Elder Jordan Stuart's LDS Mission: 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 :)