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.