Delights from the Weed Patch

Most likely you've seen these weeds in your garden. Purslane.

Sauted with onions, cherry tomatoes and rice. Gooooood!

With salmon and homemade bread.

And the next day in a salad.

greetings from osijek!

the hunt for the bed

email in croatia is either in a library or just an internet cafe where you buy it by the hour. i am in the latter.

i heard about jace being ap. that is just insane. i heard about his mission over there and its SO different from over here. its strange to think how different our experiences will be when we get home. ill be waiting for bishop francos letter. and yes i wrote back to gery carlson. he should get it this week or next.

by the way there are no wards in croatia. only branches. yesterday we had us 4 missionaries, 3 people who are visitors (but they come every single week without fail and probably wont ever become members), and 0 members. so elder brown gave the opening prayer. i passed the sacrament. elders brown and porter blessed it. elder anderson (current branch president) gave a talk. i gave a talk (almost 20 minutes too). and elder porter gave the closing prayer. there are probably 45 members here in osijek but most are inactive. we have probably 5-8 who randomly actually come.

and yes dad. its very hot here as well. thing is, here its HUMID. like crazy. its around 35-37 degrees celcius daily. and one day i heard it reached 42. woohoo. thats hot. and its darn humid... joj. we have a huge river that goes all along osijek. if you want to look up our apartment, the address is: sjenjak 32, osijek 31000, croatia. something like that. by the way dad, im very impressed and proud of you for getting a gmail address. isnt it just light-years better?

i havent had to sing yet, no mom haha. we dont have anyone to play the piano here. kinda hard. i dont remember if i told you last week but i did sing at zone conference again. a duet with sister nelson. elder lee played. and the first time i saw the music was about 20 mintues before we sang it. so we ran through it twice and then performed it for the zone haha. we did okay though so that is good.

nikola invented that trumpet design. and yes, its VERY strange. its kinda useless for playing. im sure glad trumpets arent made like that haha. he seems to think its pretty revolutionary though. he traveled to france and america to show it to professional musicians and never got anything from it. i kinda feel bad for him, but i dont see anyone buying his idea in the future. thats the only trumpet like it in the world. its his prototype and its the only one. so yep, right now i am in the possesion of the only trumpet like that haha. im pretty bumbed that you still havent sent my trumpet. but its okay. remember, if its crazy expensive, i can probably live without it. just keep that in mind. i did send that package. but it ended up being a lot more expensive than i thought. so just to let you know, it will NOT be there in a week. instead, you will be getting it between 1-2 months from now. so i dont know how that chocolate is going to hold up. its actually not going to be traveling on an airplane. its traveling "brodom" (by means of boat). crazy huh? it seemed weird. but it was way cheaper going by boat rather than zrakoplovom (by means of airplane).

we're not doing any humanitarian things just yet, no. here and there. but not anything like planting trees. and i think the serbian elders are doing fine. dont worry about me. if i get beat up randomly by some drunk guys itll be some good story for when i get home.

and yep. all my pictures are in the package. so be ready for yome un browsing. i love taking pictures with elder brown. he's a lot more fun than my other companion when it comes to taking pictures. i got a shoulder bag that is called "star dragon" and we think its hilarious but its super nice and light and fits everything i need for the day. plus my camera so thats good.

if they ever have a chior thing here its either in karlovac or zagreb. they have the most members present. so ill just have to wait if i want to do any choir things.

we had exchanges with the assitants to the president last thursday and it went great. i really like elders dixon and fowler. they're really good and im excited to see who will be ap after dixon. we'll see in a little over a month.

im trying to take a lot of pictures. you'll have to tell me how im doing with that. ill try to send as many as i can. okay thats a lie. i could send them all probably but it would just take me all stinking day. but anyway, ill try to send a lot so you guys know what its like being here in osijek. it sure in different. culture and looks and everything. ive gotten pretty used to it though.

ill tell you guys the story about our bed. so the lindorfs (the senior couple in charge of finances - dad and mom, you should try to do this. it would probably be super easy for you dad) came to osijek and say that i was sleeping on the floor so sister lindorf said that i need to get a bed. so they told us to start looking around. so we did. problem was, our limit was 800 kuna. which is SUPER cheap. we found a couple for 950 and stuff. but it was super hard even finding places with beds. we had to ask SO many people. we ended up walking down this road to a place called baumax. we thought it COULD have something in it like a bed... turned out NO. it was basically a home depot. but it was so much fun looking for a bed inside and seeing all those manly tools (just to let you know dad, i miss doing all that work with you too). so we bought ice cream cones (at a home depot store thing haha) and left. by the way this baumax was super far away from osijek the town. and we walked all the way there. so we walked back another way just to see if there were more stores. and there was. we found a bed for 750 kuna. woohoo. and when we told the lady we wanted it she thought we were crazy for getting the crappiest bed there. she kept on repeating, so you want the 3 star matress.... with the 2 start frame.... with the cheap slats?..... and then finally we finished and she asked, so do you want any pillows with that? no. how about some sheets? no thanks. blankets? no thanks. a matress pad? nope. haha. she thought we were crazy. so two days ago (sat) we woke up, did studies. or at least started. at about 8:45 our door rang and we answered the little talk button thing and it was the bed. so we got to put it all together just like at ikea and it was cheap wood like at ikea too haha. but it worked out good and now im sleeping on a bed thats more uncomfortable then the floor haha. hard to come by, but its possible. its pretty bad. but hey, i found a feather pillow in the apartment and im using that and its super comfortable. so i like that.

anyway. i better get going. sorry that its not longer. ill try my best next week to write more. i dont really have any great stories to tell. just pictures and such. and the pictures arent any good without telling the entire story behind it.

love you guys!

elder jacobsen

Cruisin' Grand

This post is Cruisin' Grand with Grandpa's old race car, not the Camaro. Will post the Camaro soon.

Friday, July 16th (Grandaddy's Birthday, incidentally), 2010, we went to the Midget and Sprint Night at Cruisin' Grand, Escondido. Denny spent practically all day, washing the trailer, the car, hooking up lights and just generally getting ready. I drove down in the Audi and picked up the Shelbo kids to babysit (Ally had to work) and we parked on Broadway where it was blocked off. It was nice to sit in the shade (it was around 100 degrees) and not have to worry about the kids getting in the street.

Ollie got a kick out of "driving" the car. Pyke played with her Polly Pockets Princesses. Denny talked to all the old codgers about the good old days!

A Little History

Uncle Gordon Petersen had the race car built in 1932 by Lujie Losovsky (a pretty famous race car builder. Look him up on the internet). Uncle Gordon, who was Grandpa's uncle, Grandma Jacobsen's (Petersen) brother, used it to advertise his shop on Slauson Avenue (Petersen's Garage) in Los Angeles. Grandpa got a job at Petersen's Garage, upon first arriving in the area, from Iowa, in 1934. The car was sold and they lost track of it until Grandpa, or maybe Uncle Gordon, found it and Grandpa bought it back around 1955. On it's maiden run, before he had even painted it, it won the main event!! And it just happened to be Dad's ninth Birthday! What a cool birthday present! Poor Dad (Denny) didn't get to drive the 3/4 Midgets much. I suspect Grandpa didn't really want to share the fun and I'm sure Grandma wasn't crazy about the idea of her little boy driving in the races. But Grandpa sure had a blast!! He retired the car in 1966, then built a new one that he raced for about ten more years.

More of Osijek, Croatia

if you want to look at pictures of what this side of croatia is like look up the cities. vukovar, đakovo, osijek. you'll probably see some intersting things.

Elder Jacobsen

(Try Google Maps and zoom in close. Click on the little squares and those are pictures that people have submitted to Google Maps.)

Osjiek

Where are you Ethan??

osijek! here i go!

im in osijek now. its RIGHT by serbia. so during the war it was one of the first cities attacked by serbia (yugoslavia). there are still buildings that have bullet holes all over them. and there are actually some buildings with huge marks where grenades hit and exploded. its really crazy. our apartment complex has bullet holes in the walls. our church has tons on the building (our church is just a part of an apartment building like in rijeka). i was really sad to leave rijeka. maybe ill go back but i have no idea. im with elder brown who is great so far. he's been on his mission for a year and 2 months. so he knows croatian pretty well which is really nice. its going really good and we're getting a lot done even though we've only been together for what? 5 days?

we're starting english class on tuesday. im teaching beginner again with elder brown. i love beginners. so much more fun. and a lot of funny things are said :] in croatian AND english.

okay the mission. here it goes. we have one senior couple in croatia. and they're leaving next month. they will be replaced. so we will have ONE couple. but they just deal with humanitarian things so its kinda different. and we are losing 3 of our sister missionaries. like 4 of our elders. and yeah. its crazy. we have 6 branches in croatia. 7 areas. pula is included in the rijeka branch. but we only have 2 croatian native branch presidents. one in zagreb and one in karlovac. the other 4 are elders. elder davey (rijeka), babcock (zadar), anderson (here), and nitta (varaždin). so yeah. and something you might not know yet. our mission has totally changed. it used to consist of 7 countries. slovenia, croatia, serbia are the 3 that are open. and then maccedonia, montenegro, bosnia, and kosovo were the closed ones. but as of may 12th i think it was, our mission is only slovenia croatia and serbia now. the other 4 are just under a general authority. so yeah. some big changes.

funniest thing ever! so osijek is right next to serbia. and it gets really hot during the summer. and its kinda swampy. the main thing osijek is known for are the mosquitoes here. so what do you think they do to get rid of the mosquitoes? if you said that they fly above the city with an airplane and dump insect poison onto the entire city, you'd be RIGHT! haha. im not sure how often it happens, but a plane will fly overhead and just DUMP stuff on the city. it goes by a few times. ill be getting a video and picture of it very soon trust me. (i can just see mom at the computer covering her mouth and doing that half laugh - half "oh my goodness" thing. the thing she does when she wants to laugh but tries to cover it up with surprise haha)

so yep. thats about it. nothing too big or exciting.

we've been talking to a lot of people and its amazing how much the lord helps when i try to speak croatian. i probably sound like a bumbling fool but when i start talking to members or people on the street they understand and get everything i say. and they're even surprised sometimes when i say im from america. i really like talking to people in croatian and i love being able to communicate. i know that the lord is helping us too cause without his help we'd be so lost. hope you guys are having a great time is california/america/wherever you guys are. ill try to write more often.

elder jacobsen

His companion, Elder Brown,

seems to have had a

little better luck with this guy.