Tuesday, March 31, 2015

March 30, 2015

Hey Mom,
 
So I didn't write last week about going to sister's conference in Tirana. We actually found a bus that goes straight from Skopje to Tirana. Usually we have to stay in Prishtina overnight. It was really cool doing exchanges in Albania; I was companions with Sister Braha who is a native Albanian and was serving there for a few more days until she got her visa to England. She's called to Leeds. I actually have a friend from the MTC who'll still be serving there when she gets there. She told us that pretty much every Albanian gets called to England. We asked her why and she said one of her best friends who served there said, "We're like the pioneers of Albania, most of us being converts, so it's easy for us to relate to them and have them be the pioneers in England." On the bus in Tirana, guess what played on the tv? The Because of Him video!!! So cool. With all the words in Albanian of course. Sister Braha told us, "We have this one investigator who found us through the commercial, and she said she got on three different buses waiting for the video to play again so she could copy down the phone number." 

One day this week we got locked inside our apartment. We were all standing by the door with our coats and everything and when we unlocked it the door just wouldn't open. I called the landlord and he said he was on the other side of the city and would be there in half an hour. He came and tried to unlock it from the other side, but it still wouldn't work and he left to go and find a repairman. We hung out and cleaned the apartment. I guess it needed it. It was nice to get a break. By the time we finally got out it was about 4:30pm

Yesterday it was Brother Davis' birthday so I made him pumpkin bread using the canned pumpkin you sent me.

I can't think of what else happened this week. Sorry for the short email again!

John 6
Happy Easter

Love,
Sister Riddle

Monday, March 23, 2015

March 23, 2015

Hey mom,

This week was good. We now have 4 people on baptismal date. And Blagoy was going to be among them for this week but unfortunately his wife moved back in and, again, he can't get baptized.

Sister Hassell pointed out to me, "Everyone we meet, even if we only have a first lesson with them, mentions something about how they've been searching or thinking about God recently. Like Naim who had been going to the mosque for the past five months. Or Halim who said he'd been questioning his beliefs lately. Or Sloboden who said he'd started reading the Bible again about a month ago." She listed more examples and I realized she was right. How great. Heavenly Father is so anxious for His children to learn the truth. 
Matthew 5:6, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled." 
3 Nephi 12:6, "And blessed are all they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled with the Holy Ghost."
 
The girl I met in the MTC from Vanuatu emailed me the other day. This is what she said, 
"I'm glad to serve my Heavenly Father to build his kingdom with my
voice. I know that Heavenly Father loves all of us and he gave us
dalent to build his kingdom in this last dispensation. I know that we
all are preciouse to our Heavenly Father. We must share our dalents
with others to help them know that they have  dalents and they have to
share with everyone. We all have awesome dalent but we must not hide
them or ignore them because is a gift from our Heavenly Father to us.
I know that we can do missionary work by singing too. Me and my
companion when we went to our appointments i sang to all of them and i
see how they touch by the spirit and want to change they're live to
better. I'm glad to have a wonderful voice that my Heavenly Father
bless me with. I don't want to hide my dalent because i love everyone.
I'm glad to learn how to love others and that's a huge thing to me. In
Moroni 7 :45 it talks about charity. Is something that we should have
in our lives. If we don't have that charity we are nothing. We don't
want to have that to us. This is a video that we have in our young
women's conference in Highland area in Utah. I'm glad to be part of it
and to know the importance of why we must share our dalents with
other's. Hope y'all have a great day:)"
That's all I have time for right now. I love you.
Sister Riddle

Monday, March 9, 2015

March 9, 2015

Hey Mom,
 
Well, I have a few things to announce. Big news. First of all, we are extremely close to getting a church building. Did you hear me? I said A CHURCH BUILDING!!!!!!!! The property they're looking at is a ways from Center so all of our members and investigators would have to take a bus every Sunday, but still. Anything is better than nothing. This gives us so much more credibility. It may even be open by next month.

Miracle #2. Guess who's on baptismal date? Blagoy. His wife decided to move in with their daughter so that he can get baptized. He's on date for March 28.

Let me clear up something to those of you reading. Sister Hassell told me that back when she was in the MTC and read my blog, she thought our only investigators were the ones I mentioned. No. Yes, we have had our share of dry spells and there have been periods of time where we have had zero investigators. But as a general rule we always have multiple people to teach. Even zero investigators doesn't mean we don't have lessons.

This week I discovered just how great I am at keeping up my companions' morale.
Sister Hassell smiling, "I just went and told that lady her bag was really cute."
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah. And her English was really good too."
"Oh, you said it in English?"
"Well, I said, 'Твојот bag...is really cute.'"
I laughed and said, "Ok."
She responded energetically, "I'm proud of myself though. That was good missionary work!"
"How is that missionary work?" I asked disdainfully.

Or back when she was still in training
"Stop talking to creepy people," I told her while contacting one day.
"We're supposed to talk to everyone!" she said happily.
"No. Don't talk to creepy people."

 
We had zone training in Kosovo again, then later went to the army base and taught institute again. We talked about brotherly love and read some verses from 1 John. We were also able to make plans with some of the missionaries there to invite Shelton, who we met one night in Skopje, to come to institute. Shelton lives at the base and though we didn't get his number when we met him, he had told us the name of an LDS guy he knew at the base and we contacted him that way. 

We had a lesson this week with this 15-year-old girl named Nora and her friend; we ran into one of "our kids" named Atige on the way and so she came to the lesson as well. I think she knows how to pray now.

On Friday we went to the Swinefords and made cookies for some type of priesthood meeting. 

On Sunday there were a few more Americans at church than usual. The branch president in Kosovo and his family were there visiting, as well as some people with LDS Charities who were there to train doctors in neonatal resuscitation. Two of the four investigators who told us they would come to church came. We had dinner with the Nelsons that night and the LDS Charities people were there. One of them was named Shayne and he said he had served in the Austria Vienna mission, and back then that mission included Albania. One of his friends was called to be the first missionary there. Pretty cool considering during my mission I traveled to Tirana for the creation of the first stake there. Shayne said that he had served in Serbia and Croatia and helped open it up towards the end of his mission. He said he never learned much Serbian and they just found people who spoke English or German to teach. His daughter is putting in her mission papers soon so he took a picture of us "the three sisters of Macedonia" as he called us, to show her.

While walking back from a lesson at Zdravka's, we passed a house that had a labrador retriever and her three little puppies outside. The mom dog was nice and let us pet her and her babies. So cute! We may or may not walk that same way to and from Zdravka's every time we meet with her now, you'll never know.


 
Love,
Sister Riddle

Monday, March 2, 2015

March 2, 2015

Hey Mom,

So this week two native Albanian returned sister missionaries were passing through Macedonia on their way to the temple in Frankfurt, Germany and we met up with them to do some non-traditional exchanges. It was so much fun and we were able to meet our goal for member-present lessons this week. :)  The two sisters had been friends before their missions and then were both called to serve at  different places in England. So their English was really good. The girl I worked with, Jona, had served in a visitors center. She said that at the beginning when she didn't know English, it was really hard because not even her trainer spoke English well. Maybe our situation in Macedonia is more common than I thought it was. They both also used to be Muslim. Apparently the other sister, Denada, was very beneficial in a lesson Sister Barch and Hassell had with an Albanian Muslim that day. Unfortunately I think I bored Jona to death because our only lesson cancelled and I spent all of our time in the print shop. Whenever we want to give someone a conference talk, we always have to take time out of our day to go to the print shop, find the talk in whatever language, pay for it and then try to keep it safe in our bags for the time until we see said person. I had the idea to just print a bunch so that we didn't have to make a special trip every time we wanted one. Plus sometimes we go there and it's closed. I got a bit carried away and by the time I looked over at the printer to see how much I had printed so far there was a huge stack. One hundred and fifty pages to be exact. Luckily printing is cheap and I carried it home immediately. The next day I got a nice binder and some plastic sheets and things so we could keep them nice and organized at home. A lot of times people in the church complain that when talks are given, they're all about the same things. Talks have only been available in Albanian for the past several years and in Serbian only for the past two or three. For these people, a lot of times it is the first time they're hearing any of it. It makes missionary work so much easier to be able to give it to them stated clearly and plainly in their own language. (Sister Schofield was so happy when the talk Sacrament-A Renewal For The Soul was given last conference because sacrament can be difficult to explain. Plus when it's a different speaker they have their own way of explaining it which may be better for the listener.) We've added to the binder since then and I've been going through conference talks trying to find every one that would be easy for someone with little gospel knowledge to understand. I just wanted to tell you that because it's exciting to have a new project.

Here's a few random stories of Macedonian/Serbian fails:
When me and Sister Schofield went to visit Zdravka in the hospital she didn't have her glasses, so I read aloud a verse from the Serbian Book of Mormon. As soon as I began, Zdravka said to Sister Schofield, "Ooh, she doesn't know how to read." A few weeks prior to that I had also been laughed to scorn by a fifteen-year-old doing the same thing in a lesson. So embarrassing. I also said a very inappropriate word on accident in the lesson with Ismael. I realized what I'd said the second I said it, and we both pretended like it hadn't happened.

While walking one day back when I was companions just with Sister Hassell, there was a cat making some weird noise in the distance. She tried to ask me, "Do you hear the cat?" in Macedonian. "You just asked me if I protect the bear," I told her.

Even more long ago, while doing exchanges with Sister Singer, she kept asking me how to say conversational things so she could help with contacting. She was funny because instead of just making nonsense-Macedonian-garble like most people do when they say words for the first time, she would say actual other words. Instead of saying, "How are you?" she kept saying, "It is cocoa." She told me, "You're nice, you could just be telling me how to say, 'I am stupid' and I would be saying it without even knowing." Then she really did want to know how to say "I am stupid" but then when she repeated it it came out "I am beautiful." That was a fun day. 

On Sunday we met with a Muslim guy who, for the first time in a long time, actually seemed interested in our religion. "I believe in God. You believe in Jesus. I don't know yet whether I do or not," he said openly. We are seeing him again tomorrow. His name was Halim, and he was such a nice guy. It makes me think back to the MTC when they told us all the time, "It's not all about baptisms." Right now there are at least two Muslim men in Macedonia (Halim and Ismael) who are reading the Book of Mormon because we handed them to them. Isn't that helping them come closer to Christ? Isn't that powerful?

Let me tell you about Sister Hassell. Sister Hassell is so great at talking to people. (Sorry this email is all over the place. My trainees/companions have given me the feedback: "You're really good at changing the subject. And interrupting," while not even trying to be sarcastic. It comes from a year dealing with long-winded Macedonians who will talk about their brother-in-law for an hour unless you get them back on track with the gospel.) One night she stopped and talked to the owner of a new Belgian waffle place that was opening up. He ended up giving us all free cookies. The next day we went back and celebrated for her half birthday. Really. She's also told me that her "spirit animal is a river otter" and one time we got into an argument about whether a spirit animal is the same thing as a patronus. She's a character. Also, she has a brother named Forrest who runs cross-country. That needed to be said. Today she told me she found my old blog letters among her things and reread some of them. "Your personality is different when you write than when you speak," she told me, "In your letters you sound about 2% smarter."

We've been teaching the Roma kids English at the Red Cross center again. Our first week back, one of the girls put my hair in a really pretty braid. It's weird seeing them having grown so much in the months since I've seen them. One little boy, Delson, drew me a picture of a flower that is hanging on my fridge now. 

Speaking of the Red Cross, back when Sister Hassell was my only companion we were contacting out on Stone Bridge one night and I had some pamphlets in my hand. I found an old one that I had scribbled a phone number onto long ago. Above the phone number I had written "Negil- red cross guy." Wow. I was referring to Negat, and I had written that the first time we met him. I excitedly showed it to Sister Hassell. She told me I should keep it as a piece of history but I scratched it out and handed the pamphlet to someone else. Let the pamphlet save two people.

On a similar night with Sister Hassell on Stone Bridge, I looked out across the Vardar and was hit with a wave of sadness realizing that these were now the last days of my mission and there would be a day when I wouldn't do this anymore. Missionary work is so fun sometimes. In our mission, and maybe missions worldwide, I don't know, missionaries do a D&C countdown, reading one section each day starting when they only have 138 days left. I realized a while ago that I should've started mine There was a point in my mission where I looked forward to the time that I could start my countdown because it would mean I was close to the end. Now that it's time, I don't think I'm going to actually do it. If I finish reading the Old Testament I will have read all of the standard works and missionary library on my mission. I think that's a more beneficial use of my personal study. 

"For I am thy God and will still give thee aid. I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,..Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand." -How Firm a Foundation, Hymns of the Church.

Love,
Sister Riddle