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 

Jordan with his friend Lyndsay from school! 

Jordan with one of my best friends Hannah! 

Eating at Dennys when they were stuck in Seattle! 

Monday June 3rd

Jordan got sent to his first area! He is in Tulza, Bosnia-Herzegovina. I was super surprised to hear this because he studied Croatian in the MTC so I just figured he would be staying there. In his e-mail to me today he said that Tulza is a very Islamic place so there are Muslims and mosques everywhere! He also said you can constantly hear music playing and at one of the mosques there are big speakers and when this guy gets up and starts singing it means its time to pray. He seems really excited to be there but my family and I are a little nervous for him because of the past wars and issues they had there.

Here are some stats I got on the religions in Bosnia:
Faiths:
Christian 46%
Muslim 40%
Other 14%

Christians 
Orthodox
Member: 1,430,158

Catholic 
Members: 692,012

Jehovah's Witness 
Members: 1,206
Congregations: 16

Seventh Day Adventists
Members: 661
Congregations: 23

Latter-Day Saints
Members: Less than 50 
Congregations: 1

LDS Membership (2010): 
Between December 1995 and September 1998 almost 900 Latter-day saint servicemen had been deployed to the "Adriatic North Region" for peacekeeping operations. In the late 2000's, missionaries in the Slovenia Ljubljana mission taught an interested Bosniak youth living in Bosnia who was interviewed by the mission president over Skype and then later baptized.  The Bosniak convert had learned about the church over the internet! At least 2 others LDS couples resided in the country in 2010. The one branch they have was organized in 2011 and they meet in Sarajevo. About 35 members go to an evening devotional on Sundays held at Elder Nelsons home. The ACTIVE membership rate is about 30 people. All church meetings are held in rented spaces or member homes. The LDS church does not appear to face any legal obstacles in performing missionary work in the country. However, the church falls vastly short of the required 300 adult citizen members required to apply as a religious community to enjoy full religious freedom. The Church may face proselyting restrictions due to intolerance of religious minorities in regions with heavy predominance of Muslims or Orthodox. Basically the biggest thing the LDS church does for Bosnia is send humanitarian help! All LDS scripture is translated into Croatian only. 

If you want a lot more information about this stuff then go to Cumorah.com and it has a ton of information. 

Jordan has A LOT of work to do! He only has 7 people in his "ward" and one is close to being baptized. Everyone please send prayers his way!! If you would like to send him letters the address is:

Crka Isusa Krista spd
Svacicev Trg 3
Zagreb 10000
Hrvatska

Friday May 31st

I have a lot to catch up on in this post!! But the main thing is that Elder Stuart is safe in Croatia! It was an extremely long and crazy journey but they finally made it there a day late! It all started on Monday morning while we were VERY anxiously sitting around waiting for Jordan to call us from the Salt Lake City airport. He had originally told us he would be calling around 8:30 or 9. 9:45 rolled around and we were all getting very nervous thinking that there was no way he had time to call us now. Luckily the phone rang and it was Jord and he was calling from a cell phone that belonged to someone in the baggage line! This person actually used to live in Croatia, small world! We only got to talk to him for a few minutes before he had to go to security. He called us one more time because of another very nice person who was also an airport employee who let him use his cell phone. He told us he would try and call us again in Seattle when he landed. We were a little disappointed at this point because we hardly got to talk to him at all and I had to get to work so I figured I was done talking to him until Christmas. I was very wrong! I had been at work for about a half hour when my Mom runs in saying Jordan is on the phone! I had someone watch the front desk for me and I went with my Mom into my bosses office to talk to Jord. We learned that his flight to Paris had been delayed about 7 hours so we had plenty of time to talk to him! I was so excited! The plane they were supposed to be on ended up not having enough seats for the missionaries. (I don't know how they possibly let that happen.) He spoke some Croatian for us and we got to have a nice conversation with him. We made arrangements for him to call my cell phone at 2 again so I could talk to him one more time before he left for Paris. About a half hour later my Mom comes to me again saying "Hurry and say bye to Jord, they got a different flight instead!" So I hurried and said bye to him and thought that was the end of it. Nope. We got another call about a half hour later saying that they missed the flight to Paris and would be staying the night in Seattle and would be flying to Frankfurt, Germany Tuesday morning instead!

So the airport set them up in a really nice hotel and gave them each $50 for food. We didn't talk to Jord again that night but we figured he would call us on Tuesday morning since his flight to Germany wouldn't be leaving until 10:45. I got up on Tuesday and went to work at 12 but I hadn't heard from Jordan so I thought he was off to Paris by now. Nope. My mom works with me at Golds Gym so when I got there she was on the phone with Jordan... still in Seattle! I talked to him for a sec and we made a plan for him to call me at 3 that afternoon. So 3 rolled around and my awesome boss watched the front for me so I could go talk to him. He had 16 minutes left on his calling card so I got to have a nice conversation with him! He told me that the flight to Germany was on some private plane and that they had different baggage requirements than Delta. The sister missionaries were over the limit so they hurried and packed some of their stuff into my brother and the other elder missionaries suitcases... then they missed that flight. SO, they would leaving for Paris from Seattle that night at 6:15 with Delta and Jordan was SURE they would be getting on that plane. Our conversation was so great! He was making me laugh the whole time, like usual! He even started mixing in his Croatian while speaking English on accident while he was telling me a story! He told me they tried to give a lady on a bus stop in Seattle a Book of Mormon but she was not interested AT ALL. At the end of our phone call I told him to call me one more time before he got  on the plane for Paris that evening and he said he would. At the end of my shift I got one more phone call from Jord and we talked for about 10 minutes and then said our goodbyes. I am SO THANKFUL that even though it was stressful and they got to Croatia late, I got to talk to my brother so much! I am so thankful for him and his example!

Now, onto the next story! Yesterday, I got a call from my Mom saying she got an e-mail from some guy from Northern Utah named Taylor Smith. In the e-mail he said he is travelling around Europe and that in every country they go to he likes to find churches, temples and missionaries. Him and his friends had gotten to Zagreb, Croatia the same day as Jordan and found him and the other missionaries! In the e-mail he sent to all the parents he said he served his mission in Paris, France and loved when people sent stuff to his parents so he wanted to do the same for these guys! He sent us a picture and let us know that Jordan is doing well! I put the picture on Facebook and one of my friends commented on the picture saying she knows the kid and that he goes to Utah State University which is where I go and where Jordan will be going when he gets home! It is SUCH a small world!! I am so thankful for people like Taylor Smith!

Jordan's p-day will be switched back to Monday now that he is in the field so I will post e-mails on Mondays now! Pray for Jordan that he can find people to teach in Croatia and that he will have an amazing experience. He is such a good kid and our whole family is so proud of him.

Jordan with the other missionaries in his area and the guys from Utah 

May 10th and May 17th

I am behind a week! I was in San Diego last week taking a nice little trip after finals and didn't have time to update the blog! Jordan is doing really well! While my boyfriend Kyle and I were in California, my grandma Dorothy told us Jordan had mentioned in a letter that he wanted some new brighter ties so she gave us some cash and we went to the mall to pick some out! I was a little worried because I didn't know exactly what he meant by brighter, but he said he loves them! Jord says he really feels like the language is coming along also. He said he can say most words and understand what people are saying when they are speaking Croatian. He said he just needs to work on forming sentences but he thinks that will come when he is actually in Croatia and can hear the natives speaking.

He was cracking me up because in both e-mails he mentioned how much he wanted to see Iron Man 3. He said a few new Elders came into the MTC and were talking about it and he was so jealous! I told him I will make a list of all the new awesome movies coming out and we can have a marathon when he gets home! He also needed an NBA playoffs update so when I sent him one his response was "I heard that OKC got shut out by the Grizzlies I wasn't expecting that but hopefully some team can beat the stupid heat! My thoughts exactly.

On a more exciting note... Jord got his travel plans for Croatia!! He is so excited! He will be flying out of Salt Lake on May 27th at 11 and he will fly to Seattle first, then to Paris, then to Zagreb Croatia! I am SO EXCITED to talk to him on the phone that morning!!!!! He is really excited to actually get out there and start teaching people. He said that the MTC is great and all but he has been in there way long and needs to leave! Keep him in your prayers for his last 10 days in the MTC and pray that he has a safe trip to Croatia!!