Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Who turned the tap on?

Well, the humidity is 89% and I feel like I could shampoo my hair just standing in the open.  For those of you who have lived with humidity, you know that it changes everything; makes the air heavy to breath, makes it cooler or hotter, ruins hairstyles, crackers are never crisp and cookies are soggy; clothes and bedding feel damp, etc. etc.  Anyway all moisture aside, things are going well here.

Saturday we put our humanitarian kits together.  We put 200 hygiene kits together and 70 school kits for the Roma children who attend school.  We had a great turn out of investigators...now a great turn out over here is different from what might happen at home.  We had 6 investigators and 6 members there to help us.  And sadly, the Masons organization we invited did not come.
We had fun doing this...we did just like the Humanitarian
Center and just passed the kits along.  We laughed a lot.

Having Breakfast and talking.  You can see some of the new
furniture that makes everything more inviting.
 We also gave the School 10 white boards, 20 lab chairs, 35 desk chairs and 15 double desks.  They were so appreciative.  Some of the chairs and desks they were using were by our standards "throw aways"...  It has been a great experience and one that the branch really enjoyed.

Our sister missionaries are doing great work.  They are teaching about 10 people and have committed one family of parents and a 16 year old boy, Nimahnja, to baptism on Nov. 23.  For Nimahnja, it is like his spirit has always known the gospel...he is reading the BOM and loves and understands it.  He has started coming to our Seminary class.  But the best is that he has ask Aleksander (our lost sheep young man) to baptize him.  Aleksander is so scared and yet so honored.  This is a great growing step for him.  (Aleksander is the young man in the picture above laughing)  Nimahnja's father smokes and is a very nice man, but he said it  may take a little longer than Nov. 23rd before he is ready.  His mom we are not quite sure of yet.

We are getting another missionary ready to go on a mission.  He is almost 26 so we have to hurry.  He and Alan are at the dentist and doctor as I write this.  He speaks English very well and has been going to the University in Novi Sad.  But school is different here.  They do not give release time where you can miss two years of school and then come back and pick up where you left off.  They would make you start all over....unless they can see merit in what you are doing.  We hope that the fact he will travel to another country and learn a new language will make them guarantee that he can come back.  But also, they make you pay tuition to hold your place.  The church pays out a lot of money to ensure that kids in these countries can go on missions...but then "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all else will be added unto it".  Hopefully that will be the foundation that is needed here to help the gospel grow. (Speaking of the word gospel, very often here people say, "what means gospel"?  It is such a common word for us and yet most people haven't heard of it and if they have, they think it is the Bible books, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John).

We did take the Sisters to the Belgrade Zoo on Monday for their P-Day.  Belgrade Zoo has 20 white lions and tigers.  The most in all the world at one Zoo.  We didn't see them all and not even the new baby white lion that was reported on Utah News, but I have included a picture of a white tiger. It is a very old Zoo that was built in part of an old fortress and on a hill so there is a lot of stairs and up and down walking.  (Just what I love)  It is an OK Zoo and had some different things like bulls and cows....but if you come from such a large city, you may never get the chance to see farm animals.  They had one lonely Elephant, one lonely giraffe, and one Hippo, but there seemed to be multiples of the other animals.
White tiger

This shows how old and the stairs

Part of the Fortress wall
After the Zoo, we took the Sisters to the Delta City Mall so Sis. Palmer could get a new camera....and low & behold the Belgrade Elders came walking by.
A great bunch of young people!  The Elder in the crazy shorts
is from Tasmania, island off Australia.  The taller Elder is from
here in Serbia, others from US.
"Only in Serbia":  There's a lot of kissing in public in Serbia and to prove it, here's of photo of Alan and I kissing in public.  He's always been a great kisser!



                                                                                                                                                                              

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