May 17 Letter

Yesterday all of the Zones (Montpelier and Concord) gathered together at the Joseph Smith Memorial for Zone Conference. Oh yeah, it was way cool. We were lucky to have the chance to "sneak peak" the NASA Exhibit at the Memorial. The exhibit had a bunch of pictures that were taken from a Hubble telescope. The pictures were absolutely jaw dropping. And yes, I did take pictures of the exhibit. Some of the pictures capture galaxies that are thousands of light years apart. It's incredible how technology has advanced.

The Zone Conference itself was great. It was about eight hours long. It's really hard to sit down for such long periods of time, but it was a great Zone Conference. We talked about the upcoming bug season; which is supposed to be quite extreme this year. We learned the proper procedure for removing a tick from your skin:-) Besides frightening us about bugs, they had some messages about how to improve our areas. Apparently President Wilkey is quite the fisherman. And that was the general message of the Zone Conference.

I believe I said this in my e-mail, but church this Sunday was great. I am about to finish wit the Old Testament. I skipped over Psalms and Proverbs though. I don't really care about those. I just wanted the rest of it so I can know what's exactly in the Old Testament. I have found that helpful when trying to have a doctrinal discussion with someone who knows nothing about the Book of Mormon. It also helps when someone starts telling a story from the Bible which is false. I've had that a few times now. It's funny to hear a so called "devout" member of another church speak with such little knowledge about the on book they read. There are so many passages in the Bible that support the Book of Mormon. But I agree with Ezra T. Benson when he said that the Book of Mormon can bring a man closer to God than any other book. You can sense a stronger spirit when reading the Book of Mormon. It's such a strong witness that Jesus is the Christ. Especially in 3 Nephi when Christ comes to the Americas. The love he has for everyone is amazing. One part that strikes me was when he was offering a prayer to Heavenly Father and weeps. Afterwards he gathers all of the children and blesses them. He as such a pure love for his brothers and sisters.

Love,

Elder Novakovich

May 16 - Letter

zdravo!

Things are pretty much the same here in Ol' Johnson, Vermont.  The weather has been showers for the past three days.  You would think that after such a long, harsh winter that mother nature would bless this land with some descent weather.  I guess that would be asking too much. 

No transfer yet.  Transfers are in 2 weeks, so it won't be until the end of May.  And Zone Conference is actually tomorrow.  And I am pretty excited for it.  I think its going to be an interesting conference, considering we were told to read the talks from the 2011 April Conference, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten" and "What men and woman ought ye to be"..... I can hardly wait to see what President has for us.  And from an email we got from Sister Wilkey, sounds like a apostle will be coming to our Zone Conference.

I had the chance to go on exchanges ALL week, so it was nice to see another area.  It was refreshing to get to know a couple of other Elders better and learn from them.  I learned a cool faith exercise from an Elder in Colebrook, New Hampshire, so that was really cool. 

I did receive the name tag you sent back!  And as requested, I have worn it since.  It looks boring, but it makes sense to wear it.  I will have to wear my Serbian name tag in Essex, Vermont, however.  There are a lot of Bosnian families that live there, and seeing the name tag will spark some interest.  Bosnian is pretty much the same language as Serbian, so it's a great opportunity to open a door that is not there otherwise. 

So how was St. George??  From what Mom told me, it sounded absolutely awesome.  I can only imagine what 80 degree weather feels like.  I must say that I am starting my summer tan pretty nice.  My face has a good start, as well as my hands and forearms.  The sweet tan line where my neck collar is coming in just fine!  It's a curse to tan so easily when your forced to wear a white shirt all day, every day.  But I did have the chance to do some service for a member, so I was able to wear that under armour shirt you sent me.  That helped a little with the tan line around my arms. 

  

Brother Stubbs must love me, because on Friday night, he asked me to give a 15 minute talk during sacrament yesterday.  And being the good little missionary, I accepted.  I talked about following your leaders and the importance of heading to their messages.  Next week is Stake Conference, so it was fitting that's what I talked about.  I think the talk went really well.  It was the first talk I have given, in English, that was just me going by what I felt and thought of.  So I am glad that it went well. 

But to say thank you, or so I like to think, Brother Stubbs invited us over to eat with his family following Sacrament meeting.  We ate so well yesterday night! His wife grew up in the South, so you know that she can cook!  We had fried chicken(of course), Mac & Cheese, broccoli casserole, rice, and her famous homemade rolls.  Oh, what a feast we had.  It was awesome.  For dessert we had this tasty thing that I will make when I get home.  It was so good.  Basically its asphalt pie.  You lay a cooking pan with a layer of Oreo's and then spread butter over the top of it to weigh it down.  Then you top the pan with vanilla ice cream.  You let it melt a bit, then spread the ice cream evenly over the oreo's.  Then you refreeze, then pull out later.  Then you add whatever kind of chocolate topping you want.  I had heath pieces and chocolate syrup on top.  Its was delicious, but in no way nutritious.  Needless to say, I helped myself to a double portion of it. 

I have some good news: I have lost 15 pounds.  And it has nothing to do with exercise.  I think all the stress and anxiety that I am feeling made my body flush itself out.  I can hardly eat food without feeling sick to my stomach.  I eat to survive, and that's about all I can handle.  But I was able to eat well last night at Brother Stubbs house.  He had us over and we ate so well! His wife grew up in the South, so you know that she can cook!  For dessert we had this tasty thing that I will make when I get home.  It was so  good. 

Mother's Day Call

It was so wonderful to be able to speak with Elder Novakovich today.  We are so proud of him for his service to the Lord and are impressed with his growth. We couldn't have asked to be blessed with a better son.  Some of what he shared with us:

• The teaching pool is shallow, but they have great members and are working with many of them to find investigators.
• They do a lot of door to door contacting.  He appreciates that the harsh Vermont winters are over - it was cold and there was a lot of snow.
• He loves the members - they treat and feed the missionaries very well.  He particularly likes Bro. Stubbs and his family.  [Our thanks to Bro. Stubbs!] 
• He is busy reading the Old Testament and wants to finish the entire standard works this year.
• The Vermont area is rural and very green; lots of trees and very beautiful.
• They meet every Wednesday for district meeting.  He's met many of the missionaries and is looking forward to meeting more of them at an upcoming Zone Conference.
• He loves mail - keep the letters coming.
• The church in Johnson has a basketball court, but there it's carpeted and you can't shoot from more than 15 feet away as the ceiling gets in the way.
• His clothes still fit - thank goodness for all of the walking.

Letter - Week of April 25 (six month mark of his mission)

My Easter was fantastic!  After church, we had a member invite us over to dinner.  The cool part was that he was bringing us along to a non-members house to have dinner.  Apparently the nonmember is coworkers with the member and she heard that he would have us for dinner all the time on Sunday's at his house.  So she thought it would nice if we came along as well to dinner.  It was great to be able to go over to their house.  They had quite the feast for us.  I haven't eaten that much food in one sitting in awhile.  I was wobbling out of the house after it was all said it done.  We didn't talk about the gospel at all, but from what the member said, just our presence will make a huge impact with her.  The fact she let us in, according to the member, was huge! 

Well my talk got changed to our Ward Easter dinner we had.  I spoke at that instead of sacrament. 

I believe President Wilkey called you a few days ago.  He said he was going to, so I assume he did.  I love that man.  President WIlkey is such a good guy.  I like him so much more than President Hill. I look back on how things went down in Serbia, and I can't believe how things turned out.  We are all human, even mission presidents. 

I got the healthy package... That was an impressive amount of items you were able to cram into that package.  I definitely am set with goodies.  I have so many lying around our apartment.  

I heard from Alex Porter today... Apparently he broke his ankle pretty bad in Mexico and is now back home in SLC recovering from it. 

I love you so much... Thank you for everything.

Letter - Week of April 18

So yeah, transfers happened this week.  We didn't get a phone call.  So it looks like another 6 weeks in Vermont.  Zone conference is in five weeks.  The only missionaries I have met are the ones who are in my district.  At this point I have been on companionship exchanges with all of them.  My companion is the district leader, so we go on companionship exchanges every week.  

We have a pretty yummy Chinese place here in Johnson that we go to twice a week or so.  Once on P-Day and once with a member who takes us every Wednesday before our scripture study class.  That member was actually a member of the seventy back in the day. 

As I told mom, our ward has been pretty crazy these past few weeks.  We had two members die, an older lady and a two year old.  I don't know if the two year old made news over what's going on nowadays, but he was accidentally shot by one of his siblings when they were playing with a gun.  So these past weeks have been very emotional for everyone in the ward where I am serving.  

Our stove will hopefully get fixed this week.  We called the members who are renting out the apartment to us, and they told us they would contact the gas company or whoever to fix the problem.  We have been forced to cook in the church building this past week.... OH I HAVE A GOOD STORY!! So last week I was cooking Dad's garlic pasta.  It was about done: the pasta was minutes from being cooked and the garlic was completely browned in the oil.  So I took off the pan with the olive and garlic and placed it onto a stove that did not have any heat on it.  After 10 seconds, I noticed that the oil was starting to boil for some strange reason.  I went over to grab it and it started to boil even more.  So I put the pan down and as I did so, a few droplets of oil jumped into the air. And I still don't know how to this day, but those oil droplets ignited into a fire ball that reached the ceiling.  I thought I was going to burn the church down.  I have never screamed so loud in my life.  Right before my face was this huge ball of fire.  Oh man, it was awesome.  The smoke that came from it was pretty impressive.  I had to close the room door because it was thick enough to set off the fire alarm, which would have been bad news.  But the good news is nothing caught on fire.  So I am safe.    I don't know if that ever happened to you, but it’s scary stuff.

I get to have pizza for lunch today!  We are going to Lydon to play some basketball with everyone in our district.  Haha, it’s time to put my game face on.  Unfortunately, Vermont doesn't believe in having wood floors to play on.  They believe carpet is far better. Oh well.  At least we can still play. 

April 11 Update

Now need recipes that require no heat…

I haven't had the chance to try any of the recipes that dad sent.  Our stove died on us, so we have no way of preparing the meals.  I have stuck to anything that is microwavable this past week. 

Things are still going the same in where I am at.  Nothing to report.  The snow has almost melted.  We have had a few solid days of rain here and it has helped with that. 

Please send referrals, does this sound familiar to you former missionaries…

This week was pretty much the same.  Tract, tract, tract.  That's all we really do.  We have a pair of investigators who we teach regularly, but that's about it.  It’s really wearing me down just knocking, knocking, and knocking on endless amount of doors.  Tracting has to be the least effective way to do missionary.  I always think what it must be like to have a pair of 20 year old kids knocking on your door saying that they have the knowledge about the restored church of Jesus Christ.... I just wish there was a different way out here, but we don't have any other option.  It doesn't help that we have a small amount of miles to use each month, which really restricts are abilities to get around at all.  Only this far into the month, we have used half of the miles allotted to us.  Oh well.

Call for Help in the Kitchen

Elder Novakovich needs your help cooking on a missionary budget and time schedule - see below.  

Elder Nyman and I are in desperate need of some good recipes. If you recall any other, cheap delicious meals, don't hesitate in sending them my way.  I wan't to be known for being the kid who can cook well.  I have also collected some delicious recipes from members.  When all is said and done, I am hoping to have a nice collection for when I go back to college.  It's amazing how cheap one can live when you have too. We spend about fourty dollars a week on food for our apartment.  We have found this amazing breakfast thingy that keeps you full for hours upon hours, all the while being cheap and insanely tasty.  If you want a amazing thing to help you with your weight loss, I would give this a shot:

The Breakfast of Wisdom!:

1 Cup of Old Fashioned Oats

1 or 2 Tablespoons Wheat Germ

1 or 2 Tablespoons Flax Seed

1 or 2 Tablespoons Wheat Bran

Almond Milk, for creamy texture

4 to 5 spoonfulls of Lowfat Vanilla Yogurt

Cup of Frozen Blueberries

1 Bannana.

Mix all the Dry ingredients into bowl and then add in 4 to 5 spoonfulls of Vanilla Yogurt.  Add Almond Milk until creamy enough.  Add the Frozen Blueberries and diced up bannanas to bowl.  Enjoy. 

This meal is perfect for keeping you full, as well as being healthy. I have had this at 7:00 in the morning and had it last till 4:00  in the afternoon multiple times.