Church

Hey so this week was pretty good. It started off with an exchange that I spent in Split, beautiful place as always!

We did some volunteering with Red Cross which was a ton of fun! We just cleaned up a bay area and had a nice lunch after. We are still on the search for more service as always. I definitely love the weeks we have a ton of service.

So we found a friend online from Thailand who is a member but living here in Zadar. He works at a hotel with a friend and their family, all from Thailand. We went to visit him at the hotel and we all played volleyball together, SO MUCH FUN. I love volleyball a ton even though I'm not the greatest at it. They all ended up coming to church which was awesome and hopefully we can work with them more!

The family (the Sarkanović's, Biserka and Slaven) we met last week also came to church yesterday. It was funny because on Saturday evening we got a call from our branch president who said he wasn't going to be able to come to church the next day and that the speaker wouldn't be able to do the talk. So I conducted and we all wrote little talks and I was the translator for the Bulgarian missionaries during it all. It was a nice experience because I got through it fine which felt good, of course they simplified it down for me as well but still. Afterwards, the family who came (their first time) said they really enjoyed it and complimented me on the translating and stuff. They were like "it's crazy for us to come here and have an American translate into Croatian here in a church in our own country." We are planning to start teaching them the lessons when they come back the next week which will be way fun!

We also met this guy from Turkey who also wants to take some of the lessons, he is such a cool guy.

Next week we are planning on playing soccer with buddies and I'm stoked to play again haha it's been too long. 

Finally we went to this cool castle for pday with a Ukrainian refugee who was baptized by one of the missionaries who's currently with is so that was really cool!

Hope y'all have a good week!

Elder Gubler

Great Teaching Week

 This week was so awesome!

We started off going to zone conference and went to these pretty lakes called Plitvice for our activity. The next day we had the actual conference and it was so good! It's one of my last ones which is weird to think about haha.

Then when we came back, we met with this group of women from when we met at the Red Cross service activity. We ended up teaching them a bunch of stuff and explaining a ton and it was so awesome, it just felt super natural (probably one of the best feelings on the mission) especially because it came from service (also great feeling). One of them came to game night and we played secret Hitler for the first time on my mission and I loved it, I haven't played that game in so long.

Next we were looking for a member's house which we couldn't find and so we were asking people nearby and stuff if they knew her and this one family is walking home and we started talking to them. They were like "wow you're Croatian is good how did you learn" and then went into why we are here as missionaries and such and then THEY asked for our numbers and invited US over so we could talk about Jesus. Literally best feeling, and so when we went we taught a whole ton and they said they are planning on coming to church to see what it's like. They were so kind and welcoming, it goes a long way.

We did more service with our friend with autism, Nikša, best guy, he is remembering our names now. We are tight now I'd say hahah. We also did basketball and I played soccer with some older dudes that were actually very good, I only got to play for a couple minutes but I'll take what I can get, it felt nice go to play at a higher level again. Then we ended with playing volleyball with new friends.

Pday we went to šibenik, city in-between Zadar and Split, very pretty. Played some bachi ball and had a good time.

Hope y'all have a great week!

Redbull Sponsor

Hey so this week went by pretty fast. We went to Zagreb today to drop off Elder Merrill and pick up the missionary from Ukraine, Elder Crane who just recovered from appendicitis and then we came back to Zadar. 

Last Friday we were walking in Centar and noticed this big thing for "Wings for Life World Run" and a tent that said volonteri on it. So we just walked in and said can we help? And they said yes come back in an hour and so we ran home, changed, and came back. We met some way fun people and helped prepare stuff for like 4 hours. We got cool shirts and bracelets and unlimited Redbulls hahah, the gist of the thing was run by Redbull. It was good to be normal with them all and kind of correct the image some people had of us and being weird and such. It was also fun to hear people say stuff in Croatian thinking we don't understand and just to respond to them later hahah, in the end everyone was super cool and it was a ton of fun!

Today we went to a cool beach kind of tucked away and we just hung out there.

That's all for this week, have a good one!

Solid Week

So I didn't write anything for two weeks ago, nothing crazy happened, I was just in Zagreb until like Thursday because the one companion I had temporarily had appendicitis (he is okay now! Just recovering still in Zagreb). When I got back the weekend consisted basically of meeting with people to set up for this past week which was awesome and FULL of awesome service stuff!

So Tuesday we meet with Red Cross to find ways to get involved (we met some of the Red Cross people a couple weeks ago to get to this point) and now we are Red Cross volunteers which is sick. Then we met with a friend, Petra, who I met through a friend on Facebook while looking for service, who was giving us an introduction for her volunteering group. It's basically we hang out with families who have kids with autism to give them social interaction! It's a really cool thing. So later in the day we meet with the family we are hanging out with, their boy is named Nikša, such a fun kid. We just play games with them and such and it's a blast

On Wednesday we went to go visit some members and we met one who helped Krešimir čosić translate the Book of Mormon into Croatian which is way cool! Then we did a emotional resilience program with some people here which is nice, it's a pretty helpful program with good tips and tools for dealing with emotional difficulties 

Thursday we started all the service stuff! We started with helping a member's parents paint these bars on the outside of the house. The grandma there afterwards gave us lunch had was giving us a history lesson on Croatia and Yugoslavia, which was super interesting and I actually loved learning about it all. Kind of about the breaking apart of the countries and the little detailed effects it had in certain cities in Croatia. For example, the huge statue of a guy on a horse in Zagreb was supposed to be destroyed but a guy took it apart and hid all the pieces underground beneath a museum and said he destroyed it, then once Croatia became independent the people rebuilt it and originally it was facing the opposite direction (towards the Austria-Hungarian empire) and then it switched directions towards the main train station. Having this little lesson was really interesting, plus it was a nice reminder of how far I have come in terms of learning the language. Like never would I have imagine being able to understand a whole history lesson in Croatian, it's a nice confidence booster when moments like that come along so I'm grateful for those.

Friday we went with our landlord named Davon končurat, to an island called Dugi Otok to help him clean out his garden, we just pulled out SO MANY plants for a couple hours then had lunch there. It was a beautiful island, it feels like a dream, like not real it's strange but i love it!

Saturday we got to go with Red Cross to another island called Ugljan where we did a clean up of a little harbor, that was super fun and we met some nice people there too. The islanders speak so different, like even to native Croatians they can't understand it. I've been told as a joke that the people on the islands speak Chinese beCause it's just totally different but still "Croatian." Like instead of saying što for what they say ča, and tko is ki and they switch their m's with n's and use a lot of Italian words and the list goes on. So we did some good stuff there and came back and had a lesson with our friend who has been enjoying the lessons. 

Sunday we had church and met some people from Germany and Chile who came to the church (members). Then we had another meeting with the family with the child with autism, Nikša, and it was way cool because the first time we met he said he wanted to know what happens when we die so we offered to help begin to answer that and they were all cool for it! So we got to teach a fun little lesson with drawings and such about what happens when we die. It was good fun.

Today we're going to check out these cool stone bridges and valley thing, that's about all. Have a great week!