Elder Joshua Winfield August 2015 - August 2017: 8th

Hello family :) Yes I am in Beograd (Belgrad) and it is crazy here, it has the biggest membership of people in the Adriatic north mission with around 70 people coming weekly, this week it was a bit a special meeting so there were boosted numbers. It has been a crazy past few days, there are a lot of things that I have to get used to, I will have to make a list.

The language is fun, its so hard but I'm enjoying it, I can't understand a lot of things so lucky my comp is really good at the language. We have whitewashed an area so it's a new area that no one has been in for about 6 months, we have no investigators and we just spend our time contacting all day, my legs have never been so sore... Everyone here uses the buses so we just bus and walk everywhere, everyone gives you the weirdest looks and just stares at you, they also think that everyone here who isn't pravoslav (protestant) is a sect so they will walk past you and say sect, they also sometimes walk past and cross themselves it's quite funny!

I had dinner at a family's house who are so nice, the have 3 sons who are all around 20-25 and then there is the mum who just fed us so much food, first we had like a broth thing with like wet bread cut of things it was a little weird but nice, then we had this tomato soup type thing which looks like a curry and had chicken and potatoes, I have about 3 or 4 bowls of it! I would finish a bowl and then she would be like JOS (pronounced yosh) meaning more and she would just serve up more and more! Their sons and the father all got the Melchizedek Priesthood this week which was awesome! One of there son's, David plays cs go and went to the big cs go tournament where all the big teams played and watched it! he loved it so I talked about that with him for a bit.

It has rained non stop every day and been wet and cold just like in a winter's day in Melbourne, I don't mind it though :) I got a cold by the second day I got there which sucked but that's okay. I didn't expect to be in Serbia first up but I guess that is where the Lord wants me. I can still serve in Croatia, I guess we will see next transfer which will be a couple of days after my birthday!

My card works fine now I took about $70 today which was good so me and my comp elder Pantalakis are going to go to block 70 which is a big building which a bunch of Chinese people bought and it has so many cheap things there. Everyone here smokes so it is taking a bit of getting used to smelling smoke 24/7, there is 6 people in my district with 2 sisters and another 2 elders who are the zone and district leaders.

So far we have not had any success but I think this week will be good, I love everyone here they are all so nice, also the members here are just so faithful and will do anything for you it is amazing.

All the food here is cheap, I got about a week's worth of good food for around $30 which is sweet, we have a basketball court right near our house and there is a shopping centre about a 2 minute walk away, our bus stop is also right in front of our apartment. I tried to get some good photos, I hope they will do for you, I'm sure I will get a lot more throughout each week. I am currently in a gaming cafe for emailing, that the only place to go really so everyone in here is playing dota 2 and cs go and all, I could play if I wanted :P but I wouldn't do that hahahah I might log on to steam one day and surprise Liam!

All the buildings are very old and communist like because of there history so pretty much every place looks dodgy. At the end of the transfer I could get shipped out somewhere else or I might even stay in Beograd for another transfer so you just never know, apparently pres Grant is pretty random with his transfers!

I feel like everyone is pretty full on here and there hearts are hard as not many people will listen when contacting and you get a lot of hate but it's fine I am sure there will have to be a family on Beograd out there who has been prepared by the Lord you just have to have faith and continue to push forward! I don't know how I am going to learn this language though, there are a fair few differences when it comes to Serbian and Croatian, the main one is the alphabet but there are a lot of words and small things that are different and they are the ekavian dialect meaning a word such as gdje (where) which is said like gdye is now gde and pronounced as is, and excuse me is not oprostite it is not isvinite but its okay I'm sure I will pick it up!

I haven't received any dear elders yet, I wouldn't bother with it too much I get mail once a month at zone conference which will be this Wednesday, you just have to send it to the mission home in Zagreb where they will distribute it off.

A good amount of people will speak english and try to speak english with you but I really try not to because I want to learn. This week we had a few missionaries down who lived in Cak Cak and one of them was from the family that we went to have dinner at earlier in the week his name is Andrea and is doing a mini mission for around 5 weeks where they go and yeah pretty much be a missionary for 5 weeks :) he can't speak English at all so I practiced talking with him a bit and that was a really good experience.

I hope everyone is doing well at home it was nice talking on the phone, it kind of sucked though because it was late for you and I was very jet lagged and tired from everything and a little down because I sucked at contacting, but I'm looking forward to speaking to you guys at Christmas, I will be skyping you with video so you can use your laptop I'm sure it has a camera.

I am not to sure what else to add, it has been a very good week! It is about 12pm here so that is when I will usually email from around 11am till around 5pm will be the times but yeah usually around this time, we just went to our favorite bakery which is amazing and better then any bakery in Australia! apparently they are better in Bosnia though so I guess we will see. This Wednesday english class will start so that will be interesting, we will be teaching the advanced class so that is pretty much full immersion in english so I won't need too speak much serbski!

Our apartment is really nice apart from the fact that there are cockroaches so we just sprayed raid around the whole place so there shouldn't be any more! hopefully....

I'll send you some photos!

Love you guys.