I hit 18 months this last week. It is CRAZY. I know I've
said this a lot already, but the mission is flying. It's so weird to me that
it's all just going to be over in an instant.
More General Authority (GA) visits. We had a really cool
thing happen this week. Elder Hallstrom of the presidency of the 70 and
President Johnson of the European Presidency met with the Crisis Relief Center
of Skopje this week, and they had a few hours before their next flight, so we
got to have a meeting with all of them and with the members! I was so excited
for them. I don't think hardly any of them have met a GA before, especially
someone in the presidency of the 70. They all talked about the power of their
voices, and the positive energy you could feel from them (all the people here
are obsessed with the word energy. I think that's how they describe just about
every feeling). They talked about how the Lord trusts us as missionaries since
our mission president lives in a different country, and to the members, about
how they're the pioneers, and they need to plant a strong foundation. We had a
good showing there too, even though it was a Thursday morning.
We picked up some new investigators this week that are
members of an Evangelical church. And that church takes place in their house. I
feel like they are just honest people searching for the Gospel in their lives.
They started their own church because they feel like all the other ones mess up
somewhere or another. But after giving the father (who's the pastor) a Book of
Mormon, he read 40 pages in one day. He said the only reason he didn't read
more because he had to prepare his sermon! We got to attend; it was a classic
Evangelical church, with a guitar and a lot of singing, and then a small Sunday
School kind of meeting focused on James 2. I really enjoyed it; you can tell
they're very God loving people. After the meeting, the older brother who wasn't
in the first lesson starting asking what we were about, and when we starting
explaining, the other 10 people there stopped talking and listened. It was a
big crowd! The Lord really blessed us to give us that opportunity.
We've been going to a lot more villages lately, like Dolno
Lisice and Dracevo. The people in Dolno Lisice were so nice since it was such a
tiny village. We had a lesson with a guy there. There was one lady, Rosa who
wanted to invite all of her family and her sister's family to hear a message,
so she took us over to her sister's house to pick a time. We used the words
Mormons with her sisters, and then Rosa's whole demeanor changed. She told us
not to call her or anything. The people here in general don't like Novovernici,
which means new believers. That's anyone that's not Orthodox or Catholic.
Elder Rigby 
