Monday, December 14, 2009

Dec. 14, 2009

It's been a while since I updated this thing, so I'll put a couple excerpts from his latest emails.

Nov. 30, 2009
"...elevators here are small first of all, so that makes them scary. im pretty sure they're held up by tiny strings, they make noises, and they dont even have comfortable elevator music to hide it. but they're an experience.
next i'll talk about somethings that i likes from this week. a lot of things stood out to me this week. we just had zone conference and it was awesome. one of the things said was the best missionaries are found in the hardest missions. the comment was made towards us saying that we were those best missionaries. which made me feel really good, but on top of that i had a reassurance that this is a hard mission and that im not doing a bad job for not having baptisms let alone investigators. i know that i will continue to search for those that are ready but it made me feel better with all the non success we've been having. We had a great dinner. we went to the Uptagraft's, a family in the branch here. they work in the embassy and are from america so they made a wonderful dinner. they are a half asian family as well so it felt like home being in that atmosphere again. especially playing with their kids. they are gavin, who is 5; bailey, who just turned 4; and audrey who is 1 about to turn 2. they are the cutest kids and all the other missionaries here made fun and told them all to call me uncle nitta because im asian. but i loved it. it was honestly the first time i felt a little home sick. but its all good now so no worries about that. We went to a concert on friday. it was a philharmonic orchestra and they were amazing. i absolutely loved it. what a great experience. I passed my 100 day mark without even realizing it. and after next transfer i'll be a fourth done, its gone by crazy fast..."

Dec. 7, 2009
"...we meet oppostion when we are trying to make the world better. keep that in mind and know that even the savior was rejected and hated by many. As I go through my day and remember that I can say that I am a representative of the Lord in every way. We must all carry our own portion of the cross and walk a little bit of the road he did. Oh you found a BOM in croatian, thats exciting that you found one. One thing about it is that it's written in old Croatian, which no one really uses anymore. but a cool thing is that it was translated from english to croation by Krešimir Ćosić. He's a hero here and he very much deserves it. He is one of the greatest men that ever lived. I'm sure you've heard a little of him since you have been up at BYU but you should look into his history. Another thing is they are currently translating the BOM and D&C over again into a easier to read book. There is a group that meets and workes on that. They are currently done with the BOM and are on about section 20 in D&C. I'm excited for that to come out. I think you would be amazed at how involved we are in the establishment of the church here. I recently had the opportunity sit in while they were recording the Croatian voices for the restoration movie. Elder Mason and I were able to go into the studio and watch as the recorded and dubbed the voices into the movie. That was a lot of fun. It's amazing how the church is getting started and its great to be a part of that.
I'll be sure that I teach you a little croatian. I'll give you a lesson right now. Ok so nouns in the croatian language have a gender they are assigned to. Those genders are Masculine, Feminine, Neuter, and what we call Feminine 4th. The way you can tell the gender of a word is by the letter it ends with. Feminine words end in "a", Neuter words end in "o" or "e", and Masculine words end in a consonant. Feminine 4th words also end in a consonant and you have to learn which of those are Feminine 4th. This is important because there are cases in the croatian language. When speaking you have to put words into these cases depending on their possition in the sentence or on what you want to say. So lets take our last name, Nitta. Nitta is a Feminine word because of its "a" ending. If I'm the subject of the sentence it's just Nitta. If I'm the thing that is being acted upon then it becomes Nittu. notice the "u" ending. if you wanted to say "that's the house of Nitta" or like making it possesive you say Nitte, "e" ending. If you said "I'm giving this to Nitta", its Nitti, "i" ending. If you said "I'm going with Nitta" its Nittom "om" ending. and if you were calling out to me you'd say Nitto "o" ending. and on top of that there are different endings that you use for plural. so the Nittas as in more than one of us has a completely different set of endings. the trick is just learning all the case endings and then talking just comes. well that's enough for today. I hope I didnt fry your brain. oh and remember that was just for the Feminine Gender. there are still 3 others..."

This morning's letter:
"...Weather here is getting colder. It's about -1°C today and snowing pretty hard. Not as cold as P-town though. I am very excited for this Christmas. President Hill has said that Christmas on the mission will be the best ones for the rest of your life. I can see that, like you said the spirit of Christmas is truly of Christ. I know that if I didn't get it before that I will this year. I know that I have already...
So you looked up a little about Krešo. He truly is a hero. I respect so much of what he did for the church. He is one of the greatest of any men. Hugh Nibley and him were actually really good friends, or so I hear. Hugh was the one to convert him. He converted him because he knew a little Croatian. Krešo ask him what our church has that he doesn't. What Hugh said was "Radost", which means joy. The other cool thing about radost is the root word, which is "rad", or work. And as you know we find joy through service and work. I know that I'm the happiest when I'm working the hardest. The Book of Mormon right now in Croatian is written in old Croatian, which is needless to say very difficult to read with different verb forms and enclitics and so on. Some missionaries that have served here have a hard time reading it. So they decided to retranslate it into modern Croatian...
I would love to be able to have a normal sit down lesson with someone in their home. I feel that I took that kind of thing for granted when I was at home. I know now that I will never slam the door on someone, I will never be rude to anyone that talks to me on the streets. I don't think I ever realized how rude people were until I came out on a mission. I can't come back after two years and be that kind of person...
I did hear something that I loved this week at Zone Conference. The quote was "I'm not going to wait for rain, I'm going to dig for water." That hit me, I realized that in this mission especially we aren't given anything, and that we work for everything. I am very grateful for the experience of this transfer. Like I said this mission is hard. But its not going to stop me, it can't. I won't allow myself to lose my positivity. I know that if that happens then this mission will become impossible. I know and have realized that people rejected even the savior and his apostles. If that happend to them then it has to happen to us too. I'd like to invite you to strive to never be rude to anyone. Truly treat others as Christ would and if we do that then maybe we can change the way people are...
P.S. Cases are very hard to explain. There isn't anything like them in english and they are difficult to understand. the first is the Nominative Case. Which is the basic case and used for the subject of sentences. Like in "Chelsea is pretty" Chelsea is in nominative. The next is the Accusative Case. Used for indirect objects or the thing being acted upon. In "I love you" you is in accusative. Next is the Genetive Case, most often used as the "of case". This has many prepositions and has to follow them or when you want to say of. In "The Church of Jesus Christ" Jesus Christ is in genetive. We combine the Dative and Locative Cases (Dat/Loc). used a lot when your in a location or doing something to someone. In "We give this to you" you is in Dat/Loc case, or "I'm in the tram" tram is also in Dat/Loc. Then there is the Instrumental Case which is used for when its with or by means of something. In "I'm meeting with Gavin" Gavin is in instrumental case or when in "bless us with (by means of) the Holy Ghost" Holy Ghost is in instrumental as well. the last case is the Vocative Case. Used when calling out to someone or something like that. "hey Chelsea" Chelsea would be in Vocative. well thats enough for today."

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