Milica was baptized on Saturday. We had three baptisms in the whole mission, apparently!! Things are on an up for us.
It was a great service. Milica was so prepared and so excited. I have been grateful just to be apart of her conversion process. We laugh and joke about how we are going to have a lesson with Milica, but she is going to be the teacher. She knows so much and truly understood what it meant to make this baptismal covenant. We took all the pictures and signed all the paperwork and had the big hullabaloo that comes with a baptism, and then in a quiet moment, when all had gone upstairs, Sister Davison stayed behind to pick something up, and saw Milica staring at the picture of Christ above the baptismal font, being baptized in the river Jordan. She just stood and stared, and raised her hand to gently touch the picture of the Savior. She loves him, and I am so sure that He loves her. She has already been called to be a Sunday School teacher. There is no one more qualified in this branch than she is. I think about other converts and the idea of THEM becoming a sunday school teacher and I think..No... but Milica has already been teaching and testifying and doing missionary work, even before her baptism. She gets it. She really does.
I sang "Teach Me To Walk In The Light of His Love", in Serbian at the service. I stumbled upon it accidentally, I didn't even know we had it in our hymnbooks. I didnt know the members knew it either, until I started singing, and they all started humming along. They are a very participating audience.
Before her baptism we also had the privilege of having a lesson with her and President Rowe. THAT was such a cool experience. He was in town for the weekend up until Wednesday, so he came over on Tuesday night to have the lesson. He grabbed a chair, pulled it right in front of her, and just went for it. He had limited time because we had rescheduled the lesson, but he still came. He is just a "lion" when he teaches. We had to teach her all of lesson 5 (and by teach, we mean review because she had already studied it all on her own) and we had prepared to have him talk about missionary work (too fitting, really, it was) and we didn't even have to tell him that, he just came in and started talking about how the thing that has brought him closest to God is when he shares his testimony with other people. I was translating for him and he went on a roll for a couple of minutes. Milica understands hardly any English, but after President Rowe left, she turned to me and said "At that moment when you were not translating, I didn't need you to translate. I understood everything that he said. How could that have happened?" And we said "That is a gift of the spirit, it is called the gift of tongues." And her spirit was so touched by that. It was the first time I saw her tear up. In her classic youthful self she just laughed because she didnt know how else to respond to her tears and said "Alright, lets move on!" She is my favorite person ever. I love her so much.
We had a couple of funny experiences this week. One of them being that we have discovered there is a fast food restaurant that sells palačinke on the go, and it is right next to the church... (we have made 3 emergency palačinke runs, so good thing it was there). We also had an American come to church! He is a soldier here, stationed in Germany, and he is here to teach the police how to deal with special operations? Something epic like that. He normally looks up the chapels in the areas where he travels, and when he typed in Bosnia, it said that there werent any branches (which is a thing, yeah, we are apparently underwraps...we are trying to get that lifted). So he hadnt been to church for a few weeks. He was sitting in the passenger side of his buddy's car, and then he sees the Elders walking down the road. In the middle of a stoplight, he jumps out of the car, and starts running down the street yelling HEY! HEY ELDERS!! They were a little surprised. Hahaha. But he found out where the church was! And he came! And on a great Sunday :)
Our other funny experience this week was with a little old lady. We were walking down centar, contacting, and we usually need to hop on the bus at about 2:35 to get to the hospital out in trapist for childrens English class, and we had about 10 minutes left to contact until then. We thought we would walk down the end of the road and then back up, when out of nowhere this little grandma yells CURICE! CURICE! (Girls! Girls!) and we turn around, and she kind of shakes her head and starts walking away. We ask her if she needs any help, and she says yes, that she just needed help walking home because she struggles walking. It was the sweetest thing I have ever been asked. We said "Absolutely", and she held on to Sister Berretts arm as we walked and talked with her for a half an hour. She was a little forgetful. She said something that we couldnt hear, so we asked her to repeat herself and she said "...I cant remember what I said." She was so cute, though. We were late to the hospital... but only by a few minutes. :)
I have officially been in Europe for a year, as of this week. I think I have lived here longer than I ever lived in Idaho for college. Thats weird. Ive been here for a long time. It was a memorable week.
Also the Davisons took us to this place called "The Cascades". That was sooo cool. Basically a giant, rushing, river/waterfall that powers this little town. I think I got some good pictures from it... And some good videos, but I will show those to you when I get home.