tanking

This week I went to get some passport pictures for visa stuff. They sat me down and took the regular passport picture, and then the guy turned me sideways and made me tilt my head and smile while he took another. I wasn't sure why, but when we came back 30 minutes later to pick up the pictures, we found out. Apparently I got a free glamour shot with my passport pictures, so we stuck that on our bathroom door. 

The new word for this week is "tank". The verb "tank" is kind of hard to explain, but I'll do my best (also if you call Jamie or Ian they might be able to help you a little bit). If someone is "tanking" or "tanked" that means they are doing or did something like a tank. The tricky part is that this can either be good or bad. For example, if there is a lot of mud or something, and a person just walks straight through it without even caring or slowing down they "just tanked right through it". So if someone just keeps plowing though or doing something without any apparent caution or without slowing down they are "tanking through it". On the other hand it can be bad, if someone is running a race and start slowing down, they "start tanking". For example, "he ran the first 3 laps really fast, but he started tanking the last 400 meters". Or, if someone is doing really well and all of the sudden starts getting worse, they "start tanking". 

As for missionary stuff, this last week was really good. We had exchanges on Wednesday with our zone leaders and I stayed in Karlovac with Elder DeFrietas, while Elder Marcek went up to Zagreb with Elder Brown. We had a really good lesson with one of our investigators, P. We don't meet with P very often because he's super busy. But he's super nice and awesome. He's in his early 30's and has a 5 year old and 2 year old daughter. He works as a social worker at a retirement home and also does other cool stuff like keeping bee's ( he said last year he had 30 hives, and this year he wants 60). He's also a super awesome dad. During our lesson we read a little from the family proclamation, and at the beginning part where it talks about how we lived with heavenly father before, Elder Defreitas asked "if you lived in heaven with god before, why do think you would have agreed to leave him and come to earth?" His answer was because of his daughters. At the end of the lesson we asked if he would want to bring his family to church, and he said that next Sunday he would bring his 5 year old daughter.

Yesterday we had a District Conference in Zagreb, it's kind of like a Stake Conference but instead of stakes we have Districts. Our district is the whole country of Croatia. At the conference yesterday they said there were over 180 people there, which is the most they've ever had! Most of the members from Karlovac were there, and M came too. We also had a super good lesson with M on Saturday night where we gave him a baptismal calendar and stuff. I forgot to get any pictures with him or the members here and stuff, hopefully I can get some tonight at family night, and we'll definitely get some good pictures in 2 weeks at M's baptism.

As for other stuff this week:
 Croatian people are crazy though and still think you need a coat and hat and gloves and stuff even if it's pretty warm outside (they think that just about everything makes you sick especially not wearing proper clothing), and they will just tell exactly what they're thinking. On Tuesday it was only a little chilly, so I was just wearing my inner fleece coat and Elder Marcek was wearing a sweater. Even though the coat and the sweater were both keeping us about the same amount of warm, a random guy on the street got mad at Elder Marcek for not wearing a coat (I was fine though, because it doesn't matter what kind, as long as you're wearing a coat). On Saturday it was super warm (like 60 degrees) so we just went out in long sleeve white shirts. An old lady actually yelled at us from across the street telling us we needed coats.

Also, almost everyone here just lives in apartments, and they are all those buildings where someone has to buzz you in. When we are tracting we normally just press a bunch of random names and when someone asks "tko je (who is it)" you just say "vrata molim (door please)" and they just buzz you in. One time on Friday, however, we were trying to get in to visit a less active member and I had to talk to a guy for like 5 minutes. He sounded kind of old and senile, and although I explained multiple times that "my name was Elder Harmon and I was a missionary from the Church of Jesus Christ and we were visiting someone who was a member of our church" he still seemed really confused and wouldn't open the door (someone else did though).
That's pretty much all for this week, I almost forgot; tell dad he's super awesome for sending the P90X workouts and that I'll send him some shirtless flexing pictures or something in a couple weeks so you can see how much it's helping.
Love you all, Elder Schyler Harmon

Remember the hotel I sent you a picture of the 1st week? Here is a picture I took 2 weeks ago.

 

If that looks like a 4 inch thick hunk of bacon, it is. I don't know why they don't sell it like that in America, but that thing was only like 6 or 7 bucks and it's super delicious!