Miracles in Croatia

This week, we received a nice letter from Ryan's mission president, David Hill, along with a photo of Ryan with President and Sister Hill. Ryan is having a wonderful time in Croatia. He is adapting well to his new environment and feeling the spirit of his wonderful work.  He asks for help from all of us: "Miracles are occurring here, and I cant wait to tell them to you!  Pray your hearts out for Croatia!  I really feel like many people are prepared!  Weve just got to have the faith, the prayers, and the work!  Try to remember Jasminka and Vladimir and Bljubašuc, and our Branch in your prayers."

Here are some more excerpts from Ryan's last email:

Welp.  Osijek is doing great.  That was really cool to hear about Sister Hendrickson!  Im going to have to look up her pic at the church here!  Thats sweet that she was a greenie here too.  She probably knew a couple of my mtc teachers on the mish, aka Sister Cassinat and Sister Harper.  Tell her hello...

Its true what she said in the e-mail about osijek, "it truly does have a lot of potential!"  We had the worlds most inspired zone conference on Thursday, i am convinced.  It was actually a mission tour zone conference.  Elder Wundra, an Eastern European area 70 from Austria was the main speaker.  He talked about how we need to break free of the influence of satan, basically liberate ourselves from the fruits of Satan - doubt, discouragement, fear, sin, low expectations, and complacency just to name a few.....  Along with that message, he said that we must align our expectations and our goals with God's -- to set our goals based on the desires of our hearts and the vision of what we hope to see happening in Croatia -- and not set our goals out of discouragement from past history and other sources.  This mission has had the "eastern european" reputation, and people tend to think like "i hope to bring 1 or two souls unto christ while im here".  Elder Wundra pointed out that that goal does not reflect the desire of our hearts, or the vision of what we can see accomplished. 

It was prophesied in the dedicatory prayer that stakes will dot this land, so God has that vision, and so do we, and we all want that.  What Elder Wundra was saying was that our goals, and also our expectations/hopes need to reflect that.  He added that as we eliminate Satan's influence in our lives through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, we can accomplish God's purposes.  When we sanctify ourselves of the adversary, we sanctify ourselves of fear, doubt, discouragement, and we are filled with love, meakness, and the help / power of God. 

As I sat there listening and being taught a little by the Spirit, I really felt as if that is the future of this mission.  With courage, faith, and work, stakes will dot this land...  The Lord can do his work here as we excercise faith like we never have before.  I just hope I can live up to that standard and be humble enough to submit to God's will...  Miracles are occuring here, and I cant wait to tell them to you!  Pray your hearts out for Croatia!  I really feel like many people are prepared!  Weve just got to have the faith, the prayers, and the work!  Try to remember Jasminka and Vladimir and Bljubašuc, and our Branch in your prayers.  These people need the fruits of faith to work on their lives!  They are such amazing peeps! 

Croatia continues to be tight.  We are going to the Osijek zoo today :]

Sounds like things are good at home!  Keep it real!  I love you all...  Thank you for your h-core support. I feel it out here.  When i have little tender mercies, i think its because of my awesome supportive fam and friends back at home.  Thanks for it all... You are in my prayers.

Ryan is in Croatia!

Ryan arrived in Croatia on September 30th.  Sorry it has taken me so long to post the good news to this blog.

He is stationed in the city of Osijek, in eastern Croatia, near the Serbian border.

The Church is really young in Croatia.  Osijek has a tiny branch, with just half a dozen attendees. What a thrill it is to have Ryan out there on the frontiers of the Church.  We are confident that good people will respond to Ryan's Christlike love and desire to learn about the restored gospel.

Here is an excerpt from his last email:



Puna pozdrava iz Osijeka.....

AKA many greetings from Osijek!!

It's Oh-see-yek, jtlyk. Osijek is sweet. Things are going well here. So the other day, Vladimir, one of our investigators, took us to get chestnuts roasted on an open fire!! They actually do that here. Do you know what's funny though?? They are kind of / really nasty. It's like mushrooms... Just a noch worse than having no taste at all. Heh!

I got here, and we had like a mini teaching pool. Elder Giberson had been here for 2 months, and the couple weeks before we got here, he was throughout Croatia doing visa related things i think, idk really. But not much was going down here. So, we don't have many people investigating the church right now, but its all good. We have a couple non-progressing investigators named Jasminka (Yasmeenkah), and also Vladimir (Vlahdeemeer). I don't know either of them really well. But ill let you know about them when i do... We also met a guy named Bljuvašuc (Blyoovashooch, heh! I cant really say it without repeating myself!) on a bench the other day. We decided we wanted to talk to him, so we walked over and elder giberson introduced us. I kinda felt like I should share with him a little bit about our purpose in life. So in H-CORE broken Croatian, I said something like, "our message is that we lived with God before this life. We are his children. We are part of his family. We have a purpose here on earth." Idk if he understood anything, but it was enough to get him listening to us/elder giberson. Elder Giberson talked to him for a while about our church,
and we got his number. He lives like 30 km away or so in a tiny town. We cant get a hold of him so far, but we'll see what we can do. Pray for him! He was such a nice guy.

So, Croatia is pretty crazy. There's so many things that are just randomly different. The door handles are all bar style - no knobbers. No windows slide up and down. Only in or to the side. Showers dont hang, there on a hose. Acura's here have hondas logo slapped on them. The prism would be like. big here. Almost every house is connected somehow. They drink alot of juice. One things not dif her though - our neighbors are american! Haha, and guess what... theyre missionaries too! Just for a dif church! Evangelists, i think. Random, huh?? Our apartment is pretty desent (sp?)! I sleep on this fold out bed thing, and Elder giberson sleeps on like a half of a twin bed. Like as wide as a crib, but long enough for 6'4" Elder Giberson. Theres no dryers, so we hang dry everything. I may be buying a dryer soon........ Jk! but hang drying is an adjustment, as it were.

The branch is tight. There's been like 4 active members that have been coming every week. But, there is a former branch president named Zoran (just Zorahn...) that seriously everybody loves who has been out of town forever. He comes back this week along with another strong member slash pigeon racer, named Irvin. Im excited. Its amazing how much a difference two people can make in a branch. It will be so good for these people to have these two priesthood holders back.

Last sunday, I gave a talk and blessed the sacrament. I talked about life on earth, and the importance of having faith in Christ. I read it off word for word. Afterwards, Nikola (Nickola), a member of the branch, took my talk, corrected the mistakes, and gave it back w/ and F+ written on the bottom! Haha, it was so funny man. If only you knew good old nikola. Hes not a mean guy, just funny. Hes like 65 or something and he schools me in chess every sunday.

We also have this guy in our branch who is just a 'friend of the church'. He is like 65 too, and used to be a normal successful pediatrician and musician from what i hear. But something happened to his family in the war i guess, and something went out in his mind. He sort of lost it mentally. You can talk to him normally and stuff but he will talk to himself sometimes, i guess, and stuff. But thats sort of beside the point. Ever since they extended the responsibility for him to play the piano at church,he has come everyweek. He remixes the hymns, changing tempos and playing the chords one note after another, ya know. Like the trill thing? its tight.

gtg, peace!