July 2010 Emails

July 12, 2010

Hello my dear ones,

I tried to make the font different....but sometimes it's better to give in than to fight....because otherwise I would have to pay for a new computer. Don't worry I would have taken off my missionary tag before throwing the monitor and computer.

Anyway, on that note, the Wanilla dream team is doing well. We just finished a very slow week, but onto a good one....with three appointments set up already (yahooo for a mission in Croatia). The members don't have a dinner calendar or anything so all the appointments we have we get ourselves. In this mission the missionaries still give the new member lessons and they are the only ones who want to meet with us. We like looking for tourists and talking to them because they are so nice and all know Mormons. So when we are having a down day we look for tourists to talk to because they are the only ones that don't hate us. We met these two girls from Belgium last week and talked to them for a long time about the church. It's nice because now they will be so much more open to talking to the missionaries when they go back home because now they have some kind of a connection with the church that interested them. Another reason we like to hit up foreigners, foreigner=English.

Every Friday we have aktivnost where we play games and have refreshments. We invite investigators and other people to it and members sometimes come. Last Friday was so good because two people came that we haven't seen in a long time and there were a lot of members wohoooo. I got to practice a lot of Croatian and I realize how bad I am at it and then I got that epiphany solidified when I had to give a talk in church last Sunday. I am not good at all and it's really annoying. But the members liked the talk. I had prepared it a while ago and I prayed about what to speak on and that it would be what someone needed to hear. I feel like a lot of people really connected with it and I'm happy for that. I also played the piano for Relief Society because after Sister Thompson left we don't have a piano player. So when I said "played" I mean just one song one handed.....it was as bad as my Croatian.

My Birthday was so good! We went to eat cheese cake and contacted alllllllll daaaaaaaay. But it was really fun anyway and I had such a good time being with Sister Fitzsimmons. We did go to this Mexican restaurant and it was very tasty. Then we ended the day by going to McDonalds for dinner and German happened to be playing Spain (world cup games). We found out Spain ended up winning and went on to win the world cup last night. But don't worry, Germany still came in third. I mean come on I am a missionary in Europe during the World Cup that only comes around once every four years.....next World Cup, I'll be 28.....Weird!

I wanted to ask everyone who reads these to tell me some things that they would like to hear me say. Every Sunday night I make a list of the week that you would maybe like and I find myself always racking my brain. I'm sure some things will be new to you that are old to me, but I can't think of them. So just let me know if you ever think of anything.

Thank you again for all the support and love!
Sister Dillender


July 19, 2010

Bok svima,

I hope you are all doing very well this week! We had a normal week...but what was not normal is that we went through three rolls of paper towels wiping our sweaty faces. Last week was plus 40 (aka 100 degrees) and probably about 90 percent humidity. The reason why I know this is because I carried a San Francisco zoo key chain in my bag that has a thermometer on it...and a compass just so we always know the mission home is north (so we can run away in a different direction.) I keep the key chain in an outside net pocket of my bag so it can get the actual heat. The key chain has Celsius on one side and Fahrenheit on the other. I also know it was so humid because I had a constant layer of sweat between my skin and my clothes. I don't really know how humid it was but I felt like I was walking around in soup all week and I thought I was breathing water instead of air. But Sunday and today has been so nice and a lot of breezes. I think this week will be a lot cooler.

Last district meeting was very funny, Sister Fitzsimmons and I and we have been giggling about it all week. There are six elders and us in the meetings. The elders talked about how we are all depressed and bad missionaries for about an hour. They gave three different conceits comparing missionary work to three different kinds of sports, and didn't realize they all said the same thing. The best part is that their solution to be better missionaries is....suck it up. I wanted to say don't put me in your crap missionary pile, maybe you don't work but Sister Fitzsimmons and I work our butts off, but I didn't. I started to say something about making steps to being a missionary we want to be, but then I realized that they already know it's about goals, they just want to vent. I do like that Elder Pasche ended district meeting on looking at our goals and reevaluating them or having a commitment to look over them again. It really was a nice ending to a testosterone filled venting session. District meeting wasn't bad, just very funny.

We prayed on Saturday that we could get enough contacts to fulfill the standards of excellence, and that we would be able to teach a lesson. When we got home and at the end of the day we had one contact over what we needed to get for the standers of excellence, even though it was a slow Saturday and a lot of people were gone. Earlier that day when we were leaving Maksimir park, a man selling something asked us if we were interested and we said no. Then Sister Fitzsimmons said, "but are you interested in...." He said he was very catholic but started asking a lot of questions. She pretty much taught him the first lesson because he used way too big of words for my Croatian vocabulary and I couldn't really understand him. We talked for a long time. He was very nice but it was obvious he just wanted to tell us we were wrong. At the end he says, "At the judgment, God will say leave me I don't know you." And Sister Fitzsimmons laughed and said, "yeah but that's not going to happen to us." She is so funny. The whole situation could have turned to bashing very easily, but she is so good at stating facts about the truth instead of arguing.

Also in Maksimir Park we started talking to this guy and at the end of our spiel, he says in English, "sorry I don't speak Croatian." Well you know how much we love foreigners. Turns out he is from Sweden. I thought I would look extra American if I said, "I LOVE SWEDISH FISH!" But I didn't. Then as we were talking to him his friend comes out from the bushes and joins our conversation....needless to say we did not shake his hand. I don't blame him though because I have no idea where the closest bathrooms are either.

We get to go and have exchanges with some Sisters that serve in a city close to us. We are doing the exchange from Friday to Saturday. I am excited because I love my girl time. I love the Sisters here and I wish I got to spend more time with them than the elders, but I guess if it was that way then a mission wouldn't be hard. We get to see them all once a month for zone conferences, but it just goes by so fast.

I hope you all have a wonderful week and are very happy and healthy.
s ljubavlju,
Sister Dillender