August 18, 2014

Hey Mom,

So today we rented bikes for P day and rode around harassing the citizens of downtown Skopje. It was only ten denar per hour! Less than thirty cents per person. They weren't very high quality bikes, but it was so much fun. First time I have ridden a bike since I quit my job at El Azteca last November. Plus the weather was my favorite, blustery, so I was in a great mood. That iPod you sent me plays without speakers so I played it as I rode for a little bit. 

We used to go to this place called American Corner for free internet but they just decided to enforce their one hour limit last time we were over there, so looks like the rest of my mission emailing home will be spent in nasty internet cafes. Some woman sitting next to me just asked me how to write "j" in Croatian. She didn't get that I had no idea.

Sister Schofield was super sick still this week but we still managed to meet most of our goals with all the sitting inside that we did. We went and watched Testaments with Natasha in the park.

This lady named Franceska that I contacted in Center came to church on Sunday! I was so pleasantly surprised. Most people I talk to I only talk to for like two minutes, and she was one of them. She told me she would come to church, but I just figured she was just trying to get away. Anyway, I sat next to her in sacrament and set up a lesson with her for later this week. She seems like a really really sweet lady.

I contacted some nuns this week. That's a first. One I saw while we were tabling in the park. She was dressed in all black with a huge silver cross on her chest, talking on her cell phone. I gave her a church invite. Then last night I saw two more nuns wearing blue, so I stopped them to chit chat. They spoke Slovenian with Elder Krajnc. If there are two types of people who are willing to talk about religion it's those who are either 1) insanely religious or 2) not religious at all. Which is kinda weird. Guess it puts the whole "lukewarm" thing in perspective.

(Revelation 3:15-16)

Anywho, hope you have a fabulous week and remember to say your prayers. Blago wanted me to tell you hello.

"It is well to know that prayer is not compounded of words, words that may fail to express what one desires to say, words that so often cloak inconsistencies, words that may have no deeper source than the physical organs of speech, words that may be spoken to impress mortal ears. The dumb may pray, and that too with the eloquence that prevails in heaven. Prayer is made up of heart throbs and the righteous yearnings of the soul, of supplication based on the realization of need, of contrition and pure desire. If there lives a man who has never really prayed, that man is a being apart from the order of the divine in human nature, a stranger in the family of God’s children. Prayer is for the uplifting of the suppliant. God without our prayers would be God; but we without prayer cannot be admitted to the kingdom of God. So did Christ instruct: “your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.” " -James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ.

Love,
Sister Riddle