Baptism in a swimming pool

This week was a good week down in Sarajevo. We did a lot of traveling stuff early in the week. Elder Merl and I had to drive to Tuzla early Tuesday morning so we could cancel his visa, and then we drove back later that afternoon. Tuesday night we picked up my new companion, Elder Wade, at the Sarajevo airport. Then on Wednesday we drove down and met Elders Blackburn and Compton at the Montenegro border. We dropped Elder Merl off and picked up Elder Blackburn because they told us that Elder Blackburn would be flying that night from Sarajevo to Beograd. We drove back to Sarajevo and took Elder Blackburn to the airport, and there wasn't actually a flight leaving for Beograd at that time. We called the AP's, and turns out his flight left from Podgorica, and they had told us wrong. So, we had to find him a bus to Beograd that left the next morning. 

After that though we had a slightly more normal week. The sisters had a baptism Saturday, a girl named Sa____. She had kind of a tough life before, and had been investigating other churches, like the 7th Day Adventists and other christian churches. When she met the sister missionaries a month and a half ago, she immediately felt that ours was the right one for her. She has a simple but very strong testimony, and is excited to share the gospel with all of her family and friends. A couple weeks ago Elder Merl and I went around to all of the Hotels in town asking if they had a pool we could reserve, because we don't have a baptismal font. After several attempts we finally found one. We reserved the pool for an hour, and had a short baptismal program right next to the pool, and then she was baptized by President Lamoreaux, our Branch President. There were about 25 people there, which was super good. 

One of our main investigators now, a young guy from Kosevo named U__, came and he really liked it. He's also come to church the last 2 weeks, which is great. He is an Albanian, but grew up in Kosevo, and while he was visiting friends in Albania he was introduced to the church there. The church in Albania is about the same age as in Croatia, but it seems that Albanians are extremely receptive to the gospel, and the church there is growing at an explosive rate. He went to church activities there, and really loved the great sense of community and how everyone there was so nice and got along so well. He moved to Sarajevo about the same time I arrived in Croatia, and got a job as a baker. Shortly after that he ran into Elders Merl and Bailey in a park. He's a super nice guy, and really wants to believe God exists, but isn't quite sure yet. We're right now really working on building his faith in God through coming to church and reading the scriptures and praying.

Tell Jessica (in answer to her question) that there are no temples in Croatia or Bosnia. In fact there are only 2 chapels, or actual church buildings in the whole mission, in Zagreb and Ljubljiana. Everywhere else we have "makeshift churches". They are all in converted houses, or in a space that used to be an office, or a bank or a doctors office or something. Twice a year they have a big temple trip where all of the members who can, in our mission, go to the temple in Frankfurt, Germany.  You all are just great, I love you.

Schyler

tracting in the rain

cool Sarajevo