Christmas

 Hello everyone! I'm lazy so I'm going to make this email quick with some pictures.

Christmas was awesome! We watched Fiddler on the Roof which is an awesome movie and would recommend. It was a cool experience too in terms of being a missionary because we created a little Facebook program celebrating Christ's birth which a few people joined and it was awesome. We got lots of sweets and food. We also delivered some gifts to members and friends who also got stuff for us and it felt nice to be able to help others in even the small ways. A lot of people who aren't members were very appreciative of the gifts and even gave us gifts in return. It made me happy because everyone was showing kindness despite differences in faiths and beliefs.

It snowed the day after and it was beautiful and really reminded me of skiing. For pday we hiked around in some snow with an awesome friend of ours named Adnan, a very friendly guy. It felt so good to be in fresh air and with a bunch of snow.

 

Also there is a friend of ours we do these calls every week, we call them toastmasters, where we ask questions to one another and answer in the other's language. Like we answer in Bosnian and they answer in English. But this last one we did, this guy named Fadil, super hilarious guy and I love him, was telling us how grateful he was for the work we do. He said stuff like (I am paraphrasing) "English class normally costs like 200 dollars but you guys do it for free. From the bottom of my heart I thank you guys and I am so thankful to meet you. All those other guys who don't listen to you are STUPID" then he proceeded to just hype us up. It was so nice, and Fadil isn't a member either, just a friend of ours. It makes me so happy to have relationships like this with people.

Pictures

Snow stuff and knitting progress

 

 

Knit Club

 So we started a knitting club. Its pretty great, I learned knitting a little before my mission and now it carries over into my mission. Special thank to those who taught me in the first place, you guys are awesome!

This week was crazy busy. In summary, we did another Banja Luka trip (3 hours drive) and stay there for 2 days, so we had to fit a month's worth of work into those two days so it was crazy crammed. We had 11 lessons/meet ups in that time. It was great. One of the people was this conspiracy lady told us stories that were pretty entertaining to listen to but hard to do so with a straight face. We met two other guys who were around our age and they were so cool too. With one of them I had an actual conversation in Bosnian so that was awesome to final be able to do that (it wasn't a very crazy convo though). 

After that we came home and had to do visa stuff and had to get blood taken, that was way fun especially because I don't know medical vocab in Bosnian. 

And finally we had our pday which we had a knit club and my district is learning to knit and its the best time. Now we are about to go ice skating.

 

Have a great Christmas this week!

Pictures

1. Međugorje last week

2. Sorry not a lot of pictures this week, ill send more over if we take some cool ones tonight

 

 

Medugorje

This weeks email may be pretty dry so I'll try and sauce it up. We had Return and Report which is basically when my MTC district all gets together (over zoom) and we do a few things together to show like how we are doing and how well we are learning the language. The biggest part is the "5 min lesson". Everyone is super nervous for it but basically all the new missionaries teach a whole lesson in language to other missionaries. That went well and everyone killed it, so it's a nice relief now that that is done.

Besides that, this week was kinda normal in terms of just finding and talking with a bunch of students (which this coming week we hope to be meeting with them because finals are finishing up). 

This pday we are going to Međugorje which is like a place where Catholics believe the Mother Mary appeared to 6 children and still appear to them like once a month. It's on the top on this mountain hill and when people climb it they do it barefooted to show their devotion because the trail is super rocky, so we decided to join in on it. It was a pretty cool experience. 

Pictures

1. Since not a lot happened, here is a picture of the drive to Međugorje

2. Walking on the trail barefoot 

3. The top of the trail

4. View from the top

5. A statue of Mary from a different hill

 

 

Crazy flying man gave us a visit

Okeedokee so this pday was crazy! We go on this hike to a waterfall and we are on top of this cliff and see this helicopter across the mountainside and we see them lifting up this dude from this giant rock and we were like "oh sick". Then it flew over to us and we were like "is it actually coming over here" and it did the same thing at the bottom of the cliff so we watched them drop and lift this guy from a cable. Right after it starts to fly up, with the guy still hanging on the cable, then comes up and flies literally like 35 ft above us (crazy wind) and the dude from the cable just lands right next to us, waves, then proceeds to dip and they just fly away. So that was a wayyy unexpected event!

This week we had a few lesson plans fall through but we were able to start talking to a bunch of college students who are really nice and down to meet up after their finals, so hopefully some cool stuff can come from that. 

Those are pretty much the highlights of this week. Here's the stuff everyone skips to anyway.

1. Helicopter man

2. Comp and me

3. View

4. Lovely cat

5. We named him boots and he followed us the entire hike

6. Copter man again

7. This video may work?