March 7, 2011 - Yahooooo

March 7 Yahooo

Hi!

How are you all doing this week? It is very cold but really sunny today and really nice!

So lent is coming up on Wednesday and I decided to give up chocolate bars and ice cream. I am really excited! We have Fat Tuesday this Tuesday so we got some chocolate bars for it HaH! I already started eating them and they are GOOD! But I am not worried about not eating them for 40 DAYS!!! It will be so fun especially since all the Elders probably think that I will give in, but just to prove them wrong I will survive. I remember when I stopped eating meat for six months and how good I felt physically and mentally because it felt good to have some discipline. Yahooo.

So a mission goal that is in my free agency boundaries that I made was to read the whole standard works before I go home. I had studied all of them and read a lot from all of them but have only read the Book of Mormon all the way through. So as of today, four months left almost exactly, I have read the Book of Mormon again, the New Testament. I will finish the Pearl of Great Price this transfer probably early because I am really far already. I am doing the D&C countdown which is a section a day before I go home. So I started that when I had 138 days left and now I am on section 25 I think, or 24. I started from the beginning and I am going to the end. Also I have to read 9 pages a day in the Old Testament before I go home ha ha. So with a lack of time to do all the reading I have been reading the Old Testament at night and have been using a lot of discipline to do it because I am really tired at night. I read Numbers in a week and I will have finished Deuteronomy by next Monday. All these goals that I have made and this one in particular I start to think why did I do that and is that a goal I should really be focusing on? Then right after I see why it was a good idea and that I should and will keep doing it. For example, with this goal I read everything except the New Testament every day and everything relates together so well and brings so much more understanding and light. I am so happy to have the standard works, it has been amazing to read them and find little gems all over the place.

You know before I left the MTC, I was thinking I was going to send dads scriptures home and buy a cheap set so I can mark them up and say these were my mission set. Well I prepared for that and I even bought a new cheap set, but you know for two days I was so depressed and I thought how am I going to do this and I didn't want to part with them and dreading the time I was to send them home. But them after a day it hit me that....I don't have to. Ha ha, so I returned the cheap set to the MTC book store and I felt a load lighter Ha ha. I am so happy ever since that day that I have had his set. I plan to pass them around to my siblings so that we can all read his scriptures from cover to cover like he did. When I read his comments and see what he marked I feel like I am reading them with him and see what he has to say to me. It is very nice and special to have that time with him and the Spirit. I marked everything green so I see what I marked and I have written in comments or corresponding scriptures. So when we pass them around we can all read the scriptures together. Isn't that such a good idea!!!!! It will be hard to part with them but not that hard since they will be with my family and not too far away!

On another note, we live by the Zadar soccer stadium and there was a game the other day. I hate it because there are all the guys from the age of 15 to 40, very awkward for a young missionary to walk by groups of them. Also they have the police out for riots in their gear - ahhh scary looking. So we were walking by this horrible crown and some guys from the stands looks at us on the road and starts yelling JEHOVNI SVIJEDOCI (yehovnee sveeyedotsee) which is Jehovah's witnesses. We were like, dang it, if we are going to get persecuted we want to get persecuted for the right church at least! So later that night we were walking home and this big group of guys sees us and starts yelling Moroni, then Sister Laws turns to me and pumps her fist and we high fived and said, wohooo it's for the right church this time. Ha ha. it was great.

Well it is beautiful and sunny today! But it is really cold, there is a wind that comes from the mts and it is bitter cold. oooo we got a hair straightener last week and it is so fun to wear my hair down. It is past my shoulders so I will have to send you a pictures so you can see. I love you and thank you for the emails!!!

love,

Sister Dillender