Elder Joshua Winfield August 2015 - August 2017: 12th

Hey family! how is it all going!? I saw the photos of the basketball and I take it everyone lost :/ I hope everyone isn't too salty. I am going to be honest I was very sad when I found out that Richmond lost :( 3rd year in a row. It is okay for me though because no one knows about footy over here so it doesn't matter so much, I feel sorry for dad.

I got back from the temple about an hour ago which was nice, we did sealings which was also very nice I enjoyed it! It will be so cool when we can get get sealed as a family! I have sent lots of photos so I hope you are all happy with that :) I don't know what I'll be able to take over the next few weeks but I'll try to find something, the camera quality on this camera is so amazing, photos come out so well on it! I only got 2 emails this week, one from you and one from Teagan so I can write lots to you :D

This week has been pretty chaotic with one of my companions chipping a bone off in his femur he has to have surgery tomorrow which sucks, we have been in and out of the doctors all week, the only plus side is we got to go out of the MTC! There was a fast food restaurant called chick-fil-a across the street which is quite popular here and I can see why the nuggets were so good, not sure whether that was because I am sick of the MTC food or whether its actually good, but either way we went there for lunch. It was weird because every time we are sitting in the doctors or walking around everyone is saying hi to us and saying thanks for serving ect.. it is so weird that people actually like the missionaries! I shouldn't get used to it though because it will definitely not be like that in Croatia. We realised after that we weren't suppose to go to anywhere other then the doctors, but that's okay, no harm done.

This week we did our first skype call to someone who actually is from Croatia and is living there, we actually ended up skyping someone from Serbia in the city called "Novi Sad" which in translation means "new now" her name was Tanya and she was about 60-70 years old and you could tell she had PTSD from the war big time, our teacher later told us that he baptized her and thought that she could of been saved by the grace of God and that baptism wasn't necessary, but she turned up to church every week, she met through the free English classes that missionaries hold at the chapel every week. It was so hard to understand some things she was saying, she spoke a little bit of english to us so that was nice. In the end we got our message across, and that is all that mattered.

So I heard that the medievil feast was on! I hope that was fun and you enjoyed that Rachael! I remember I was looking forward to that and I got gastro the day before the feast so I missed out on it :( that was one of the times where I was sick and I didn't want to be! I hope everything is going well at home, it sucks you got no pictures for me :P

We have a couple of people going to Macedonia which is in the Bulgarian mission but they have to stay at the MTC as their visas haven't arrived, I think it is because of all the things going on in Syria ect... so they are pretty gutted that they have to stay longer and they had to watch those leave who they arrived with, I know I would go nuts if I had to stay longer then 9 weeks! This weeks devotianal was spoken by the president of the primary, sister Wixen, it's so cool to have someone high up in the church speak every week and they are right in front of you!

I received your package with the scarf in it this week thanks for that! and the cream is really good. It would be really nice if you could send me a pocket dictionary, I know some of then will have mistakes but yeah we do kind of have a dictionary but it just has church type words in it and I want something that has normal words in it. If you order it from amazon you can get it sent directly to here within a few days. Elder Geertson loves that scarf that came as well!

Apart from all the chaos with elder Matthews knee there isn't too much else that happened this week, we did get a new zone president which is cool, his name is president Wiseman. My companions also got called as zone leaders which is cool, I'm still online coordinator which means I continue to do nothing at all :) It is starting to get a little cooler here which is really nice, I'm sick of it being 35 degrees everyday, it's actually been raining too which is also good! I have met quite a few people here going to Sydney mission and Brisbane mission and they all seem pretty excited, they all don't know what AFL footy is! quite surprising.

Well it makes it so much easier to think that I only have 18 more days left here! we get our flight plans and itinerary in 7 days! apparently we go from Salt Lake to Chicago then from Chicago to Frankfurt Germany! then from there to Croatia! Then I'll find out whether I'm going to Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia or Montenegro. I won't be serving in Slovenia because that is a language taught on its own here, but nothing is impossible.

This week my testimony of the power of blessings was increased after helping give elder Matthews a blessing for his knee, it was just me and elder Deleeuw, he had never given a blessing so he did and it was really cool, I anointed and you could really feel the spirit. Every week on a Tuesday night after the devotional we have our own little testimony / devotional review in our room and the spirit is always so strong in there and this week so no different, everyone usually cries, I don't but I definitely feel the spirit :) I am so excited to get out to the mission field and meet all the people of Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia!

Love all of you!