"So much PDF everywhere"

Dobar dan,

Well.. news. I am going to Beograd, Serbia! Transfers are tomorrow. 

I am really excited! We spent four hours this morning de-registereing me from Rijeka and paying fees. I leave tomorrow morning and am know it will be another great chance to serve. It was sad yesterday to say all my goodbyes to the branch here. I really love everywhere I have met and taught and there are some really cool people here.

One of our investigators, Josipa, has accepted a baptismal date! For Dec. 20, but I won't be in Rijeka anymore. She is really cool. She like marked up her Book of Mormon and says she just thinks it's really interesting and she could really focus when she read it unlike other things she has to read and study. She is 17 and studying nursing. She gave me a hug after our lesson Saturday. 

This week we took 8 boxes of Book of Mormons (or is is Books of Mormon?) onto Korzo on Wednesday and Friday and handed them out with cards talking about it. We had them in lots of languages. A group had done this about a month earlier with the Koran but they also handed out a rose with it, so. Hard to compete with that! But I talked to some great people! One 25 year old man I talked to said, "You know, I've always wondered why the bible just kind of stops. I think God would try to talk to us." Točno. I also stopped one man that said, "sorry, English only" and I said well, I speak that better than I do Croatian! So we proceeded to talk together for a while. He was from Florida. He was working on the ship ports here and flies planes and stuff. He said in Florida he let the mormon boys in to talk about John Smith all the time. I said well do you have any free time on that boat? He laughed and said of course! I gave him an english book of mormon. :) And three of his friends one. I also had three seperate people ask me if I had ceramic teeth.. I said no I don't smoke.

On my last day of English class we took a picture and one of the students, Jadranka, came by the book of mormon activiy on the street and hugged and kissed me and gave me a huge Milka bar. I told her we didn't have those in America and she said well good, eat it all up! I just love the people here so much. We sang and danced the hokey pokey in class when we learned body parts. They laughed really hard with/at us.

There is this old man we talk to every Sunday at our bus stop as we both go off to church. I wrapped up a Mormonova Knjiga for him and sticky-noted 3rd Nefi 11 when Christ comes to the Americas and told him I was leaving so is was his Christmas gift. He told me this Sunday a story about how he "went to communist meetings for 18 years but then I found Jesus." He says people from his meetings asked him why he stopped coming, he said "come and see!" So he had people come to church with him and they were like you're right, love and agency is so baš lijepa. He told me he found the Lord Jesus when he was praying, that he asked if he was there and the Lord made him feel peace. He was so humbled by that and says that time, many years ago, was when I found Jesus and started my life.

More news. I bought some chocolate to give as gifts and the next morning.. I came out and there were nibbles eaten out of the paper and chocolate bar I had bought! So, we put out the mouse trap with chocolate on it. I got really sick one night- I think I got food poisoning from a dinner appointment.. anyways so the next morning I am laying in bed and the alarm goes off so I am like Sister Durfee, please tell me there is a mouse cause I cannot get up I still feel like death. She is like.. uhhh... so I come out and there it was in the trap! Gross. I gave a talk in church about choosing the correct path and decisions and made an analogy to the mouse and I think I grossed out a lot of the members. Woops! They all got a look of terror as I told the story. So that was gross. We promptly scrubbed the house from head to toe after and took it out and threw it in the trash outside. Yummy.

Okay so. One thing about Europe-- sister Durfee and I were waiting at a crosswalk light and there was a couple across the street eating each other's faces (kissing very intensely, for anyone who didn't catch that) and we couldn't avoid looking near them because we had to wait to see when the light would change and we could go across. People, especially young high school kids are just kissing and hugging and they have no problem doing anything and everything in public. So we finally awkwardly pass them as the light changed and we crossed the street and Sister Durfee said, "so much PDF everywhere." I started wheezing I was laughing so hard and I said, "did you just say.. PDF? as in portable document format?" I laughed and laughed I had to stop walking and I cried I was laughing so hard. She had meant PDA.. as in public display of affection. So, that is something I will quote for the rest of my life.

"The harvest is truly great, but the laborers are few." Luke 10:2

"Fear not, from thence forth thou shalt catch men." Luke 5:10

I LOVE YOU ALL.
Sestra Richardson

me and English class students, the NASTY MOUSE, the book of mormon finding activity.

our alternative less painful? mouse trap, day two of finding, end of transfer dinner the senior couple treated us to

A week in Zagreb

Hi my loves! 

(PS I made my blog private, if you want viewing privileges just email me and I can add you)

Sunday was district conference, for the whole district of Croatia, in Zagreb at the chapel. It was great to see members from all around the country! After that I had an exchange with Sister Marks so I just stayed in Zagreb and her companion went home with mine. We contacted on the street a few people who talked about how the Bible is really confusing to them. We taught them about the Book of Mormon and the Bible together and about modern day prophets. I am again, just so grateful that I know exactly what is expected of me and what I can do to return to live with God!

Zagreb was a lot of work. Hard work. Sister Marks is a lot of fun and we just talked and talked and talked and worked. She just gets me and really understands missionary work. It was a breath of fresh air! We had a meeting with President Grant about facebook English class pages and I spent some time designing, updating, etc. etc. just a lot of things that needed finalization. Check out facebook.com/RijekaEnglish and there are like 12? other pages too of what we have been doing! Lots of work. I'm glad everything is (hopefully) finalized though now. Never thought I'd be using that skill on my mission! The best part is they only have ghetto programs on the church computers like paint and microsoft publisher, unlike using adobe illustrator like I'm used to. We made logos and flyers and updated a lot of things in the mission! 

I bore my "Aggiemony" to Sister Marks during the exchange, and since this is her last transfer she will be going home soon. She decided that she wanted to go to Utah State too so we like did her application and everything and that night made a blue smoothie to celebrate! An awesome member, Ivana,  fed us rabbit, deer, and boar stew that I literally was picking bones out from as I ate. It was very flavorful! The same member we went with to Varaždin for P day and the "center of the world".. see the pictures. AND especially for the Richardson family would love to know, we got milk out of a machine on the side of the road! I will send a picture.

We drove President's car to run a few errands and the lights were broken (we had to take it into the shop the next morning) so only the brights or no lights worked! Cars honked at us the whole time that our brights were on. Not our fault! Zagreb's English class is super cool, one baka brought us oranges and chocolates which was great because we were so busy this week that we just kind of forget to eat, I lost 10 pounds haha so no complaints here! 

We exchanged back on Friday, and Lucky and his son David came to Aktivnost! So, turns out he is actually not a Catholic minister, but was in the ministry for a Catholic priest, which means he was a priest's assistant thing for most of his teenage years. We played UNO and games with him and he got to meet a lot of members and asked a lot about baptism because of a wall of pictures we have of people's baptisms. He kept telling members at Aktivnost how I had stopped him on the street and basically forced the book of Mormon into his hands and made him read a verse and he felt something crazy powerful, and that we stopped him while he was on the way to church that night at Trsat- a huge Catholic cathedral!

We taught another new investigator this week, Josipa. We actually found her like 3 weeks ago talking to her on the street and I kept calling and calling her. Finally she answered and I asked if we could meet up and talk more. She said both her and her mom have been reading from the Book of Mormon I gave her and wanted to talk the next day! Her mom ended up not being able to come to the lesson, but we taught her and she loved it. She hugged us at the end and was beaming. The spirit truly touched her. The member we had in on the lesson asked us to hold of on teaching her tithing because she thought it would scare her away. Hahaha. She is a senior in what we would call high school. The Lord knows her, he knows each of us! It's really cool that after talking to, contacting, tracting thousands of people that the Lord blesses us and shows us his elect! 

Transfers are announced Thursday morning via a mission-wide email, we'll see where this next transfer will take me or if I'll enjoy a warm winter in Rijeka! 

LOVE YOU ALL. 

castle in Varaždin, P day, getting milk from a machine! I have drank almond milk my whole mission, but I couldn't resist that and it made me feel horrible inside haha but it tasted good! 

The week the car vanished

Dobro jutro,

You're probably dying to know why the title of this email is. Well. To make an exhausting story short... once upon a time we got the car keys from the senior couple this Thursday and went to get the car where they had parked it last. IT WASN'T THERE. So we searched and searched and no luck. We, the Elders, and the senior couple are all searching at this point at like 9pm and they realize that actually, we were the last ones to drive it, on Sunday for a dinner, and so where we parked it it should be. We went to where we had parked it.. no car. We called the APs because we needed it to get to Slovenia the next day for a trainee meeting. They gave us the towing number.. the next morning we called and sure enough they had our car. No one really ever gave me instructions on the car and where to park it.. so turns out you can only park in certain blue spaces in a north park of Rijeka. Cool. So after we paid 500KN to get it out of the tow place the next day, (like 100USD) we were on our way and all was well in Slovenia. Now I guess I can say I've had my car towed in a foreign country? Hm. President called at one point in the night I told him Don't stress! Don't stress! He thought that was hilarious that I would tell him not to stress especially when we were the one with the vanishing car.

This P day we went and hiked up to an old bunker on the hill. It was really cool, really sketchy. We went tracting that night and an old baka let us in and we tried to talk with her about the gospel of Jesus Christ. She told us how hard life had been for her, we shared with her words of peace and comfort and quoted some things from the book of Mormon. She made us eat bananas and told us about her family who had all passed away. She showed us her bible, held together by bandaids. SHE WAS SO SWEET. I thought about the widow's mite, and even though she had so little she gave so much. As we were leaving she tried to give us all the money she had in her wallet and told her thank you for telling people about Jesus Christ. We would not take her money but she insisted we take all the fruit she had- like 4 bananas and 2 apples and gave us 2 chocolate bars and cried as we left and said we were so beautiful. She really was so giving and sweet. Not something we expected but, hey, that's a mission. We also tracted and met a Buddhist-Christian. She was really nice too and we talked about why the word of Wisdom is actually a great idea and how she agrees with it one hundred percent.

There was a movie about Amish people that was translated into Croatian with the title as "Mormoni" and I had a record 6 people ask me this week about that and I proceeded to pull out the phone and be like yeah so, I also only have one mom and one dad too. Good to clear these things up.

I'm on a week long exchange in Zagreb this week with Sister Marks. She is super cool, we had district conference yesterday and that was so uplifting. Jesus Christ is our Savior and our Redeemer. Our Heavenly Father knows us and cares about us, 

I LOVE YOU ALL

Sister Richardson

Elder Dyches, birds, bunnies, big Book of Mormons

Bok svima, 

Everyone asked for more details this week. This email will be my attempt at more details. So the Croatian Book of Mormon has Moroni 10:3-5 in it in the very front. I love opening that to people on the street and having them read that promise and then talking about how if we ask God in the name of Jesus Christ, sincerely, that we can know if the book is true! So on Tuesday we were walking from club heart to the church and I said this prayer that I would contact every person from there to the church that God would put in my path because we didn't have a lot of contacting/tracting time that day. We were walking up the street and I stopped this really nice girl who said she had read the Bible many times and used to believe in God but doesn't know anymore. I testified about the Book of Mormon and that God exists, He loves her and He knows her. She read Moroni 10:3-5 and just burst into tears and hugged me tight and then Sister Durfee and said it's a good thing it's a good thing! she said they were good tears. She said thank you so much and we talked a little more and gave her the Book of Mormon. There are just a lot of people here that are ready for the gospel of Jesus Christ. The elect hear the word and remember it from when they were told the plan of salvation in heaven. 

We printed a huge Book of Mormon this week for a sweet family we are teaching. We wanted a bigger copy so lds.org is awesome and we totally just printed and bound one for him! What a blessed time we live in that we can do that and have so many resources available to us. When we went to teach him (this is the minister and his family) he asked us a lot of questions about life, the world, what the purpose is. We prayed really hard in planning his lesson and what we should teach and made a picture of the plan of salvation and taught about that. It was perfect. He cried and said he is always searching for answers. He said he will be baptized when he finds out it is true. He said the sweetest prayer at the end of our last lesson and cried and said he is so happy and I cried a little bit too. They are a really sweet family, really patient and really loving. Really excited to learn too. We are really blessed to have met them.

OH MY I am just #blessed I don't even know where to start with this Thursday. First we get the car, drive to head to Zagreb for zone conference and we're stopped on the side/the middle of the street next to a Tisak (like a stand with treats and magazines and such) and I'm in the car with my hazards on while (you park almost anywhere if your hazards are on) Ses D is ten feet away buying us granola bars for later on. The cops speed up behind us and the driver gets out and runs around I thought towards me, I really was shaking I thought we were going to get ticketed or something! I am just always on high alert. But they were just buying a snack at the Tisak too so I was a little shakey from that....

Then we had zone conference. We talked about numbers, we talked about success stories, we talked about FAITH. Faith is so important. Faith can move mountains. We talked about the difference between hard work and hard work with faith. Elder Dyches from the second quorum of the seventy came and taught and it was really powerful. At the end he asked if anyone had questions and no one did, but an Elder raised his hand and said will you just keep talking? It was really cool. Then president Grant came up and told me that Elder Dyches was going to interview someone from the mission and that it was going to be me! So there is this quote in Preach My Gospel about how not to share all the spiritual experiences you have just willy nilly because they are sacred and personal, and that's what that interview was. I am really lucky though that I got to spend some time talking to him. How about a promise if you write me a handwritten letter I'll share some of his wisdom with you? :) Just kidding, I'll share a little here.  We talked about training, trainers, life, even raising kids, missions, sports, and the world. At the end he asked me if I had anything to ask him, because it might be my only chance to ask a general authority a question in a setting like this. I asked him what one decision in his life has made the biggest change in his life? So much wisdom from him. It was really powerful. I prayed and thanked God for that opportunity. It was really powerful, my body was all warm and kind of like a burning inside, hard to describe, when I talked to him. These witnesses of God truly have the spirit about them. I made the comment that for a doctor he had good handwriting and signed my planner to prove you could read his signature. He said his dad was a pharmacist and always complained about doctor's handwriting.

THANK YOU MOM FOR THE PACKAGE AND THE NEW AGGIE GAME DAY SHIRT. YESSS. Okay also I got a letter from a "Jeff Barry" who lives in Logan and all it had in it was the USU beating BYU news story, that's it. I do not know a Jeff Barry unless I am just losing my mind.. so. Anyone know about that? I rejoiced though and loved it!

Okay a worldly story, sorry. Yesterday we were talking to someone outside the church on the sidewalk and all the sudden I just like smell something so gross, like I thought I was going to throw up it was so strong and I just started running toward the church building doors to run up there because I thought I was going to lose my non-existent breakfast (fast sunday) and Sestra Durfee runs after me and was like I think a bird just "went" on my head! Sure enough, there was this slop of green mess on her hair, it was so so so so gross like. I wish I could email a smell you would maybe pass out it was so bad. So we run and scream up to the church, I stuck her head in the shower and washed it out and put dish and hand soap in it. Don't worry though, we got a good picture. So disgusting. Who does that even happen to? Besides us. We had to laugh like all day. She sat through church with wet hair. 

So they don't do Halloween here but the younger crowd knows what it is. We were practicing contacting approaches on a side street together and a about 20 year old came up and was like hey! You're nuns for the Halloween party tonight that is so awesome! We laughed and started to teach him and he was like I'm kidding, I know you are "Mormoni." But, instead of Halloween they have "Svi Sveti" which translates to all holy but I think it's like all saints day in the states. A mix between that and memorial day. We went and visited Ivan's mom's grave and put down and lit candles and brought flowers. It was really peaceful and a strong spirit was there. He told his conversion story and how he has been prepared for the gospel. It was really powerful. 

I love you all! Make good choices!

Sestrichardson

ripping open the package, the halloween aktivnost for our branch, one of the coolest members in the world, Emma. she gave me that necklace (she made it)! 

my glasses case from the states, street "brother pants", at a gorgeous house of our friend Matea- she and her family fed us dinner last night. she is great!