course, and told her we were missionaries. Then she asked what we do, and I said we spread our faith.  Then she asked if we could come in and talk for awhile. Well, maybe if we have time, right….Whatever! Of course we can! We went inside and she asked us why we were so happy all the time. She would always see us greeting people on the streets and smiling and she liked how positive we were.  So, what do we believe? I have no clue why, but the first thing out of my mouth was that we believed that families could be together forever. Then I caught myself, and started with the first discussion. Then some people came into the store and she got a little busy, so we gave her a pamphlet and she said to come back and chat some time.  When we came back, she said she had read the pamphlet and she really liked it, and how could she get one of the books. Well, I said, I just happen to have one right here that she could have. We told her a little about it and she got busy again, so we tried to set up a time to meet with her. We are going to meet with her this Sunday and all go to church together.  This will be interesting since I’m giving the Sunday School lesson, and it’s on the law of chastity. Ouch! But, it was so cool to see friendliness pay off, and have someone courageous enough to ask us who we are. She’s just another one of God’s gifts plopped down in our laps. It just sent us flying.

Other than that, things are a little different around here.  There were huge transfers and now Elder Clawsen is with Elder Holmes, and Elder Bateman went to Celje.  Elder Ledbetter is here with Elder Martin and Elder Tingey went to Kranj. Elders Barnes and Reynolds are in Ljubljana along with Elders Dastrup and Peterson.  So, among missionaries it’s different, but we are just going to do our work and baptize all of our investigators while I’m still here. I know my time is running very short, and there are too many things that must happen first.  I’ve made a few, okay, many mistakes, but those will be, if not already, remedied and we’re going to be “super missionaries”. Listen, you might be able to hear the Superman theme in the background. Now, however, I have to write to about 1,000,000 people and take a shower, and cut my hair.

5 July 1996

It’s 10:14 so I have a couple minutes to write.  Agh! Today I ate fish, not just any fish, but scaly fish with fins on still.  We each had 2. Nelka made them for us. She lives in our building and has an adorable 5 yr old daughter named Deja.  She adores us. Is that pompous? It’s ok. We adore her too. Anyway, I almost died eating that fish. We want to share the gospel with Nelka, but we’re just not sure how to do it.  I think I’m going to have to leap that bridge. A thought came to my mind a bit ago, that I just shared with my dear comp(ica). I think I figured out what was wrong with our teaching.  We need to testify more. Courage! Why be scared of that? No reason whatsoever! Anyway, time for bed.

We had a cool 4th of July picnic with the elders yesterday.  It was fun. Plus, we go to meet the new mission president tomorrow.

9 July 1996

Zivio!  It’s p-day eve.  We had a great day.  The sun was shining. We finally got our bikes and even with all of this, I’m grouchy.  I have no clue why. Just because. I don’t want to be because that will bring down Sister Penfield.  I just need to do something fun, or rather uplifting.

But anyway, just to describe the day, we went and got my bike and Sister Penfield bought hers, or better yet, just got it, because when we got home she reached in her pocket and pulled out this wad of money.  Oops! We forgot to pay. 50,000 tolars just sitting in her pockets. I can’t believe they didn’t notice. We’ll go back tomorrow and pay for it. Then we went and made chilli beans and corn bread with Janja. She was so cute.  She loved it, and so did her family. Plus, we got to talk a little about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Man, that cornbread was so good!

Then Klavdija wasn’t home, so we went to visit Mirela.  She was very busy, so we said we’d come back on Thursday.  Then we went to visit Gospa Trap. I don’t believe I’ve mentioned her yet.  This is a bit surprising because she’s one of the most interesting people.  We met her about 3 weeks ago, tracting. She let us in immediately, or rather her live-in refugee did.  I don’t know exactly what to call him. He lives there but really doesn’t have anything to do with her. No, I mean their friends after living together for so long, but when I asked how they me, she said the same way we did.  What?! He just knocked on your door?! I was utterly confused. I still am. Anyway, she’s a funny older lady. She’s almost blind, so when we read with her, she takes off her inch thick glasses, and holds the book so close that she can rest it on her nose.  It must work pretty well though, because she has books from just about every religion in Maribor. I think we, and Kristusovi Bratje (Jahovah’s Witnesses, although that doesn’t really translate directly) are her favorites. Who knows. She even learns from the Muslims.  I didn’t even know they had missionaries. One time we were over there and we were trying to hold a conversation between jumping up and down to get us sok, live-in man blabbering something about getting some money (it’s very hard to understand him because he slurs). It may be a result from an extreme amount of alcohol intake.  Plus, there was a little tiny Muslim man telling me that if I met some beggar but didn’t have any money, to pat him on the head 3 times and explain something. I’m not sure what it was I was supposed to explain. I was too busy trying to keep myself from busting up laughing. Then all the sudden there came a knock on the door. Oh no.  Who could it be? I see a lady walk in with a suit and a briefcase type bag. Freak! Jahova’s Witnesses. Phew! It wasn’t, just a lady selling table cloths and lace. If I wasn’t with investigators I would have looked at her stuff.

 

12 July 1996

Hey!  It’s Chris’ birthday, and yesterday was Ty’s.  These last couple of days have been great too. Yesterday we got to play with the kids at the orphanage.  it’s so fun, and I know they need the attention, but sometimes it’s really hard when they don’t listen to you, because you don’t know what to do.  Like Maja. She is mentally disabled and it’s very hard to control her. Oh well. She needs love just as much, if not more than most.

Then we did some errands and a little running around and then home for lunch.  The the best visit with Petra. She has amazing child-like faith. It’s amazing.  We went there thinking to review the 2nd, but when we got there, we ended up teaching it instead of just reviewing.  It was great. But then the big question, that I wasn’t quite prepared to ask. Whenever you teach a 2nd discussion you ask them to be baptised.  Well, I wasn’t ready for that. I knew it was coming, but I was scared to death for some reason. I thought she would say that she was already baptized, especially since she kept telling us about how her parents had her baptized.  So I kept skirting the question and figuring out how to ask her. I told her a little but about my feelings when I was baptized. Then I did it, not actually how it’s written, but instead invited her. I told her that we would like to invite her to be baptized into Christ’s church.  She said,”bi”. That is to say, she would like to. What?! That what I said. Then she said, “ I said that I would.” Then I had no clue what to say. I hadn’t really thought she would say yes. So I made up that we were having a baptism the end of July and said she could pick the date.  She asked if it could be in August instead, because her birthday is Aug 7th and she would like to be baptized on her birthday. Oh well, of course! I think that can be arranged. So, that was amazing! Ful da best! After that I didn’t know what to say. I asked her how she felt about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.  She has a testimony! My favorite was when we asked her to come to church and she said she would try. She was going to be painting a house this weekend. But, she said, I guess I have to be more serious about this if I want to be baptized. Yes! I loved that!

Well, it’s 10:30.  We also got to visit Lučka and a few others yesterday.  It was awesome, plus a really cool dance concert of Vlasta’s.  Today was awesome with Ljubica. She is really catching on to studying the Book of Mormon.  Time for bed.

15 July 1996

Tell me why, I don’t like Mondays…

Today was so extremely long!  Not that it was bad, or anything, but our plans all just fell through.  I felt like we did more wandering than ever. But hey, we did come home with some interesting Chinese bean rice that looks like transparent pasta.  Don’t ask.  

Oh yeah, I almost forgot.  The day wasn’t all bad after all.  In fact, it was wonderful! Vanja had a baby girl.  I guess if anything else incredible happened today it would be way too much.  But hey, we did get our lesson almost done, and the letter for English class almost done.  Plus, we at least got to see Petra. We didn’t get to teach her, but we rescheduled and now we have more reasons to see her.  This is a good thing. She had to go to the dentist today because her filling fell out while she was flossing her teeth.  

Then we got to visit Lučka today.  It was cool. While we were there, I suddenly had a realization.  I always had a hard time with her saying that she already had the Holy Ghost with her all of the time.  I didn’t think that was possible because she had never received the Gift of the Holy Ghost. Then I thought, everybody was given gifts, special personal gifts from God.  Maybe that’s one of hers, and we should be concentrating on other things to bring her to baptism. That was a big help for me, to help her with the church.  

Oops, almost forgot Sister Penfield asked her what she would like us to teach her, or rather, what she would like to learn.  She said she wanted to have the discussions over again. Cool! Maybe it’ll be like a whole new start. Okay, it really is late now.  We also visited the Rizvanaj’s. I love Idaet and her little family. I’m sad though because Moharem always leaves whenever we bring up church.  Maybe he thinks that it’s a visiting teaching thing. Oh well, I’m tired now and must go to bed. (Remember cheese for zone conference; thin slices so it costs less.)

22 July 1996

Too much time has gone by, and I haven’t written.  Well, we finally saw Vanja’s baby, Patricija the other day.  She’s a doll! She’s got tons of black hair. We’re going to go visit tomorrow.

We’ve had quite an interesting couple of weeks with one of the members.  This person happened to fall in love with the elder who baptized her. I don’t want to go into detail, other than just what I learned from it.  First of all, turn over investigators. Elders teach men. Sisters teach women, gotovo! Then and most importantly, trust in the Lord and take all decisions to Him.  It would have made perfect sense to dog our appointment with her today and never go back, and avoid her. A sane person could have done that. But that’s not what the Lord wanted done.  We spent about 2 hours yesterday trying to figure out what to do with her today. This without interruption. We prayed that we would know what to do and that she would be calm. It worked, and we practiced what we thought would happen, and we were set, scared, but set.  Well, when we got there things were a bit different. We followed the Spirit, and she agreed to start over again from the beginning, and to not remove her name from the records for at least 2 months. She was in such a good mood when we left and I felt good about the whole thing.  So did Sister Penfield. Finally a little rest, not too much because she still needs a lot of help and so do we, but at least a little. 

Oh yeah, last wednesday we rode our bikes up to Austria.  It was totally fun. Then Friday after zone conference, we went out to eat Chinese food for Sister House’s birthday.  Cool!

 

26 July 1996

Well today was a pretty cool and interesting day.  This morning we went down to the trg, not just because we needed food though.  It was our friend’s birthday that works down there. She’s really cool, only thing is, we don’t know her name. She turned 21 today and so we took her a krof. We wanted to ask her to listen to our message, but she was amazingly busy.  We decided we’d have to go back a little later in the morning. We had an appointment with Ljubica though today, so we didn’t get back.

Ljubica is awesome!  We thought we missed her because  she wasn’t home when we first came, but as we walked up the door, she came up the walk.  She was at her aunt’s and said she hurried home to catch us. WE had fun chatting, as always.  Then we got to finish the 4th discussion with her and teach her the Law of Chastity and Word of Wisdom.  She accepted everything! Yay! And…she even liked it.

Then it was a totally great visit with Cvetka and she even asked how to pray.  She wanted to start doing that again.  

Then we had a little mental break down, and then we went out again,

It was short lasting.  We went tracting. It was cool.  I actually went back to a door that turned us down.  She had so much faith in Christ, I couldn’t see her turn away His church.  Well, she did anyway. WE didn’t get let in at all, but it felt good just to get out.