Sestra Erin Jones serving in Celje, Slovenia 

Zdravo!

Winter is getting closer, which means that in Slovenia, it's getting cold and there's a lot of rain. It rained literally all day yesterday--it didn't stop once! But luckily, despite the weather, it's been a good week.

We had another exchange this last week. After we went to a cool castle called Trakošćan, we went to Varašdin. Our exchange was with the Varašdin sisters, so we went out to eat with the missionaries there and made the exchange. It was a weird exchange, since Sister Mortinson (the sister who came with me to Celje) is a Croatian missionary. Meaning she doesn't know Slovene. It made lessons a little interesting. Most Slovenes understand Croatian, but Croatians don't always understand Slovene. We had lessons that were taught in a mixture of my beginner's Slovene, some Croatian, and some English. Thank goodness most people here know at least a little English! One lesson was a little weird, because we were teaching a lady from Serbia who's lived here for years. She doesn't like Slovene, so as soon as she found out Sister Mortinson spoke Croatian (which is almost the same as Serbian), the rest of the lesson was in Croatian!

The coolest part of the exchange was when we taught a personal English class with this girl named Mateja. She needs English for work, but couldn't come at the time we teach everyone else. Sister Mortinson really likes using the questions of the soul from PMG to teach, so we printed those out and used them to talk about the Book of Mormon. Mateja said she had asked herself almost all of the questions on there! She said she had read some from the Book of Mormon we gave her last time, and that she would study to find the answers to some of the question of the soul. Super cool!

Another cool lesson we had this week was when we went looking up potentials. We knocked on the door of one apartment, looking for a man Sister Legro had met a few months ago, and a lady answered the door. Turns out we had the wrong apartment! But she let us in and we taught her the first lesson. She seems interested, and said she would read the entire Book of Mormon. She's just worried that her husband won't let her learn, but she promised to talk to him about it.

On Friday, we had another leadership meeting in Zagreb. (That meant that, with the exchange, we were in Croatia every other day this week!). I really love those meetings. I really love exchanges and the leadership meetings--I would love to either be the companion of a leader or a leader for my whole mission even. The travel on exchanges can be a pain and you're a little more busy that way, but it's been a really good experience.

Sunday was another really good day. I gave a talk in church! It wasn't super great or anything, but it went well. I didn't have a lot of time to prepare for it, so I just translated some main points and key words, but I was still able to go up and talk fairly decent Slovene for 10 minutes. The members are all great, too. It's not that scary to speak in front of 10 people, all of whom you know, and who are always helping you and complementing you on the language. The best part of church, though, was that Anka (Prayer Lady) came! We taught her a few weeks ago and haven't seen her since other than the occasional "Hi, how are you" on the street. I think I mentioned this story, but when we taught her, she said she wasn't too interested. We gave her a Book of Mormon, though, and she came to church on her own! She also said we can come by sometime this week. I'm super excited!

That's about all I have for this week. Missionary work is as hard as ever, but it's so great!

Adio!

Sestra Erin Jones

 

She often sends us an extra email to answer our questions. This is one we received today:

Sometimes I do forget people don't always call me Sestra. It's been funny :)

Our branch is great--there are about 15-20 people who come to church each week. There's a branch mission leader, but we don't always have meetings with him. For the most part, the members get along really well with the missionaries. They're all great missionaries themselves, and share the gospel with everyone around them. One member even gave a Book of Mormon to a man who came to her door selling stain remover!

Zone conference was with all of the Slovene and Croatian missionaries (not sure how many there were). It was actually two zones together, since travel is hard between so many countries. We have the 4 open cities in Slovenia and then Varašdin from Croatia in our zone. Our zone is pretty close, too, since Slovenia is small and we get to see each other fairly often.

Love you!

Sestra Erin Jones