Monday July 22nd & July 29th

July 22nd: Sorry I am so behind on Jordan's blog! I was in New York for a week on a vacation with the girls in my family and then this past week I got engaged so I have been a little busy! Jasmina was baptized! Elder Sheridan ended up baptizing her and then all the Elders sang a song. Jasmina was very happy and she said that was the best thing she has ever done! With her baptism that makes 8 members in his ward :)

Jordan said zone conference went really well. They did a lot of role playing and he said it helped him a lot and he will be able to help investigators with more problems they have now. He is still working very hard on grammar and memorizing vocabulary words and he is getting better. It is still hard for him to understand what people are saying but he is getting the hang of it! Before Jordan left on his mission, he was going to the gym everyday and getting really buff! I asked him how that was going for him and he said he eats cereal pretty much every day and doesn't work out a ton so he is a little worried ;)


July 29th: Jordan was transferred! He is now in a place called Banja Luka, Bosnia. He is companions with Elder Fausnaught again! He was a little worried about that because they are both brand new to the language but he says he is very excited to be back with him! They're new apartment does not have AC and it has been close to the 100's the entire week, so he is trying to get used to that! At the end of my e-mail Jord said him and Elder Fausnaught were leaving to go bowling! He LOVED bowling when he was home (he has his own bowling shoes) and apparently the bowling alley they were going to is very nice so I am sure that was very fun for him :)

Monday July 15th

Jordan had a great week! He did an exchange with a missionary named elder Sheridan on who has only been out of the MTC for 3 months so he said that was very crazy trying to talk to people! They were able to give Jasmina her baptismal interview but then she called them the next day and said she had smoked so they had to call it off for now but hopefully they can baptize her in a few weeks! Jord is still talking with the Grandpa of the family they met a few weeks ago, his name is Osmo. He seems very interested still and Jordan is hopeful that he will want to be converted! They also have some other investigators that seem very interested. One investigator named Sanja is hoping to get baptized on August 27th! They only had 9 people at church on Sunday but there were 6 missionaries, 2 investigators and 1 member so they are really trying to get their numbers up. Jordan gave a talk about the Holy Ghost in Bosnian and really hoped that everyone could understand him!

Jordan told me that they met a tourist from Florida and that she took a picture with him and his companion so I decided to look on instagram and see if I could find the picture and I did! I love when people post stuff about my brother and I am so thankful for modern technology so I can see stuff like this!!

Monday July 8th

Pray for Jordan a lot this week! He became discouraged this week and really homesick and he needs all of our blessings! His e-mails this week were a little shorter because he didn't have much time. President Rowe came to church with them this week and Jordan said he gave such a powerful talk and that the spirit was so strong there. A 19 year old girl named Sanja from their English class felt the spirit so strong that she went and talked to President Rowe afterwards and wants to be baptized now! 

During the week the Elders saw a man carrying a lot of heavy groceries to they offered to help him carry them home. When they got to his house he invited them in and they were able to talk to him and his family about the restoration. The Grandpa seemed very interested so they gave him a pamphlet and came back for another lesson that week and showed them the restoration video. They are now new investigators! Jasmina is still getting baptized on July 16th and Bahrudina is still deciding if she will that day also. PLEASE keep Jordan in your prayers this week and pray that he will start progressing more with the language and pray that he won't be too homesick! 

This picture is on a different blog called "Winters in Bosnia". It is about Sister Winters and her husband in the middle and their mission experience. She feeds Jordan every Sunday and has posted some awesome pictures on her blog so we have been able to see more of Jord! 

Monday July 1st

Jordan's e-mail to us this week started out with "This week was a great week, I am really pumped to be a missionary right now!" Sounds like he is enjoying himself! They were finally able to watch the missionary broadcast this weekend and he said they enjoyed it a lot! He said every morning him and Elder Kroff get up and recite their purpose in English and Bosnian. Their purpose is to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through Faith and Jesus Christ and his atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end! Remember how their mission president challenged them to get to 10,000 church invites in June? Well they got 10,431! Jordan and Elder Kroff got 159 in one day! President Rowe was very happy with them and he will be in Tuzla on July 7th so Jordan is excited to see him.

Jordan and Elder Kroff had to spend 4 hours moving today because their year was up and apparently their landlord kinda sucks too. He likes his new apartment though and he really likes his new landlord, especially because she can speak English! Also, the Adriatic North mission is growing! Starting July 28th, Montenegro will be a part of Jordan's mission! Jord and Elder Kroff didn't have a ton of success this week because everyone they talk to says they are Muslim, even though they don't practice it. He also has a lot of the older generation telling him that they don't believe in God because God wouldn't have let the war kill thousands of people and destroy their cities. Another way Jordan and Elder Kroff have been working hard is by teaching beginner and advanced English classes every day! Jordan says he likes doing this a lot because it helps him with his Bosnian since that is what language he has to teach in.

Jordan was VERY happy to learn that the Jazz drafted Try Burke and 2 other very talented players on Thursday also. He is mad that when it looks like the Jazz will finally have a decent season, he won't be able to watch! But I will be sending him play by play details of every game :) Jordan asks that everyone please keep Jasmina in our prayers because she is still having a hard time with smoking but she really wants to be baptized still!

Monday June 24th

Jordan had a really good week while he was in Sarajevo! For their zone activity he got to hike to a really cool waterfall called Skakavac. Jord said that you can see a lot of signs of the war all over in Sarajevo. There are bullet holes in a lot of the buildings and when you are driving down the road to get to Sarajevo there are signs with skulls on them making sure you don't walk into the fields because of the land mines that Serbia planted when they invaded Bosnia. Jord also go to see his first companion Elder Fausnaught while in Sarajevo and he also saw a few sister missionaries from the MTC which he was very happy about. He also drove passed the Sarajevo Olympic Stadium and he did his first companion exchange for 2 days. His companions name was Elder Sherwood. While he as with Elder Sherwood they talked to an investigator named Faris who could speak English which Jordan was super pumped about! They talked to him about the Holy Ghost and the influence it has in our lives and while they were teaching President Rowe came in and also started teaching him. They invited him to be baptized after and this is Jord's story about it:

"Faris accepted but we aren't sure about a date yet. President told him to pray about his decision and then he left. We met with Faris the next daya nd he told us a great story the spirit was strong in the room! "Usually I am scared of the dark but when I started praying, I decided to turn off all the lights. I prayed for a while and when I opened my eyes I forgot where I was, but I wasn't scared of the dark because I knew God was there with me!" It was so neat, it was definitely a testimony builder. I met some great people in Sarajevo, maybe I will end up serving there.

Jasmina and Bakradina are still planning on getting baptized and have set their date for July 13th :) When Jordan and Elder Kroff were at her house this week giving them a lesson Jasmina told Jord she could tell he was trying his best with the language and that she could joke around and laugh with him and that she couldn't do that with other missionaries before and she said there was something different about Jordan. Jasmina asked Jordan to baptize her! So he will be baptizing them on July 13th in a lake and he is so excited about it!

Jordan didn't have a lot of time to e-mail today but he did mention that he was super excited that the Jazz made Jerry Sloan their Senior Adviser and that they are also getting a new jumbo tron! He also said he would be sending pictures next week :)

Saturday June 15th

Jordan had to e-mail us early this week because on Monday he is going to Sarajevo for a zone activity and conference. He will also be staying there a little longer to work with an Elder in Sarajevo so he won't be back to his area until Thursday! This week, they didn't have any new investigators and they only had 3 members and 1 investigator at church but they are really trying to invite more people to come to church. He said the language is still hard for him but he is trying to learn 10 new words a day. He said that everything he learned in the MTC is completely different than what he is trying to learn now.

I was so happy to hear Jordan report that Jasmina stopped smoking! Here is his story:
"One success story from this week is that Jasmina stopped smoking. Elder Kroff asked her if he could see her box of cigarettes. He asked if he could buy the rest from her, that really made her think. Next thing you know she took all her cigarettes out of the box and ripped them up and threw them on the ground. We have been staying in contact with her a lot since then. We told her she can call us anytime she is stressed so hopefully all goes well with that."

Jord said that whenever they meet people they use their last names and since everyone there has seen Stuart Little they always laugh at him! Especially the little kids. He also said people there drive like crazy. As long as you have your hazards on, you can park anywhere so there are people parked all over the sidewalks haha.

P-Day Monday June 10th

Jord had a great week in Bosnia and said he is really loving it there! His trainer, Elder Kroff from Montana has been helping him a ton with the language since he didn't study and Bosnian in the MTC. He said a lot of the words are really different so it has been hard! He said he is basically trying to memorize power statements so that when he goes door to door people think he knows what he's saying when he really doesn't haha. He said church for them is so different. Since it isn't even a year old there yet, there are only 7 members and only 4 attend church every week. They only have sacrament and they don't have a bishop since no one has the priesthood yet. He said the 4 members that come to church area all youth which is awesome because that is how the church got started in Bosnia was from a youth!

Jord's mission President, President Rowe, has challenged all the missionaries in the mission to get 10,000 church invites this month. Jord said that is about 10 invites a day from each companionship! He is excited to try and meet this goal. They have one investigator who is really close to being baptized, her name is Bakradina and she just graduated from high school. After graduation she got a job that requires her to travel to a lot of different cities so they will be baptizing her when she gets home. Her mother Jasmina is also really close to being baptized but is having a really hard time quitting smoking. He says pretty much everyone there smokes because it is so cheap, he has even seen little kids smoking! It is really hard for him to understand what Jasmina is saying because she has no teeth so his trainer will translate for him. One day after their lesson Jasmina said she had a question for Jordan. She asked him how much longer he had on his mission and when he said 22 months she asked if Jordan would come back for her daughter Bakradina when he was done! Bakradina was sitting right by Jordan and was so embarrassed she got up and left. Jasmina told Jordan that Bakradina had a huge crush on him and thought he was way cute. Jordan told Jasmina he would add Bakradina on Facebook when he got home :) Haha. I told Jordan he needs to use his good looks to convert a bunch of young girls!!

He said this past week they did a lot of tracting up in the villages of Tuzla and found some good potential there so they will go back this week and see what they can do. He said they do a lot of walking so he has a lot of time to look around and it is a huge culture shock for him! There are stray dogs everywhere and kids begging for money. People throw their trash everywhere and don't even care, everyone is smoking (young and old) and little kids are always walking around alone, even at night. Very different from Cache Valley, Utah!

This is a little story from Jord:
" A cool story from tracting was we met a lady and asked if she wanted a Book of Mormon and she said she didn't but we left our number with her. Her son calls us the next day speaking perfect English and says that his Mom actually wants a Book of Mormon now. He said he was going to come by and pick it up and we were really excited. We met him and gave him the book and he asked us if we wanted to talk and hangout sometime. A couple days later we went to breakfast with him and he bought us a palacinka which is pretty much a crepe, but they are a lot better over here ha. His name was Muhamar and we hope to stay in contact with him."

Jordan said the food is good there, especially the pastries and he has liked everything he has tried. He said he likes the Pizza but they cover it in ketchup so he usually asks to take that off. He also said everything is way cheap because there is no tax and you don't have to tip! It sounded like he had a great week and we can't wait to hear from him next week :)

"Family Picture" Elder Stuart, Elder Kroff, Elder Bishop and Elder Fausnaught 

Their "Ward" 

Church