Transfers

Hello! So this week nothing too crazy happened actually, we had our normal stuff and service like english class and horse service and soup kitchen.

One of the people we have been teaching came to church again this week so that was awesome!

The big squeeze this week was transfer announcements, I found out I am going to Karlovac Croatia! It's a smaller town like 40 mins or so outside of Zagreb. I am excited to get a change and stuff! I'll have to switch some things in the way I speak and such which will be fun hahah, the languages here are pretty much the same just a few different words and grammar changes.

 

I have met some of the nicest people ever here in Bosnia! One of those people is a lady named Hatidza, she works in Bascarsija and missionaries always buy pape (socks) from her. She is soooo awesome. There are so many people in Bosnia I'm going to miss, saying goodbye was hard.  But I'm looking forward to meeting new people in Croatia. 

That's about it! Y'all have an awesome week!

 

 

 

American Corner

 So this week has been very exciting! It started off with us meeting someone named Slavko who actually grew up in Germany and is now living here in Banja Luka. He has met with missionaries before and he is such a fun a cool guy, its nice to talk to chill people every once in a while haha. He has told us he wants to be baptized but he doesn't want to give up some things with the word of wisdom. I am so stoked to keep meeting with him, I really enjoyed getting to know him.

We taught our English class we set up and that went well! We went over American geography and it was a very fun conversation with the people here. We also had our first day at this horse club we found which was way fun, we really just helped clean off this paint on some fence and that was about it, we did get free food which was great though haha. At the end of the week we also did some work at the soup kitchen here and they invited us to a ping pong tournament the next day but sadly we got SUPER busy so we couldn't go. They had all these cool little trophies too.

Lesson wise, we have been calling this super sweet woman named Katarina. We have been reading from the Book of Mormon and stuff for a while now, I have been in contact with her since my second transfer and after our lesson this week she said she believes that the Book of Mormon is the word of God! So that was way exciting, we also invited her to church and SHE CAME! This is huge for me because this is the first person in my whole mission (who I first got in contact with) that came to church, so that was super exciting and I am so excited to talk to her again about how she liked it and such.

Then the big squeeze. On Monday we had a presentation planned at this place called American corner which is kind of like a mini embassy that does a lot of presentations, workshops, and teaches about America and STEM stuff. But we had a presentation about us and who we are! It was so so fun, we talked about who we were before we came on a mission, what we want to do after the mission, and what we are doing on the mission. in addition we also talked about American culture and differences with our lives at home to living in the Balkans. There was like 15 people which was an amazing turn out. Plus one guy is interested in what we do so we hope to meet up with him, and along with him, another person wants to learn english so it was very good. In college I did a lot of presentations in the business scholars program so doing this one felt oddly fun to be presenting again, it was a weird but nice feeling.

My emails are getting longer than before

 

Woah Woah Woah

 Zdravo svima! Okay this week was pretty great! To be honest nothing too crazy happened but like keeping happy vibes through everything makes it soooo much better in every way shape and form.

So we met up with some of our friends from our English class the beginning of this week. They are Nikola, Jasna, Danomir, and Mario. They are all such studs, they took us to one of their favorite bakeries and we got some way good bread. We are excited to keep doing stuff with them and hopefully they can invite some people to English class so we can help some more people out.

After that we took a bus down to Sarajevo for zone conference which was so cool. We met a guy from Macedonia there. I never pictured to be on a bus from Banja Luka to Sarajevo talking to a Macedonian in English, Serbian, and attempted Macedonian talking about God. So that was super fun! He was a foreign exchange student living in Idaho for a year so he knew about missionaries and stuff. He asked a bunch of stuff about the church a LOT with him. He was such a nice and fun guy so I really enjoyed talking with him. It was a really cool experience to meet someone.

Then we had zone conference and such which was awesome. We also visited some members and our friend Ermedin (Civil engineering professor who we practice English with; such a cute guy and literally my second grandpa) which was a ton of fun! We also got a little bit of time in Baščaršija (old Town in Sarajevo) and I got these awesome pants that I'll send a picture of. Then we finally got a car back so we drove back up to Banja Luka and I love the drive so much, it is so beautiful and so therapeutic. 

Once back we visited with one of our friend's friend who is a clerk in the orthodox church and he gave us a tour of the main church in Banja Luka (Crkva Isusa Spasitelja I think is the name) that was such a cool opportunity to learn more about the orthodox faith and check out the church. I have a lot of respect for their history and them in general, it's all very fascinating.

After that, since we have the car, we drove to this horse club to meet with the director there and set up service stuff! It was so fun and I am very excited for that. Again, another thing that blows my mind. Like we just met with these people and spoke in a foreign language about horses and service and it was so awesome

Then on Sunday we had an awesome lesson with Irma (at least I felt it went well) and we all shared our experiences of how we came to know the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon (including her)! So she shared hers and it was awesome. We talked about a bunch of different things and in the end we asked her thoughts on baptism! She said she wants to see if it's what God wants for her so we offered to help in anyway we can by sharing what we know about baptism. So the next time we meet we will talk about that and I am excited.

Then for Pday we went to Travnik and checked out some castle and some mosques there. It is a very beautiful place and has very good čevapi at Plava Voda. Then afterwords we played some pool which I am developing a huge love for hahha.

There is this high school in Travnik that is split with Muslims and Catholics. I put in a picture of it and the blue side is for Catholic and the yellow is for Muslims. It's just a crazy sight to see about the separation at this high school building for different religions. 

This upcoming week is going to be awesome. Basically what we have planned is two days of horse service; a day volunteering at a soup kitchen; hosting an English class; teaching about baptism; and last but not least is giving a cultural presentation at this place called the American Corner to a bunch of people.

Hope yall are well! 

 

Elder Gubler