IN RIJEKA

Hello my loves, 

We're in a random internet cafe and I only have a little bit longer to email but I will get more later. Just wanted to let you know I am safe and happy and so excited to be here! 

My trainer is Sesta Kropushek. She's from Saratoga Springs. She is awesome! Been here for only three weeks (in Rijeka) and she is my saving grace for real. You know how independent I am.. she reminds me how to not look like a fool in everything we do. We live in one of the sections of a cute yellow house about twenty minute bus ride outside of the city centar. We take the bus every day into the city.

We taught a few lessons this week. One to the sweetest family I have ever met. Seriously. Their son is very sick. He is blind, about one year old, and has brain and heart problems. They were going to get married so they could get baptized, but had to use that money for surgeries for him. Marriage and divorce is very expensive here. If I could  pay for EVERYTHING here I would. I just want to give all my money to those people I talk to who are struggling. When we went to teach and share a message at their home, the spirit was so strong. We talked about Mosiah 25:13-15 about how God will lift us up in our trials. Everyone is really sad that Sister Peterson left.. she was the sister before me in Rijeka for seven months And they aren't afraid to tell me that! But that's okay. I love them and as I serve more here I hope they will grow to love me too! We also taught another awesome sister. Even in the incorrect Croatian I do know, I told her I could see the light of Christ in her eyes and that she knew the Savior. We showed her the Restoration video at the church and she LOVED THAT. The members here who are active are so strong. 

We had about 35 people in church on Sunday. Guess what. I SANG. A DUET. What since when do I ever sing? Never. But that's okay. Then words are in front of you. 

pictures are: my last cafe rio in the states, ses K and I waiting for the bus today, making my first palačinke for aktivnost on petak (we played Uno.. which is great because I know both numbers and colors very well. and ate a lot of food), some wall painting here (apparently graffiti is not illegal.. it is EVERYWHERE)

I WILL EMAIL MORE TONIGHT. We are going to Pula today and gotta catch a bus. Happy pants day!

LOVE YOU. 

Sestra Richar

Jill's Area: OGRANAK RIJEKA

You can see it here:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Gradska+knji%C5%BEnica+Rijeka/@45.326755,14.440911,17z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x4764a0e1f5d8d291:0xfcf5fd96e3a3b713

Drag the little man icon to a street and you can Street View the City.

Last picture is with President and Sister Grant.

Going on a zrakoplov (air floater)

Moje obitelji i priatelje,

MY TRAVEL PLANS ARE HERE! I leave Monday morning and report 8:30am to the travel office. SLC to Denver to Frankfurt to Zagreb. Or should I say Cafe Rio to Panda Express to World Cup to my new home, Oh what a week. I am losing some of my sanity. I said, "bird, bird.. bird, biiiirddd" the other day as we were walking and we didn't realize until about 20 seconds later how crazy I must have actually sounded and AM. Hmm.

People ask if I'm scared, nervous, exctied. I have to say EXCITED. Okay yes, I'm a litte scared. But I know that I have Jesus on my side! I have faith in Him! I know that this is God's work. If it was Jill Richardson's work, we'd have a reason to be frightened and scared and anxious, etc. But it's not. And I cannot wait to serve. 

I started keeping a seperate notebook just of things I'm grateful for. It's been awesome. My attitude is better, I am more positive. Why have I not been doing that my whole life?

I made a Preach My Gospel case cover thing because mine is very tattered and it has pictures of Jesus, my family, the temple, and my dad on his mission. Everyone asks if that's my boyfriend and I am like.. Um.. that is my father.  Also I had this girl recognize me from track? Who ran against me in hurdles. That was strange. And two from EFY and three from Boulton Elementary. The EFY is the smallest small world I've ever been in. 

We taught a non-member this week over Skype for TRC. He knew English so we pinky promised our teachers we would not speak English, samo hrvatski and so that is what we did, with the exceptions of the words, "Harry Potter" and "smart" so I later had to buy both of them ice cream to make up for saying those. Well, just the word smart. That is truly when the mission got real for me. When we taught. We taught about how Christ is our brother, how reading the Book of Mormon blesses our lives and how God is our Father and wants us to communicate with Him, and we can do that by praying. We asked him if he would pray tonight and he straight up said, "No."  That is when it got real. At the MTC, when you are teaching your teacher/investigators it's definitely more real but in the end they still progress and keep your commitments. It was good, and I needed that rejection to remind me that it is okay if people say no, as long as we are still inviting them. He was awesome though, super smart guy. What a blessing to be able to understand and talk with him! God helps his missionaries so much.

This week has by far been the hardest to stay motivated. I'm finishing up some memorization (scriptures, the first vision, and more) and some goals of things I wanted to have done before I enter the country. Also my teahcer Brat Freeman guessed I would serve in Banja Luka. So there's that. All but Sister Christiansen's visas came so she is getting temporarily reassigned to Fort Collins.

My mom said she wanted more details: I wake myself and my companions up every day at 6:30am with a big, "DOBRO JUTRO!" Then I shower. Every day. This is both great because I like the feeling of being clean, my companions like when I am clean, the handbook says to, and it is the only time a missionary gets to be somewhat alone. Usually sisters are singing in all the showers and usually I spend that time reciting things I know in Croatian in my mind. Then breakfast which usually is fruit and water. Sometimes Marshmallow Mateys to sustain myself. Then we walk to class on the nice MTC cobblestone walkways and Sestra Kawai and I sing the Star Spangled Banner. I usually sing the drums part or soprano and she sings alto. Yes, I sing the drums part. We say a prayer before everything. Everything. Class, choir practice, gym, meals (duh) but yep. We have class for 3 hour blocks with 2 our of our 4 teachers. Class usually consists of grammar lessons, coached missionary study, teaching our "investigators", and the very occasional walk outside, and reading, anything we need or want help with. Then lunch which is some form of potatoes and salad and water. It's great. Just kidding I ate in the temple cafeteria today and it was SO GOOD. I forgot what real food tastes like. I love my classmates and teachers so much. Then we have dinner, which usually is something with beef and ne. Ne volim. At dinner we talk about wonderful things like how to conjegate verbs, case adjectives, and guess what people's first names are. Or wonder aloud about what our teachers are doing with their lives because we live vicariously through them. Then back to the classroom, where we have 1 hour personal study time, 1 hour comp study, 1 hour language. We use a language learning program called TALL which is good for learning vocab and such and also do language study evaluations where we talk to the computer following prompts and can get feedback from our teachers. We can also study on "our own" with our companions. In this time we focus on investigators needs and plan what we can do to help and teach them. We return to our residence at 9:30 and have personal time at 10:15 where everyone has to be quiet and 10:30 bed time. Sunday and Tuesday nights are devotionals. But other than that that is what happens!

Do you know the song, "Prayers of the children" because it's about the children in my mission. The second to last line is actually in Croatian. Incorrectly, but still. It's there. So we learned that this week. 

Ljubav, (I guarantee that's not correctly used, but it is the word "love")

Sestra Đil

Hrid bol krv smrt..

Moj dragi people, 

First things first: THE FOURTH OF JULY. All we were really told was we have a devotional at 7:30, don't be late. So we followed suit..pun intended.  We sang and all were happy and very colorfully dressed and then casually at the end of the speaker and closing prayer President Nally got up and told us that we were going to watch 17 Miracles! That was a miracle itself. Hahaha. I have never enjoyed media more than I do now. THEN after that-- it was 10:15 I think?? We were all exhausted (we go back to the residence every day at 9:30 and are in bed by 10:30) and AGAIN he got up and said, oh, PS there is an ice cream truck outside these doors, and Sister Carrie Underwood just finished so now we can look outside and see fireworks. We again did so. Never have a seen a happier MTC crowd. IT WAS SO GREAT. LET FREEDOM RING. I told my companions there is honestly nothing else I would rather be doing and no one else I would rather be serving as we watched the stadium of fire fireworks show.

We cleaned the temple this morning as a district since it is closed. We helped clean decorations, I actually put new trees in haha! Some Sisters wanted to clean chanderliers but I said Nah give me some real work! My hands are all cut up, worth it. I miss hard physical labor like that. Is that weird?

I told my companions, "let's just be friends." But it was in weird context.. we were playing the role of investigators and we had to make up a story about ourselves. We were all trying to make this complex story and I wanted to simplify it.. I don't know if you find that funny or it had to be in context but for some reason right when I said that class was silent and our teachers laughed and we laughed harder and yep. 

I hunted down Shayna (Sister Griffin) who I served with in my ward in Logan-- I attacked her in the cafeteria and she cried and I told her all would be well and yes! Always so good to see familiar faces.

They announced in Sunday mission conference that we will now teach lesson 5 from PMG before baptism instead of after, and then reteach all the lessons again after baptism. Also we will keep in contact with each new convert for months! And our mission is getting iPhones and iPads this week- so exciting! Josh Wright played the piano and spoke to us Sundaynight for the devo. He was amazing. You'll have to look him up. 

One of our goals as a companionship has been for me to speak less in the lessons and Sestras M & K to speak more! Language study has been intense this week (and always) and I just want to share all I know and love! So for a lesson with Valentino, I pretended to be sick and have no voice, so they could teach more. Our teacher's boss came in and sat in on the lesson. It was so hard for me not to chime in! I can't believe we only have like a week and a half left. Sometimes I'm like alright send me I'm ready- other days I'm nervous. But I know I can do all with the Lord on my side. I laugh so much with my companions. I finished some translating our teachers wanted us to do so I made phrases for myself to translate. I couldn't think of any more and so Sestra Kawai asked me what's something I would say daily. I thought for a moment and replied, "I'm hungry for lunch!" We were in tears laughing at this. I don't even know.. Everything is just better at the MTC. (except the food) BUT tender mercies because THEY HAD BAKED POTATOES IN THE LEFT OVER LINE. I ate them for breakfast, lunch, dinner, breakfast, and lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. They never ever have those.

Mom and Dad-- Brat Bell (one of my teachers) gave an example of conducting a meeting. He said, "Sister Ivans will lead." I got so excited! He said how much he loved both of them. You'll have to tell them. 

About the title of this email-- Okay so I'm trying to simplify explaining this in any way I can.. basically they have masculine, feminine, and neuter cases AND feminine 4th in Croatian. I made a song about the feminine fourth cases... because they are all the exceptions. I made this to remember them.. and translated it for your enjoyment. It also has hand motions.. so. We put together words that meant similar things. Hence cliff pain blood death.

pamet narav                     memory character

jesen kći                         autumn daughter

misao stvar                      thought thing

laž rijeć                           lie word

većer noć                         evening night

pomoć moć                     help power

hrid bol krv smrt                cliff pain blood death

ljubav obitelj                     love family

i ost est osim most(a)       and (words that end in) -ost, -est, except for most (means: bridge)

to je ženska četiri.            that is feminine fourth.

(tune of twinkle twinkle little star)

Just imagine me singing that. When one of us gets a package it's like we all get a package. Sestra Kawai's mom sent her rice cakes and all kinds of food and we were just wow. So happy. WE SKYPED WITH JUSUF. For TRC. Which I'm still not quite sure what that stands for. He's a member that lives in Zagreb. Oh my goodness I love that man. He's been baptized for a year and a half now (I believe) and wow. So strong in the gospel. I was almost in tears when I left. I love all the people there already. I cannot wait. We taught about the Holy Ghost and how we can be clean and listen to him every day if we are worthy and working towards having him as our companion constantly. 

I LOVE YOU ALL. I drooled toothpaste on myself this week while brushing my teeth. Also if anyone knows if there is Cafe Rio in the SLC airport you should tell me..  Life is good. If anyone is still reading, in the next email you should send me an experience you have had about the Holy Ghost. I love and pray for you.

- Sestra Richardson

PS the card readers are not working again. So sorry! If they were.. imagine this week's pictures: me an infamous tree here that smells like cream soda (no but I promise it really does), us in our forth of July getup, me with letters and packages, eating some sourdough bread while wearing Brad's robe, and Sestra Kawai and I singing.

Dan Neovisnost (Independence Day)

Moj loves! Happy 4th of July!

First things first, dad that video of sassy 5-year old me was WONDERFUL. You can put that on my blog if you haven't. That had me in tears- best part was "the M  T  C." I made my companions watch it too, they say I have not changed at all.

I re-started the Book of Mormon this week. I've never really noticed the difference of reading and studying until now, but now that I do what a difference that has made. In 1 Nephi 5:18, it's awesome how the word of God will go forth to all nations, kindreds, tongues and people! It's great to search, ponder, and pray. Not just "read." There are so many metaphors about fruit, bread, feasting, etc. in the scriptures. Obviously they were written for us because we understand. I still love the MTC but if there is one thing I am ready to fly away for it's the food...

Stephen Allen- of the missionary department spoke to us again in a Devotional. He had us watch a lot of the old Homefront videos he helped produce- like the "family, it's about time" ones. Those had us laughing sooo hard.  Good points I took from that meeting and others: We will not be inadequate as we depend on Jesus Christ, that we have agency and that can be a bad thing but only if we make it so, and to be converted to the LORD, not the church.

Ja volim krumpire. I hope that google translates well. This week in a lesson Mersed asked us what we did for work before our missions. I didn't know how to say "nannied' so I said, "I watched children.." which translates quite literally and creepily and we were all laughing pretty hard at that. This week at TRC- which I'm still not quite sure what translates as, instead of teaching RMs that aren't our teachers, we got do to Skype TRC! I was really nervous for it, but end of speaking most of the time like I always do with my lessons and I loved it. I zoned out at the beginning when the member and beautiful girl we Skyped- Vicki- who was in Bosnia- told us that the little girl in the Skype with her was her little sister and not her daughter. I later asked him how old her little girl was. Fail. She was super nice about it though and very helpful. She knew English so she would correct us on little things. We talked about faith and it was just AWESOME! I always go into things like that nervous and leave beaming with happiness. Also- it's true what I heard about the people in my missions. They are tall, dark haired- model type.

No one here has really heard about the iPad announcement! I was running with Sisters at the field today and they were totally in shock. I don't know why nothing has been said here?

Sestra Mahabier got a migraine on like Tuesday and so during gym time she needed to rest in the residence.. so we had to stay in the residence too. Sestra Kawai and I ran the halls and the stairs and did abs and such in an unoccupied room. There is a pull up bar in the hall but since these are sisters' rooms it's used as a coat hanger. So once upon a time put my legs over that and tried to do sit-ups (I hope you can picture this) but it's only made for pull ups and so my tennis shoes when I did the sit ups went up into the ceiling and all manner of dust and such fell into my eyes and I fell off. Hahahaha. Good times. Also I got electrocuted when I tried to put my blow dryer in a socket in the bathroom. That was today. I don't really know what happened but all is well! It was like you see in a  movie-scene type of thing and I was frazzled and then thought.. did that really just happen? It did, but I was fine. Again, not sure what happened there! I also drooled on myself during companion study- again, not sure what happened but it just did. The MTC changes you, everyone.  I tried to say "squirt" and "shrimp" at the same time.. but I said "squirp." And got made fun of the rest of the day for it.

We memorized our missionary purpose in HR. (Croatian) So I'll be sure to whip that out every chance I get. I also have Moroni 10:5 memorized and will use that almost every lesson. 

Apparently the calling as a Sister Training Leader is only for three weeks then they call someone else, so now I am less-meetinged on Sunday. -- Except Sestra Kawai got called as the online trainer or something so now I just have to wait outside of the leadership training meetings instead of being in them. 

Send any pictures when you send me emails! Just of your week, your shoes, the grass, anything. I love to see your smiling faces or just your life.

As a class, we did mock street contacting. I "walked past" Elder Harris (from Bountiful) in the hallway and everyone watched and I had to make small talk and stop him and ask him an intriguing question and such. I accidentally barely touched his arm as I stopped him, habit I guess. I said, "I AM SO SORRY OH MY GOODNESS" and my teachers and the class just laughed at me so much and I was like I AM SORRY!  Again, an indication of how strange I will be when I am back. However, he did accept the Book of Mormon I gave him and I shared a message on families. Great stuff. I love that kind of thing- I'm the only one in the class who does- thank you year of RSP, being an ambassador/ tour guides, etc. :)

Brat Jacobsen (one of my teachers) was talking with us last night and said he had a secret, his wife is pregnant! I hope you don't all think I'm weird for writing home about that. We really do just live vicariously through their lives. So.. But anyway she's due in November. I said I had a secret too- and then told him that we had pictures of all our teachers on our wall where we write down what they said. He laughed and said he had another secret- that he has our pictures and writes down things that we say. I don't know why but it made us laugh all so hard! But they have to do that for reporting and such, so. Less creepy. 

Thanks for the package Mom. We all made fun of the Crocs shoes for about two hours. Even the teachers joined in. But comfort>style so who even cares. They aren't too ugly.. I think they are the least ugly I've ever seen.. that's all I will say about that. ALSO SO COOL-- Sestra Mahabier was so excited about the Netherlands and Holland ancestors. She thinks I'm related to her friend, Yentl Croese, who is currently serving in the Washinton DC temple mission. She also helped me pronounce Bekker and Meibos correctly! That was amazing. And we ate all the grapes and sat in the sun for about ten minutes and it was glorious. 

I LOVE YOU ALL. Jesus loves you too. Jesus said love everyone, treat them kindly too. Amen.

Sestra Richardson

Primary Talk on Missionary Work

Jill's brother Brad has been transferring all of our old home videos to digital format. He found this priceless treasure! Thanks Brad!

Jill gave this talk January 8, 2000. Fast Forward 14 years and Jill is now in the MTC preparing to serve a mission in Croatia.

Yes, it made us cry!