"Rats!"

The title of this email has nothing to do with rodents in our apartment, thank goodness we don't have that problem here in Beograd. But I said "Rats!" sometime this week and Sister Konietz laughed way way hard at me and was so confused and I forget sometimes how weird English phrases we have. I said "spilled the beans" too and it was just, same. We have a good time. BUT:

Transfer email came! I am going to be again serving with Sister Durfee, who I trained!! That will be a great time. Usually that never never happens. I know it was inspired. I will be in Beograd with her. Tomorrow we travel literally all day, hopefully I can get all your mail you've been asking about in Zagreb. My passport is filled with all kinds of stamps and stickers and visas.

We were contacting this week and talking to this man who was selling shoelaces at a stand (those are all over, not sure why) and this thing dropped in front of us and we thought someone had thrown something at us or out the building above us. We looked closer, a bird had flown over and laid an egg while flying I guess? There were tons of birds. It was really weird. Not sure why I told you that, but the three of us laughed pretty hard.

Please keep the investigators we have in your prayers. We have a mom and her daughter, a family of three, and one older women who have potential. Yesterday we had a mission wide fast for all of those who could potentially be baptized in the next few months.

Just lots of tender mercies this week. I talked to the coolest, way stylish lady in her huge furry Russian looking hat and she actually like opened the Book of Mormon and read it with us and told us her schedule so we could come over another day. I AM JUST SO EXCITED. There is no more rewarding work. Even just talking to one cool person who will actually listen out of 100 people you tried to stop that day, it makes the whole mission worth it.

I got a weird cold again this week. Throat and nose. I did some good old home remedies and am better now. Don't you love those? An Elder in my district is great with doctory stuff too so he helped out. This has been a great district of Elders and Sisters. I am going to miss them. 

We were really bold this week in a few lessons. Another investigator told us during the lesson (in English) that he felt "something all warm and tingly in his fingers and like a white angel was in the room with us. " I explained the Holy Ghost and we talked about how we can recognize His presence. He has been trying to quit smoking. We are going to stop eating sugar with him and so we can support him! IT WILL BE A BATTLE FOR BOTH OF US. Haha, but really. Serbian chocolate is just. Heaven.

I gave a talk for 15 minutes. Beograd branch is the biggest in the mission- about 70 people per week average. I wrote out a lot but ended up just rambling on in Serbian for a while- the branch president slipped me a paper that said "2 minutes left." Sometimes I feel completely incompetent in the language and other days I am like hey I'm fluent! It just comes and goes. I compared ice cream to missionary work and when we taste something so so good we want to tell everyone and post it on our instagram and we know of its goodness like Lehi knew in his dream.

Thank you for your responses to my questions! It just snowed here a little. I am traveling all over tomorrow. It's gonna be a great next two months!

I LOVE YOU

GOD LOVES YOU

HE HEARS OUR PRAYERS

-Sestra Richardson

pictures: on the roof of the church with the best district, the IPHONE is finally in Serbia!, me just trying to finalize so many things and make it to a lesson and hold a laptop I got to borrow

feet-eating fish, exchange in Sremska

PORODICE I PRIJATELJI,

Okay these videos are what happened last week: I'm going to try and send you guys pictures and videos more because I feel like those say it best!
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6e4WzDHC-U7TlpHcjc1bTZYb2M&authuser=0
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6e4WzDHC-U7dWF0QTlhbjFaRkU&authuser=0
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6e4WzDHC-U7LTVVSEZuN3lBOFU&authuser=0

This last Pday we got FISH PEDICURES. It was.. a little bit sketchy, but fun! I sat in the tank with the bigger fish and I was so squeamish and it just tickled! The littler ones just feel like a feather tickling you but the big ones you know they are eating the dead skin right off ya! No regrets though, we did it! We made the Elders do it too.

I was off to Sremska Mitrovica! From one of the biggest areas in the mission to the smallest. I think we contacted almost the whole city while I was there- and when we tracted everyone already knew who we were! But it was great. I was on exchange with Sister Allred from Missouri. We went running and it was so nice. I have made Sis K go running with me too lately, it is finally warm enough. We had people contact US instead of us contacting them while we were there, telling us about the Orthodox church.. Lately when I have street contacted I tell people I am not from here and I want to practice my Serbian with them and then I ask them if I can! We have taught several cool lessons on the street this way, it has been great.

You know the TV show hoarders? We went and found a non active member from off the records and she let us in. The house was just, hmm. Bless her soul, bless our souls. When she said a closing prayer with us after a very brief visit I could hear something moving in the pile of stuff next to me on the couch? I think it was a couch. Hmm. We went home and I did not feel very good. Poor lady, she really needs help. I offered it though and she really did not want it and apparently a very long time ago missionaries took everything out of that whole apt..

We had a lesson with an investigator this week about the sacrament and watched the last supper bible video on our ghetto DVD player. She couldn't really see the Serbian subtitles on that little screen but she understood it all. It was powerful, at the end of the lesson she bore her testimony to US rather than vise versa about the Savior. She has work every Sunday so she has not been able to come to church yet, but I pray for her every day. She is just one of those people you meet that you know has Christ in her life. She wanted to start the Book of Mormon from cover to end, I am going to read it along with her. I have high hopes for her!

We marinated chicken in Fanta grape soda and ate it one dinner.. anything we can eat to get us through the week haha. Anything quick, easy, somewhat healthy? I finished making logos for the foreign language pages, I just have to merge the old and new pages now! That's what I do while Sis K teaches German class. If you can see this, here is the start: https://www.facebook.com/pages/%D0%91%D0%B5%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B4-%D0%91%D0%B5%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%BB%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%BD%D0%B8-%D0%A7%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8-%D0%A1%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%85-%D0%88%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B0/898558293510376

Sis K and I taught 3rd hour of church yesterday to all the adults. There are some really smart and wise people in this branch and I felt really inadequate. It was about D&C 3:3-4 and we just kind of had to interpret it and read other scriptures! We talked about how God's work always continues no matter what and He is in control.

I love you all!!!!!!! Okay I have some requests. When you email me, send pictures!!!! And in your next emails, answer these questions if you so desire. 

1) How has your knowledge of the plan of salvation (where we are from, where we are going, the fact that we will be judged one day) shaped your life?

2) What would you ask people out on the street if you were in my shoes?

3) What do you tell people when they ask where I am serving? Like with B-rad I would always be like El Salvador.. (people: "okay, yeah.") Do you know where that is? ("hmm not really") Oh it's below Mexico and before South America, by Guatemala.

Sestra Richardson

pictures: fish and the logo

Happy Christmas (again)!

Zdravo svima,

This week was Serbian Christmas! It seriously feels like it has been one big holiday for a month now. The AP's texted the whole mission and said we have, if we want to, permission to go to the midnight mass thing. We went to Sveti Sava (temple) and they had tons of fireworks, huge fire outside, chanting, bells, lots of alcohol and smoking, the whole bit. Inside obviously I didn't get any pics of, but there was a priest in a big gold sparkly hat singing and chanting and just tons and tons of people there crossing themselves and kissing pictures of saints and there were big gift shops selling candles and crosses and music and all kinds of things. It was crazy to be out at midnight! Not crazy, but just weird since I've been inside at9pm every day since last May.

WE GOT TO WATCH MEET THE MORMONS. President Grant got a special copy that he can only show to missionaries and it says "Special screening version do not copy" or something along the bottom. We watched it at leadership meeting and zone conference, it was great. I am was determined to get into kick boxing after that! The last one about the missionary mom, when the boy opens his mission call and is like "English speaking!" we said a laugh/heavy sigh when he said that, it was hilarious.

I got a new unofficial calling- I am now the manger/have all the passwords for everything facebook, google drive, foreign language (English) class for the mission. I have to make the guidelines and everything and make the pages again and the logos. It just really needed to get cleaned up and President Grant basically just handed it all off to me and gave me a 3000 advertising budget for the year/ when I go home (I hope I am allowed to tell you that) and so here I go! Any suggestions would be welcome once I get the pages up and going officially. The problem we're running into right now is we have one facebook account now for the mission, then like 20 PAGES for each area's language class, and we need just the missionaries in that area to have access to post for their page only, but, I cant give that access as an "admin" with their myldsmail.net accounts for some reason, and we cant use our personal facebooks, so I might just have to make a new gmail account for each city to be able to use the facbeook. Complicated! sigh.

We taught some of the people we got to church last week- one is a Nazarene. He and his family. We discussed the where and the when of the Book of Mormon. Just how complicated and the time and location and the plates from the book of Mormon is evidence that it is true.

We had our branch Christmas party this Saturday, the primary children sang "stories of Jesus" but "приче о исус" when they sang and when they read Cyrillics faster and better than I do I just have to laugh. We had one young man just show up at the Christmas party and was like I got a Book of Mormon at the book fair and got your church address inside it and I want to learn more. We are really excited for this coming year!

I love you all!!! So a part of my studies this week I read Alma 32 about how Faith is like a little seed.. we have to nourish it and grow it though! I want you all (if you are still reading this) to email me your favorite way to nourish your seed of faith daily. Remember that our testimonies "don't have to be this tall to enter" but they grow line upon line, precept upon precept. Faith is not us seeing Jesus come out of the clouds- that is a KNOWLEDGE. Faith is us reading, hearing, feeling, and having that belief. But it's not like some belief in something that is crazy and not real. Faith is truth and knowledge based.

Serbian New Years this week- I will be on an exchange in Sremska! 

Love you all!
Sister Richardson

PS TOP RAMEN

Happy new!

Happy new year! I hope you have made goals that are gospel-based. But truly! That is when we are the most happiest.

This week will be another fast email- we are headed off to Zagreb (4 hour drive) right after this for leadership council and a dentist appt for Sister Konietz. This week:

- Took 5 hours trying to find a less active member by about 20 different buses and me holding a huge map in a squished corner of the bus and listening to the names of stops, found her house in a corner of a village, ended up frozen but felt fulfilled even though she doesn't live there anymore..

- I woke up one morning, felt weird, worked out, drank some water. During companion study Sis K got up and puked and then I laid down and we spent the next two days puking and eating crackers and sprite! Can you say New Years diet?? Ha. We watched old seminary videos though which were interesting.

- We had a missionary meeting here so Sisters from Tuzla and Banja Luka stayed at our apartment. One was planned, one was because of a missed bus. Always gotta be flexible as a missionary.

- NEW YEARS. We actually weren't allowed to proselyte after 5pm, we walked around a little but without badges and skirts, they were handing out free beers and setting up for a concert that night. We did go to the church and drink juice with the Elders and then went home. It was fun though, a little time off. I went to bed at 9:30, but put the alarm on for11:55. I got up, wished Sister K a happy new years, and we watched from our first floor apartment all the fireworks we could! It was SO LOUD fireworks just go on for so long. Nothing was really open from about 4pm on the 31st til the 2nd....

- I figured the only missionary work I could do while we were sick was text, call, people and go through the area book. Sooo I texted every number in our phone who wasn't a missionary or a member! To tell them that we would be having a sacrament meeting special for Christmas invited them and their families! We had EIGHT former investigators come! 71 people at church in total! That broke a record here!!!!!!! It was so cool to talk to and see them uplifted by feeling the spirit. I played a piano piece and accidentally set down pages 1 & 3 so I played the first page, started the second, but realized it was the third, flipped it around, and then flipped it again to play the back after I played the second. It was the first noel, a cool arrangement. Thank you mom for making me take piano lessons.

This week (it was new years so I had to) I made some goals for my mission this year and for life. One was to build my relationship with God. I felt like prayer, for me, had turned into more a routine lately than something I desired and something I felt uplifted by. I slowed down my prayers, I talked to God. I talked, He listened. I felt His love. It's a real love. It's like when you call someone-- you don't just talk for 5 minutes straight and tell them the exact thing you told them the day before. Imagine if I called someone and said "pleaseblessthisfoodthatitwillstrengthenus" and "weloveyouandtodaypleasehelpmehavepatience" or just route phrases. We would, just like when I skyped my fam on Christmas, slow down and be thoughtful and let him know our hearts and our desires! He is our ETERNAL FATHER! He always wants to hear from us. He gave us His Only Begotten Son so that we can have peace in this life. I was reading Mormon 8 this week about the second coming. It's Moroni speaking, finishing Mormon's record.  It was an intense chapter, but I liked this part:
22 For the eternal purposes of the Lord shall roll on, until all his promises shall be fulfilled. 23 Search the prophecies of Isaiah. Behold, I cannot write them. Yea, behold I say unto you, that those saints who have gone before me, who have possessed this land, shall cry, yea, even from the dust will they cry unto the Lord; and as the Lord liveth he will remember the covenant which he hath made with them.
24 And he knoweth their prayers, that they were in behalf of their brethren. And he knoweth their faith, for in his name could they remove mountains; and in his name could they cause the earth to shake; and by the power of his word did they cause prisons to tumble to the earth; yea, even the fiery furnace could not harm them, neither wild beasts nor poisonous serpents, because of the power of his word.

God knows us. Jesus Christ is His son. They want us to come back to them. God has a plan for us, and we need not fear! With God, we can do ANYTHING. I love you all.

Sister Richardson

pics: two from new years, one from the week. "Isus" means Jesus in Serbian. except it's usually spelled Исус