Week of April 23--Bedbugs!

Sdrasti priyatelite mi! Another week in Starz (...zagora). This time, I'm in a threesome companionship with Sister Meyers and Sister Child, since Meyers is waiting for her new missionary to come from the States, where she's waiting now in Virginia for her visa. So we hang out together! It is fun! Makes me feel like we are Charlie's Angels or something and nobody will escape! (e.g., not hear the Gospel). But anyway. THAT means: the missionary who I will train, in June, has entered the MTC by now! OMG. Guys. I really don't feel capable in any way or form to be a missionary on my own (meaning, work with a companion who is more clueless than me). But I guess it will just happen? Okay? Oh well? :) This was kind of a weird week for rabota (work). (Are you annoyed of the condescending translating-in-parentheses yet?) Firstly, because we have decided it is time to get a new apartment. The one we're in now is right on the glav (main street), but in a really, really old building, so with super old pipes and mold EVERYWHERE and the implied fumes from those things. And . . . this week we got bedbugs. So. Good. We're just wandering around on the street going "Join our chuuurch!" while we're all gross and diseased and bug-marked. The church of bugs of latter-day bugs. So a lot of this week was taken up with the slightly surreal task of apartment shopping in Bulgaria. We went to this one broker? dealer? guy who helped the elders find their apartment, and thought it would be normal, but it WASN'T. They were CRAZY. Like this mother-father-son business and the dad was all "charming" and "wearing white shoes" and "singing Tom Jones" and drove us in their car to this 20 story commie block on the edge of town (everything we told them we didn't want) and showed us this terrible, terrible apartment with a TV from the '60s in there (and everything else from the '60s too, it seemed), but kept going "It's so beautiful! We'll get you new furniture! So that was kind of funny. But the search goes on! Also, we went to a Chinese restaurant this week with the following dishes printed in their menu, clearly mistranslated (Chinese/Bulgarian?): "Fryed rice with hiney" "Simmer sea delicacy, under metal tile" "Srewed vegetables" "Simmer duck on a metal tile" "Sea gifts, with duck tile" ALL REAL. ALL TOO REAL. EXACT TRANSCRIPTIONS. Also this week, we found out that our mission prez, President Roth is going to pay for our investigators' weddings! So OMG! We get to be witnesses to Tanya and Peter's wedding, and then drive Mitko and his family out to their celo to get hitched! Also, in Bulgarian, when you're married, you say you're "womaned" if you're a man or "manned" if you're a woman. Interesting! Grammar! Finally, I gave a talk in church yesterday. Man it was weird and hard and scary. I got the call to do it on Wednesday, and almost refused, but in the end did it. And since our branch president is actually an elder (the Starz branch is kind of struggling), and the elders weren't there on Sunday, it was all Brother Major, the American guy living here, conducting, while being interpreted by Sister Child, and he demonstrated the idea of wrestling on the stand in sacrament, since nobody knew how to say it in Bulgarian. (He was talking about Enos wrestling with his guilt) But I gave a talk! Scary! 15 minutes of Bulgarian! But I did it? Something I've learned from my companions who have been here a long time is this: the Lord doesn't want shiny fast racing ponies who are geniuses and can braid their own tails. He needs steady, sturdy, plodding workers who will endure to the end and get it all done in their own time. So that's what I'm trying to work on, and you all should too. I love you. Sorry my emails are of low quality. Bsichko hubavo!