Week of June 25, 2012

What do you do when you're in Stara Zagora? (Or 'Starz' as we all refer to it?) Reach for the 'Starz!' Ha ha ha ha ha. Good joke. 

Anyway, it has been a confusing blur of a few weeks. Mom, make sure to put up the rest of my letters so people don't think I'm dying or having big holes in communication or going home or anything. Or being boring. Um, so after the strange blur of mission conference and saying goodbye to our delightful Austrian mission co-presidents and Elise getting baptized and me forgetting all of her paperwork and being an idiot, I ended up in Sofia, where the 11 new missionaries were waiting for us (so many new missionaries, how do they keep coming?) and ended up getting assigned to train Sister Turnbow in Stara Zagora. And then ended up packing my three suitcases and 1 guitar and a DVD player into a bus and heading for the country (basically what our zone is - the hick and hillbilly area of Bulgaria).

It's kind of scary to be here, training, knowing as little as I know, especially to be in a new apartment where no missionaries have ever lived before, and therefore has no missionary vibes/pamphlets everywhere/Area Book/investigators. It's also weird to be the one setting an example for somebody who literally knows nothing. But I guess it's my time, or something? I just hope and pray Sister Turnbow doesn't think I'm an idiot (even though I somehow managed to leave my passport and money card in Varna, what??) and learns something from me.

I learned something this week: Mitko, the one who got baptized last time I was here, can walk on coals. I guess (as I read in our Bulgarian textbook) that coal-walking is actually like a traditional folk tradition (tradition) in the rural parts of Bulgaria? So that's cool. So Mitko will be going to a resort town near Burgas to WALK ON COALS for money for a few days. He's doing well but still pretty much abandoned by everyone in his family/friend circle on account of his baptism, and still having everybody refuse to pay him for work he does, etc. But he continues to be strong and tough, just like the soles of his feet, I guess.

We also went to an oblast conference in Plovdiv this Sunday, to say goodbye to the Roths and to eat strange egg and meat and oil sandwiches. It was a good time. It's always strange and cool for me to see more than 10 or 15 church members in Bulgaria gathered in one place, because first of all, it makes you realize that yes, people WILL actually listen to you/change their lives, even if they're hard to find, and secondly because it's cool how different/struggling/strange we all are as a branch family, but how people still manage to be members together and make communities where we all try to teach each other to be more Christlike. 

I'm looking forward to a week of a lot of contacting here in Stara Zagora. We basically have no investigators, progressing or otherwise, and very few members coming to church these days, so our work is cut(e) out for us. Cute out for us? I've never considered myself a very good contactor (shyness/self-consciousness/stubbornness, some combination of those things) but it's time for me to get over that and just do it, without worrying about my level of skill or the results. The option to cower and self-doubt just really isn't there anymore. So I guess that's a message I'd pass on to everyone this week: don't waste your time with self-doubt. You can say it and say it over again, and continue to self-doubt, as I do. Or you can sit up in your crappy internet zala chair, take life by the coke bottle, and just do it without thinking about yourself. Nike. Olympics. Sports metaphor.

Oh also this week we were with Tanya and Peter, the new converts ,and they were pouring us their traditional "under-the-table" juice (that's just juice they keep under the table, not like, a bribe or anything) and cookies, and a giant slosh of colorful blue slimemold came sloshing out with the juice too. And they pretended it was no big deal and tried to wipe it up and pick it out and hand the glass back to us. So that was . . . funny. Um.

Okay. I love you guys. I throw my hands up in the air sometimes, saying, Hey-oh, learn the Gospel. Is that a song people like anymore? I feel out of it.