few more pics!

Zdravoooo

Bok!

Hey! Thanks for all of the letters that you all have been writing me:) I love reading them and hearing about what everyone has been doing.Thanks for all the drawings boys! there are too cute! I loved them all, (especially the duck on fire, evan!) And thanks for the flies dad!! My district really loved them! Thanks for the package as well! the moccasins look super duper!

 

The language as been coming along. If any of you have any ideas to help me learn the language faster let me know! If you ever run into Margaret, maybe she will have some good ideas to help me out. We have about six hours a day of language study. It feels like i'm back in school again! All of our teachers are great! All recently returned missionaries from our mission. Our teachers are Brat Rubisch, Brat Freeman, Brat Hansen, i Sestra Black.

 

This last week we had TRC. I actually dont really know what that stands for, but we go and teach a spiritual message in Croatian to either a native speaker, or a return missionary! I reallly like doing this because, unlike our investigators, they help us out with the language when we're struggling to come up with a word. It was so awesome!

 

This week we also started learning the Cyrillic alphabet, I wrote out all your names in cyrillic, so hopefully I'll be able to send ya another letter today:) We started doing everything in cyrillic last week, aaaaand yeah it was pretty good. Once we get it memorized it should be pretty easy! Writing it is easy, but we all sound like a bunch of kindergartners trying to read for the first time! haha i love it!

We also moved classrooms this week, 'cause they're fixing our air vent or something. I miss our old building! haha we're usually in the building with all the weird languages, but oh well.

 

We taught --- this week. It was the BEST lesson we have ever taught! We went in there with as little written down as we could manage and tried our best to talk with him, bring the spirit, and bear our testimonies. We focused on repentance, because he just got out of jail. He kept talking and talking and all I could pick out was the word mir, which means peace. SO we talked about the atonement, and Stestra Clarck bore an awesome testimony, then I got to ask him if he would be baptised so that his sins could be washed clean, and he said YES! first lesson! oh man, that was definitely the highlight of this week:) Even though we know our --- is just our teacher, he is actually a real man, from Croatia, and it's amazing how the spirit will help us see what he need to hear.( We found out that last week, the real ---'s mom got baptised! I already love these people!) 

 

Sister Madsen (she teaches at byu, and her husband is Truman G. Madsen) came and spoke to us about our mission and Kresmir Cosic! Sister Madsen is just amazing! She got her hip replaced about a month ago and she is leaving for Croatia a month after we do to go and teach and implement the new youth curriculum in Croatia! Her family was good friends with Kresmir when he was playing at byu. You all should google his story, cause it is pretty incredible. She also told us a little about our mission: there are 13 branches, and two groups. Their temple in the Frankfurt templeand it's about a 20 hour bus ride away (doesn't make chicago seem so bad). There are a little over a thousand members, and only about 500 active. She told us all about our mission president and his family, and all of the ward members there. It just made me so much more excited to  go and meet the members and nonmembers out there! Sister Madsen was so inspiring and wonderful! I wish I could write more about her!

 

SOOOO many people in our zone have gotten sick this week! it's just crazy. Poor Sestra Kovatch ( the sister the Clarks know) got a virus in her intestines! wah! I don't even know what that is! she was just horribly sick this week, but thankfully she is on the mend.

 

This Sunday was great! We went to the new sister meeting finally, haha. we also had a great relief society meeting! ALL of the sister missionaries meet together, and we listen to a speaker. This week we had Mary Edmunds come and speak to us (google her:))Her motto is "do good and be good", and her life truly exemplifies that! She was HILARIOUS, oh my gosh haha. Don't worry though, she was spiritual too! She really lifted all of our spirits, and I think we would have been more than happy to let her speak to us for another hour.  

 

Oh! and if you remember the talk in priesthood session given by president Eyring, the young boy convert that he talked about is a boy from Bosnia!

 

Me and my companions have been doing just super together! I love them so much, and I know I'm lucky to be with them. They both truly want to be here and serve the Lord. I think that that might be a trait that goes all around the adriatic north district! haha oh I love it here. Thanks so much for all of your support and help to get me here!

 

I love EVERYTHING about you all, and miss you so much!!!!!!

love,

Sestra Rankin

 

A few pictures!

Croatian District

Discovered MTC vending machines!

Vocalpoint?

Dobar Dan!

    Hope everyone is doing great! It sure sounds like it! Thanks for all of your letters! Letters are like gold here in the MTC! Tell the boys I loved all of thier pictures that they drew! I´ve got moms and dads letter too! sorry you lost your wallet! ugh! thanks for signing up for dear elder. Ok, now im going to try and answer as many questions as  I can remember!

 

Everything here has been awesome! Me and my companions plus, the other sisters in my district, have all become such good friends! We have so much fun together, and i´´m so grateful that we were put together. It seems like we are all going to become life long friends! The elders are pretty cool too! One of them is from alabama, and speaks croatian in a southern accent, haha. I´m going to try and send a picture of the sisters in my district, of when we disovered the vending machines! haha late night (930) shenanigans! we have so many inside jokes! haha Everything in the MTC is just uuber funny!

 

We go to the temple every Monday morning, and it is so cool to be able to just walk to a temple. no big deal. It IS a big deal! I love going to the temple with my sisters! today it was raining as we were walking back from the temple, it was so fun to be in the warm rain!

 

The language has been pretty good. mmhmm! Thankfully we have kind of been focusing mainly on just croatian, and none of that cyrillic alphabet stuff yet! When it was our 3rd day here, we started teaching our first istrazivak (investigator) Marko! and we commited him to baptism last week! wahoooo! haha we were so happy we actually said the words right. I was trying all day to memorize the baptismal commitment. thankfully I was actually able to say the words in our actuall lesson!  We have learned so much the importance of relying on the Lord! This week we have just started to try and go in to our lessons with as little written down as possible, because thats when we feel the spirit and connect with Marko better. It´´s been a bit difficult, but rewarding! We have a new investigator that we´re teaching tonight named Ivica! His story is so cool! He just got out of prison!  wooohoo! right after he got out he made a promise to God to repent of his sins, and now we can help to show him how!

 

 

General confrence in the MTC was so cool! It is a day of listening and fooood. all we do is sit, then go eat, sit, then go eat, ect. ect.! hahawe just realized that we havent had a regualr Sunday yet! So we are just going to go to our new sisters meeting next week! haha It was amazing to watch general conference here, in almost every talk the missionar ypurpose was quoted from! So many of the talks applied to missionary work! More than ever i have been feeling closer to my savior and really realizing all the things that He has done for me, and is STILL doing for me. I feel like I´´ve learned so much, even though I havent been here for very long! I´m excited for what is coming over the next 18 months. Guess who came and did our Sunday devotional!? Vocalpoint! haha it was so cool, my favorite song they did was a mash up of an african lullaby and come, come ye saints! People were lined up outside of 19M just to get a seat, because we dont all fit in that room! There are three BIG rooms for overflow seating. Thankfully we got a seat inside the asembly room! afterwards we saw the movie legacy! its a pioneer story, with a sorta awkward romance story intertwined! We all loved it! haha it was pretty much as close to jane austin as we are going to get out here!

I hope you all have great a great week!

 

I love you, I love you,  I love you,
                          sestra rankin

 

 

 

Mom could you please send some of those international stamps that I left you? that would be awesome. And if you could send the moccasins as soon as possible, because I only have my church shoes to wear with my jeans on pdays!! oh yeah, and just in case you wanted to know my departure date is the 27th of May! cant wait! have you seen the host mom? how was it???

 

First Official Email Home!

Here is content from Madeline's first email home, first pday.

Hey Mom!

It is so fun to hear from you! I can't believe it's my first pday at the MTC! How weird, and awesome. I love being here! Although I miss you all, they are keeping me and my companions busy! Thats right,companionssssss I have two! Sestra Clark is from Syuracuse, UT and she is super organized! Me and Sestra Palmers are trying to learn her ways! haha Sestra Palmer is from Alpine, UT and goes to BYU- Hawaii! How cool is that!? I really love both of them, and they are both funny and down to earth. We get along really well. There are five sisters total in our room, thank goodness we dont have six, because we only have four closets! haha But yeah, we all get along really well!! We all love gym time and Sestra P is a runner! yesss! I'm so glad to have someone to run with:)  I feel like this email is a buch of random sentances that I have strung together. .  haha oh well I'll just keep going. I love wearing my name tag! It says Sestra Rankin, Crkva Isusa Krista, Svetaca, Posljednnjih Dana. I'm sure you all know what that means, and it is actally a lot easier to pronounce than it looks! 

Hrvatski is hard! We are actuallly also learning Serbian and Bosnian too! So yay Russian Alphabet. Haha, but we have been learning A LOT. It's a really pretty language to listen to, so we all look forward to when we can actually speak it! There are nine of us learning Croatian in the MTC! And seven of those are Sestre! Which is more than there have ever been at one time! Our Starejesina (Elders) are great! One is from UT, the other from Alabama, and they are both 18!

Everyone was telling us to just at least make it till Sunday, and they were seriously right! Easter Sunday in the MTC was sooo cool. We all really needed it after this week. It was also our fast sunday!  For our meetings we had a general authority come and speak to us! The presiding Bishop Gerald Causse and his wife! They gave excellent talks, and they said things we really needed to hear. The sacrament for that meeting was really interesting. They passed the Sacrament to everyone, including over 3,000 missionaries. I don't think I'll ever forget it! Aftert that we had some meetings and then our evening devotional speaker was given by Sheri Dew! She is such an amazing speaker, and her talk was sooo good! I wish you all could listen to it! After that we watched a movie, that showed an old devotional given  by David A. Bednar called the Character od Christ. Watching that was such a good way to end my first week in the MTC. I'm not sure if you all can listen to it, but if you can google that talk, I would totally recomend it! I think it was a 2008 Christmas devotional. . maybe!

Thanks so much for your prayers I can feel them and I need them! My sinus infection is doing a lot better! Thank you antibiotics! annnnd I can't figure out how to do pictures, but hopefully I can get some to you next week!

I love the MTC, I love the work, I love my Sestre, and I love you all so much!

Volim,

Sestra Rankin

Quick update!

We had our first letter home from Madeline. She has two companions, Sisters Clark and Palmer. She really likes the MTC and the sisters in her district. I can imagine that Easter Sunday is probably pretty special in the MTC.

MTC Address

Madeline reports today to the MTC. Her address is:

Sister Madeline Paige Rankin
MTC Mailbox #5
ADRTCN 0528
2005 N 900 E
Provo, UT 84604-1793

madeline.rankin@myldsmail.net

I'm sure she would love to hear from family and friends.