Weekly

 Okay so today we were Walking back to our apartment and there was the EURO game going on with Poland and Slovakia I think it was and I peeked in and started watching and there were these two older dudes there and we all reacted at the same time when there was a big save towards the end and I was like "yo who do you want to win?" And we just started talking and we all sat down and chatted for like an hour. It was so cool like literally never would I expect do be in Bosnia and then just sit and chat with two Balkans in Bosnian about their lives and languages and such. They both were good friends growing up and lived in Italy during the war. They were both so nice and we exchanged contacts so hopefully we can meet up with them again. There names were Haris and Zoran.

We met a good chunk with members here this week and helped out in the ways we could, like with welfare and some spiritual messages here and there. The bigger things were that we got some good service in! We kept doing some work at this soup kitchen called Mozaik Prijateljstva which was a ton of fun. This week there we just helped prepare food and set out clothes for people to come by and take.

We made a good friend with a guy named Damir who is this awesome 18 year old guy who lives here. He wants to practice his english and hang out with us so we did just that. The next day he came with us to meet with these other people we met who were from Argentina and Venezuela at this event they were hosting. They are some fun people who met and married some Balkans and now they live here haha, the event was just to show some Latin American culture and stuff so it was way fun to help out. And oh boy, my Spanish is literally dust now. Every time I try to say anything besides the basics it just comes out in Bosnian. Anyway, it was a lot of fun with all of them! We tried some candy from Argentina which was pretty good. And now that we have met them and stuff, we are planning to meet again with them and American Corner to set up an intercultural night which would be an event where we could all share something about where we are from! We are super excited for that. I find the most joy in doing fun things like these and helping in the community and such, it's awesome. So back to Damir. We are planning to start meeting with him weekly and teaching english and such. He also asked if we wanted to play soccer sometime and i have never been more excited. I just gotta buy a ball, find some time, and then we will go play. 

On the topic of english, we had our second class of the english discussion group which had a great turn out again! Some new people came and we made some new friends. We are actually planning on hanging out with them this following week so that is gonna be tons of fun. Later this week we will also be having zone conference in person in Sarajevo so i am also excited to head back to the home land hahah. plus this weekend we are going to meet with a horse club ranch thing out near Banja Luka to set up some more service there. We are just tight on cars right now so once we have a way to get there every week we are going to volunteer there as well. This following week should be good, lots of stuff to look forward to. If we could: play soccer, visit Sarajevo, set up more service, teach more english, and hang out with some more local friends all in one week, I would be ecstatic. Unfortunately I don't think we will be able to fit it all in one week so we might spread it out, which is also good. Either way, some fun stuff coming up.

Ooo one more additional note: we met up with another one of our friends from english. He is such a fun and nice guy, his name is Andrej Doko. He is catholic and we talked about going with him to check out their cathedral and stuff. We also are planning to play soccer with him and some of his buddies at some point. They host these little fun events every so often so i want to join some of them (low key very jealous).

 

Last note: today we are planning on playing some pool which is the funnest thing ever. I missed playing haha, all i need now is some golf, pickle ball, and spikeball.

I hope everyone is doing just dandy wherever you're at! Not many pictures this week but I'll send what i do got.

 

 

Wekkly

 This week had some pretty exciting stuff! So we have been teaching and meeting with quite a few people regularly now. It's been a very positive experience to help these people in these ways. We are working through an addiction recovery program with someone. Another two we have been reading the Book of Mormon together, so giving some good spiritual nourishment. With all of them it's been so cool to see how these things have been helping them.

With that note, we have been trying to help people in any way we can. So we got in contact with a soup kitchen and we started serving there this week! The people there are so funny and fun to work with! It is very nice to do some service too, it's one of the biggest things I look forward to for sure. We also had our first English conversation course this week which went awesome! We created this group on Facebook and are getting in contact with all the people that old missionaries knew and just anyone who wants to practice English. We are gonna be doing it weekly and I think it will be an awesome way to help the younger population here because a lot of them want to learn English.

We have been doing a good chunk of work at this place called the American Corner (basically like little place that holds STEAM workshops) and our friend, named Miodrag, took us to lunch at this super nice restaurant and it was delicious

For pday my comp (literally awesome guy Elder Titus) and I went to this cool island thing in a river that had a restaurant on it that was so fancy and cool. We felt so European eating there, plus it was so cool that we just wander in, order in the language, and eat on some island thing. It's definitely something I would have never guessed I'd be doing a year ago.

Language is still coming along but there is so much more to improve one. I feel like I am barely learning anything but when I look back like a week I see how much I actually am. Very fun time learning this stuff!

Anyway that's about all. Lijep Pozdrav I budite dobro dragi prijatelji 

Yahtzee

 Okay so this week was so very busy dang. Low key same with last week, thus why I forgot to write an email. Anyway, I hope everyone is doing well. Here's the sauce:

It started off pretty mellow because all we really did was planned the remainder of the week with people. It was funny because I would look at our schedule one day and think to myself, "Woah, we got like nothing this week." Then I would blink and it was overflowing. 

So we had a little mid transfer transfer and it didn't affect us much at all, really all we had to do was help pick up some people from the bus station which wasn't too crazy. Then we had quite a bit of lessons. To be completely honest, nothing really crazy happened during them. Just usual things like reading the Book of Mormon together and sharing thoughts or continuing another section of a lesson with people. It was just tricky because there was so many lessons so it was fun to squeeze them all in. Outside of that, we are getting prepped to start our english classes again in Banja Luka. So it has been a lot of that. We created a Facebook page to start and get the word out. So we spent a good chunk of time making that look nice and meeting with our friends at this place called the "American Corner" to get it set up. The American Corner is basically a place where people can come to learn more about American culture and stuff and they hold workshops and presentations teaching STEM stuff, it is very cool there. We are hoping to get English officially started this next week, so we are going to do a lot with that this week.

The weekend was a fun time! The senior couple and other missionaries came up to Banja Luka and we had church together which was fun because usually its just my comp (Elder Titus) and I and a few members, so it felt like there were so many people. But while they were here we had a lot of meetings with members because the senior missionary is the branch president here. So it was a good time! Usually we are just there to translate, but I am getting a lot of experience in just how a church works and functions.

Language is coming along day by day. Every time I think I am improving, its like I open my eyes just a little bit more only to realize how much I do NOT know. I love the grind though, it is a lot of fun.

Anyway I hope you all stay awesome!

Elder Gubler

 

 

When chopsticks take a dive

Hello everyone! I hope everyone is doing well, thanks for tuning in. This week hasn't been too crazy to be honest. It was mainly a normal week with teachings and maintaining church stuff. We have been having some good lessons with people, especially with this one girl who we read the Book of Mormon with a lot. She is really into it and there is a lot of potential there.

We also got to have a call with one of our good friends from Sarajevo named Ermedin. He is the sweetest man. He is a professor and needs to learn english for his job so we practice with him all the time. I literally love the man, he is like an extra grandpa.

Speaking of extra grandpas, we have been working a good chunk with a member here named šefik who is the greatest guy! He loves this food called čevapi and it is the main topic of conversation with him. We actually went bowling with him today and it was such a fun time.

Another fun thing is we met with this guy named Milan who is a little older than us but he is totally just a stud. He is going into the military soon and so he has been doing a lot of training and we are now going on weekly runs with him. It feels good to run again, plus we run at this cool stadium there which is so fun. We were told we might be able to play soccer there so I definitely will be buying a ball and doing that. But anyway, he is so fun and definitely very bro-y. Its always a fun time with him.

Last we met at this place called the American Corner where they hold presentations and workshops to teach people here tech stuff and teach about American culture and such. So we hope to be working with them a ton and making events with them. Things like cultural events where we would do presentations on us and America. We want to do more English classes and game nights with the members and friends. 

So that's what pretty much in the making. Besides that, the only spicey thing was that there was a lil car accident with our buddies, everyone was safe which is good, but it was fun to work to get that all figured out. 

Owimbowee

Zdravo svima! Okay so this week was pretty fun! We had zone conference on Tuesday and Wednesday and it was great!  During Tues and Wed it was so funny. We literally got our car booted and we got to talk to the guy who unlocks it and he was so funny! He gave us the stickers he puts on the cars when they get booted so we got a little souvenir. After words we went to lunch at this place that just cooks whatever food they have and serve it. It was so good but when we went to go pay it was literally 127 km which is like 80 us dollars. So that sucked hahah. 

After zone conference we went running with this one investigator and he is such a bro its so funny but i love the guy. We ran 2 miles and boy it felt good to run again. We gonna start running with him more often now. 

We also had a lesson with this one girl who we have worked with before and it was funny, after we finished the closing prayer (it was video call) my phone died and we hurried and charged it and came back on and she was still there and we ended up just talking about missionary work so that was good! 

Then finally for pday we went to this place called Jajce which used to be the capital of Bosnia in the medieval ages. There's a castle from the 1400's there and catacombs for the kings refuge in the 1500's. On top of that it was just a beautiful city. They also had these cool waterfalls and lake things that were so beautiful, I wanted to swim so bad but ya know how it is.

Anyway that's about it for this week! This upcoming week will be pretty busy. Basically its like this: help someone get re baptized, continue to help with addiction recover, teach lesson and read with two people, meet with an returning member, and keep running with the one investigator.

Elder Gubler

 

Banja Luka

Đe si ljudino

Hahah I found out that that sentence means like "what up big man" or something along those lines so it is one of my favorite things. 

This week has been pretty average to be honest. We came back to Banja Luka after the baptism in Sarajevo and finally got our visa stuff figured out which is very good. The lady we worked with I'm pretty sure disliked us. But she asked me how long I was going to be staying in Banja Luka and I told her as volunteers we switch where we live every 3 months. And after that she was super nice and was like "wow you speak our language well." It was so nice to end on a good note with her. She was super nice at the end of the day. Its crazy how big of a difference it can make to people when you are being nice.

The next day we did some member welfare and those are always good because we are helping our members here out. We are also helping one of our members here work through an addiction recovery manual and it is such a great experience. It really feels like i am helping someone. He is such a faithful man and he is so willing to work with these things. We have been doing a lot with him and it is definitely some of my favorite parts of the week. Another thing too, one of these days we are planning to go to his house with some members and go to the river in his backyard and bring a guitar and a ukulele and fishing stuff and food and some juice or something and just hang out and jam out while we fish and eat. It is going to be so much fun, especially because his house is in like a little village area so its all green and outdoorsie and beautiful. Plus the idea of us hanging out and having a jam sesh with a bunch of Bosnians while we fish and such is soo cool!

Another thing with the members that was really fun was during church yesterday. It was Fast and Testimony meeting, and these two old members start whispering to each other and they're saying stuff to each other, "You go up" and the other would say, "No you go up".  It was really funny to me to watch this prodding between these two to go up and bear their testimony.  I thought I was the only one who did this when I was younger but it turns out that it happens all over the world and at any age. They both ended up bearing the testimony which was awesome!

Major Ls. We went to deposit some money to an ATM at a bank and something happened and it took our card and we went to go ask the bank teller for help but turns out it is orthodox Easter so there was no one working and no one will be working until Tuesday. So that was very unfortunate. Fun part of Easter was that we got to walk a bit around the city and watch some of the celebration stuff they did, it was way fun, plus we met with some members and had some ice cream.

Last thing, we have been working with this one lady and she is super nice, its a bummer because i cant speak the best so it can be hard to get the message across sometimes but we have taught a few times and its a whole lot different leading the lessons now. I definitely learn the language a lot faster now though. I have spoken pretty much all Bosnian here besides with my companion so i have been learning a ton.

Last last thing. We visited these Krupa waterfalls which is super beautiful. Definitely a place I could just hang out in for a long long time.