tears

I hit my one year mark this week.

tears were shed.

BUT otherwise, it was a really really great week! Crazy things all the time everywhere. We started off the week with a really great family night, which included saying a lot of fruits with our lips over our teeth and eating probably 8000 plums.

pictures 1 year mark planner art

OH SPEAKING OF PLUMS

Reason number 860 why Slovakia is amazing: Everyone loves fruit. There are fruit trees everywhere. I have never eaten so many apricots and mini apricots and plums in my entire life. They are in every cake, at every gathering. I live in the garden of eden. You will be walking down the road, and there is a fruit tree that has just grown, so you can just pick a plum and eat it. Same thing with raspberry bushes. But also, the city, when it is really hot, starts to really smell like rancid fruit. But that is okay! Because everyone makes us jams out of these fruits. Right now in our fridge, we have two full jars of apricot jam (one vegan, one not), and one full jar of plum jam. But you have to be careful. One of our investigators uses rum instead of preservatives in her jam...

Anyway, things got pretty exciting on tuesday when we got to go to Nitra to have a concert! Oh
beautiful city! It took us forever to get there. We took a bus in the wrong direction for two hours, then got off, then got on a train, and then on another little train, and then we were in Nitra. They have a new, beautiful space for the church building and we were lucky enough to sing there! We sang successfully and they had a huge investigator turn out!

Anyway, we got to go to this older couples home this week, our investigators, and they were so sweet and fed us banana poppy seed bread (the poppy was not so bad in this. usually the poppy filling is very strange and I do not understand why it is a dessert) We had a fantastic discussion about the priesthood in the home. She loved that we in the church can have a priest in the family, in the home. She was impressed and was interested to hear about how the priesthood influenced our families. I so happily testified of the power of the priesthood in my own family! How grateful I am to have been raised in a family surrounded by the priesthood. It has always been there for me and I am sorry for the times I took it for granted. It is really the power by which we build our foundation on Christ in families.

We had a movie night with one of our investigators. She speaks fluent english, so we watched the Joseph Smith movie with her. The whole thing! it was a spiritual experience for all of us. The movie ended, and we tentatively asked her what she thinked. She said "Well, I kind of had a spoiler already because I have already read that first part of the Book of Mormon." Our smiles were as wide as the tatry mountains are tall. I was so impressed, as I have been in the past, by the prophet Joseph Smith and by his faithful, incredible example. We have been listening to the lectures by truman g madsen during our meal times, and I cannot help but testify that I know Joseph Smith is a prophet. I seriously cannot deny it. The more I learn about him, the more my testimony is solidified. I continue to be amazed by his life, his example, his works, his prophesies, and his calling. I am grateful to be a member of the restored Church of Jesus Christ!

So, anyway, then we had a culture night! We went to this little town called Nemčova to go to a little fair. How fun! And our district is so much fun. The elders came down from Nitra and we went and ate trdelniks and bought some cool slovak stuff. Okay, well, I bought an awesome stuffed cat head magnet for the fridge here in trenčin. Will buy slovak things in the future. My favorite part was riding on the crowded bus home with everyone staring at us, asking us who we were, and fanning us with fans and giving us unflavored giant puffed corn things that taste like styrofoam. That, my friends, was a real culture night.

Oh, also, it rained. Incorrect.

It flooded.

Which was actually lovely, because it has been drier here this year (according to everyone on the street), but it did not make for the best contacting weather hahahahah

Lastly, we went on sunday to visit our 80 year old investigator, and we brought our 81 year old member. Surprise! They already knew each other , because the investigator had been taught by missionaries fifteen years earlier with her husband and with this same investigator.

COINCIDENCE?
I THINK NOT

They were so cute. They kept saying, "We are not old, we are just more experienced."
Love them.

Thank you and lovely summer and lovely school I wish you all!

s laskou, sestra abbott

ps transfers are next week