Week of February 25 2013: Varna!

Sorry for the incoherence/upset of last week. I think it was probably from just having come from a funeral (probably). But this week continued in its strange, slightly painful fashion, which was made stranger and more painful, but also more sweet by the fact that it was Sister Tate's last week, and 1) made me realize how awesome she is and how much I'll miss her and 2) how close I am to being in my last week, and how sad that is. Just reminded me of what Mom wrote to me and what is written on every upscale yuppie tea bag, Dove chocolate wrapper, and smooth pebble with writing on it: something something about living in the moment, enjoying the moment, not thinking about the future too much.

I found out on Friday that I will be moving to Varna next transfer. Those of you who are regular fans of this story will remember that I was there a year ago as a new missionary, and then another mini-transfer after that, making this my third time in Varna. And I love it there! I am really, really happy. It's kind of funny, but it feels like going home in a lot of ways. Most ways. Varna is where I have memories of understanding no one and nothing but loving everything, and maybe that's what I want to get back to being like again? Just in confused excitement and clueless? It was a good time. There are investigators and members there who I love a lot who I've always thought about and missed, my whole mission, and so it's really a sweet blessing to go back, even though I've come to love Ruse.

Interlude: I was writing some notes in our area book about people, members, etc. and wrote one about a friend of ours who I described as "very sweet, but flaky," and then realized the pie crust-implication of my description. Also, I recently saw a Coke truck that said "Trink Coke!" instead of drink, I suppose. Funny!

Another interlude: yes, I did remember that thought by writing "sweet blessing" and then realizing how silly "sweet blessing" sounds, like a brand of cake shaped like a Bible or something.

ANYWAY. The format of these letters needs to be switched up. So I'll do so by writing, instead of about events, etc., about PEOPLE! Whom I will miss.

There's a girl in Ruse who's best friends/kind of siblings with our new convert Svetlo, who's thirteen so I won't say her name in a scary public place. She's kind of wacky and out of control, if anyone's noticed the evidence on Facebook (and I haven't LOOKED, other people have just TOLD ME). She and Sister Tate and I have become a weirdly familial like kind of friends, in which she calls us "babo" (which is a vocative form of the word for "baba," grandma) and we also call her "babo". (This is a grammatical practice also in action with "mamo," or mom. It's kind of funny to hear kids call their moms, and then their moms call them "mom," back, but that's what it is.) I am addicted to parentheses, its seems. Anyway, the other day we had her and Svetlo teach us a lesson about the Restoration for practice/teaching is the best form of learning reasons, and it turned into Babo imitating me in all of my movements and expressions and wearing my tag, and then putting on my coat and pretending to make a fake missionary planner in her little notebook, and bossing us around and telling us she and her companion (he chose to be called Elder Randall Scott, in honor of a cowboy of some kind that I don't know) had another lesson. It was really cute and funny and awful (she also sprayed my coat with men's cologne). And it just made me realize how much I love her and want her to be a member and to grow up happily with the Gospel. She can't get baptized now because her parents are against it, but she wants to and talks about it constantly. Anyway.

Well, the gist of everything is that I'm happy, I'm going to Varna, and I will miss Ruse. And more and more, I realize how little time I have and how much of a blessing it is to be here. Corny corny balls. Oh well.

I love you all. Bam, i did get your package! Thank you so much! And Erin, thank you for the missive from the homeless shelter! And Dana, I'll talk to you soon! (In June?) And I want to recommend the following verse: Ether 12:27. So there.

Love, 

Sister Crundbeyell

Week of February 11, 2013: Black Dog

Here I am again! You can't get rid of me! Well, another week has slipped grossly by, like the drip of an electric heater falling down freezingly down my shirt from an apartment high above me, like they all do here. Not that I go around wearing shirts with giant holes and openings inviting the entrance of freezing water drips, but . . . okay. You get what I mean. This week involved going to Sofia for Sister Tate's passport updation, even thought she leaves like 2 days after it expires, but whatever! We visited a Sofia classic, of whom most former missionaries here will immediately have some kind of memory: Dyado Velichko, the king of all sister missionaries. Oh, Sister Heiney (spelling incorrect probably)!!! You have greetings from him. You and I should just conference call him when I get back to make it one exciting explosion of Dyado! Anyway. We visited him with Sister Tate, and he's this older guy who lives in a very old block and who was tracted into by sisters like 10 years ago, reads the BOM, probably believes in the Church, gets visited by members, but is too old for baptism/membership, but just loves having sisters (especially) and missionaries in general visit him. So we visited and he told us an excellent story about a tiny elephant who became a big elephant. I pinky swore with him to call him regularly, because he is all alone and SO CUTE. So that's that. My sistery freakout is over.

 

For some reason it is very hard to find/make time to go contacting/tracting in Ruse. Probably I'm just a bad missionary and it's always been hard for me, but for some reason here, the tasks and chores and random tasks (Austin Powers reference) just kind of make time get interrupted or something. But maybe I'm complaining, and I should go take it up with PAUL who found time to be KILLED by people during his mission. So whatever. But any thoughts on that? Still struggling to find people who are going to be real investigators and eventually find true desire to follow Christ. So please continue to pray that we can find them, because Ruse really, really needs some new strong members in the branch right now.

 

We had a few lessons with a guy from Algeria named Mustafa (like one guy in my Arabic class picked as his Arabic name! or like the Genie in Aladdin says to mock the latter!) who got a BOM in Arabic (I also slipped one home to do some useless "attempts" at "reading") and basically wanted to spend a half hour telling us about his knowledge of Old Testament characters and saying "This book is cool. I will read it," and then asking us if we knew Zacharaius in a kind of judgy way. But that's okay! He was cool. Stereotype alert: I find that a lot of the people I teach/meet here who have Muslim roots or background(s?) are very open and friendly in a discussion kind of way, especially, but just have these huge roadblocks to helping them accept Christ. Like, for instance, not believing in Christ. Boring missionary phrase alert: It's an interesting experience to meet them and talk to them.

 

We also continue to meet with our Romanian friend, Iulian, for whom we crafted an enormous chocolate chip cookie with a smiley face on it because he's sad he has to move back to Bucharest in March (aren't we all). Furthermore, we had a lesson with this cool guy named Deyan who lives in a smaller village outside of Ruse for most of the month and can only have lessons once in a while, but who has read almost all of the BOM and brought us an American tomato seed packet he wanted us to translate to make sure there was nothing wrong with them. He said in May he'd bring us some of the tomatoes they grew. I. Want them.

 

Okay one more thing (actually 2) and I'm done! On Saturdee, Sister Tate and I went to visit some members who live in a kind of rougher area of town, and they gave us some cakey things when we left that we were both not in the mood to eat, so we walked out with the intention of tossing them into one of the dumpsters, where undoubtedly, some human or beast would shortly eat it and then use it more than we did. Only as Sister Tate walked up to the bin, I felt a sense of foreboding drifting across the smoky, garbage-scented night. A single star cast its light upon the broken bottle chips and cigarette butts near the can. I sensed a strange presence - almost animal-like. A subdued, anxious snuffling issued faintly from the dumpster. As I opened my mouth to say, "I think there's an animal in there," in a matter of 20 confusing blacked-out seconds, a giant black dog leaped balletically from the dumpster's depths, pounced its paws on Sister Tate's chest, and then darted away growling and whining. After, we stood there for a few seconds in shock, not really understanding what had just happened. Then we shrugged and walked away.

 

One more thing: Lyodmil, the convert who got baptized last year with Sister Tate, moved to Ruse! And he plays guitar! So yesterday I had a guitar session with him for our cowboy party this Saturday (oh boy) in which I taught him "Angel Band"! So. All dreams fulfilled.

 

I love you all. Try and listen to the Spirit! 

 

Sister Crandmill

 

Week of February 4, 2013: Salutations and Signings-Off

Good day, family members! Man, salutations and signings-off are the hardest part of this email gig. Well, we had a week! First of all, on Monday, we had a lesson with a less-active member here, who lives in like, a penthouse above the church (kind of cool) and his really cool, cute parents, who are all very nice and healthy and well-off and have a book full of missionary signatures from like ten years back, but who have never really gotten on board with the whole "acting on faith" thing, or really ever been taught, as far as I can tell. It was interesting: all six of us Ruse guys (elders, me and Sister Tate, Elder and Sister Eames, the senior couple, and don't forget the laptop!) using a powerpoint to try to help these guys understand the Plan of Salvation, and me just wondering, wondering, why don't these really nice, spiritual, awesome people understand or have any desire to accept the Gospel? I guess that's an interesting feeling that I've had here a lot that is hard to explain: feeling so frustrated when someone who's clearly so ready for a good change in their life just doesn't GET it. Any thoughts on that one? Let me know if you have any similar experiences/ideas.

 

I also bought the following hat: giant floppy with a red flower.

 

We also had a lesson with this older guy we met in a block, who showed up to the church for his lesson in a giant fur hat half an hour early, and then engaged us in a classic conversation about communism/why we should be happy we didn't grow up in communism. There are just these certain topics people get on here when they meet foreigners that come up EVERY time: communism, work, communism, the Turkish rule, etc. They are interesting, yes, and now I .. . . know a lot about them. That is all.

 

Also! Book of Mormon Miracle. I think I wrote about this already. The investigator (I hate saying "our" investigator, it sounds so possessive/greedy) Rumi continues to listen to the BOM on CD, and seems more changed than I've ever seen her. Her very elderly husband fell this week and is in the hospital, but she wasn't as distraught and hopeless as I thought she might be. She seems more hopeful and uplifted and excited. The Book of Mormon can do that. So read it! Now the question is hoping and praying that all the parts of the Gospel start clicking together in her mind (she studied philosophy and theology and is very, very smart - even gave me her old Arabic textbook from when she lived in Libya! not that that demonstrates smartness) but struggles, struggles with basic Gospel concepts like repentance. I guess we all do. 

 

Also, new convert Seifitin was having a really hard time the past few weeks, and didn't come to church, but we finally went to his house way out in the middle of nowhere and demanded him to come to the door (it has one of these really tall fences with no doorbells/anything, and a scary dog) by rapping on his window with a stick balanced near for that very purpose. And then he came back to institute and church yesterday, so that's good. It's nice to see people overcome their struggles. Nothing to do with anything I did!

 

Anyway. We continue to struggle to find new people to teach, and to find the opportunities to find. So if you could all pray for us, and for the people here in Ruse who need to talk to us, that would be appreciated. Thank you.

 

Okay, I love you guys. Keep it up!

 

Sister Crundalle