Week 53: A Birthday, Two Concerts, 50% Done, Transfers, and Other Insanities

Hello family and friends! This last week was absurd. This email definitely is not going to do it justice. Since many of you are probably wondering about transfers, here it is: I'm going to Slovenia! Specifically the city of Celje (Pronounced Sell-yay.) For those of you not terrible familiar with the Adriatic North Mission, that means that I'm soon going to be speaking an entirely different language than I've been speaking so far. It's like getting called to speak Spanish, but then getting transferred to Portugal half way through. We'll talk about it more later, though. Here's the story of the week.

On Monday our schedule got screwed up by a repairman needing to come precisely at 1pm, but we survived. We still managed to do some fun things for our P-day, like get Elder King a custom soccer jersey.

A special jersey for Elder King

At the end of the day we had a big branch party over at the fancy park on the other side of town, and a lot of people showed up, including people from the branch, English Conversation Group, and a few others. We played some volleyball and soccer and such and it was a good time.

Tuesday, we spent most of the day preparing for our concert in various ways, such as making programs or practicing music. We did have district meeting in the middle of it, in which Sisters Beus and Turner (who are going home something like today) shared with us 18 things they'd learned from their 18 months as missionaries. When the concert finally rolled around that night, it was a big hit. We seemed to have an even better crowd than the branch party did the previous night, with some unexpected attendees. One of our ECG participants who happens to be a professional jazz musician said that we were all at a professional level too, and asked why we'd all been hiding our talent. After the concert itself, there was some food and we had a good time introducing people to each other. (See the videos below if you want to see some of the musical numbers from the concert).

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

I Am a Child of God

On Wednesday morning we got transfer announcements. So many plot twists. The main one for me is that I'm going to Slovenia, which is a country where they don't speak any language that I've ever learned before: Slovene. So, it'll be like being fresh out of the MTC, except they didn't teach you anything in the MTC. It'll be great. Also, Elder Smith is likewise going up to Slovenia, but he'll be my Zone Leader in Ljubljana, and he started his mission in Slovenia. In any case, there were a lot of unexpected things on the transfer board. Right around then, the sisters gave me a gift for my half-way mark: a bag of a bunch of "half-way" things, such as half of a chocolate bar, half of a missionary pamphlet, half of a passport photo of Sister Turner, etc.

Half-way gifts from the Sister Missionaries for my hump day.

Then we went to lunch with them and some other members and friends. At this point we're trying to figure out what this all means for us getting visas for Slovenia, since the Slovenian embassy here is only open 9-12, Monday to Thursday. The rest of the day we worked on some various stuff to prepare for the whitewash (you're welcome, Elder Leach), and then at the end of the night we had a farewell dinner with the Newtons for the Sisters. That restaurant, "Miss Sophie's 4 Rooms", has some really darn good lava cakes. While there, we got a fairly urgent call from one of our members, and so we went with the Newtons after dinner to go figure out the situation.

Check out this amazing lava cake!

Thursday was absolutely insane. And my half-way mark, and Elder Smith's birthday! 50% done. Anyway, the start of the day was definitely really good, since we went over to the Newtons' for breakfast to celebrate Elder Smith's birthday. The sisters also came and some gifts were given, and then they headed off, Sisters Beus and Turner to go home, and Sister Orchard to get stuff situated for transfers. From there Elder Smith and I went to go help that member some more with the urgent situation, but we also needed to do visa stuff at the same time, since the Slovene embassy has such restricted hours. So, long story short, we had a whole bunch of taxi rides all over the city to get all this stuff figured out, and then we finally ended up late to our lesson at 4:30 with "Jenny" (our ECG/friend/investigator lady. But that's not her real name). Even though we didn't have any time all day to plan the lesson, it was somehow really a great lesson.

Lots of goodbyes...Sister Turner and Sister Beus have completed their missions and are headed home.

Then ECG needed to start, someone needed to test the broadcast system at the same time, and Elder Smith and I hadn't eaten in 9 hours. Thankfully the Newtons got us McDonalds really fast, we ate really quick, and then Elder Smith went to do the broadcast thing (don't worry, all the walls in the church are glass, so I could still see and hear him) while I taught ECG alone. Right after ECG we had to run off to help that member with the urgent situation, and unfortunately it made us somewhat ignore some people that had gotten us some various little gifts (Elder Smith's birthday, my half-way mark, and the fact that we're both leaving). Don't worry though, we've done our best to apologize, and they were very understanding. Anyway, the rest of the night we were helping that member get stuff situated. We eventually get home and find out that the sisters' travels got really screwed up by their bus going off course and some other crazy stuff. Plus, Elder Smith started feeling sick to his stomach and was already feeling like he had a cold. We went to sleep.

On Friday morning we helped our member friend with that situation some more, and then we had to run off to do visa stuff. By the way, the Slovene embassy has been giving us a big hassle about getting the right documents this whole time, but we somehow got all the right stuff before they closed at 1pm. A few hours later they called us to say they needed one more document that they didn't tell us about before, but that they were closing, and we'd have to give it to them on Monday. At some point during the day, we discovered that a good friend somehow thought we were spreading bad rumors about them, so that was rough. We did meet up with them and get the situation figured out, though. While we were at it, we also taught them a lesson that went really well. We also had a great lesson with our most recent member! He's so great. That night some fireworks went off to mark the end of the Sarajevo Film Festival that's been this week, and then there was a giant concert on the main street that's right outside our apartment window.

A great view of the fireworks from our window.

Saturday we went up to the barn to do service, and that was really good, like usual. Honestly, the rest of the day was kinda crazy too and I don't even remember most of what happened. I do remember, though, that Haris introduced us to an inactive member that he's still friends with from before his mission, and then we got invited to go to a soccer game that was going to be that night. Somehow we got permission to go, and it was pretty cool. People around here are absolutely crazy about their soccer. The two main fan-sections literally didn't stop yelling their organized chants for the entire game. Anyway, when we got home from that, I wrote my talk for Sunday.

Haris, Elder Smith, and myself at the soccer game.

On Sunday we went to the park to meet up with a member from Banja Luka, and then had church! We actually had a really good number of members there this week. And I gave a talk! For Sunday School, Sister Ezard had come down to give a lesson on self-reliance. Haris invited a few of his friends, and two of them came! In case you haven't heard of the church's self-reliance program, it's really great. If you're looking for a job, a better job, to better manage your finances, etc, you should check it out.

Today we turned in that last document to the Slovene Embassy, and they took my passport so I can get my visa soon. We don't know exactly how soon, but the hopes are that it'll be by Wednesday. Who knows. In any case, we'll probably have overlap with the two Elders that are coming here to replace us.

You know what? Your homework for this week is to go look at that self-reliance stuff and see if there's anything that you think you could be interested in. I know that this stuff can really help people improve their lives.

Well, that's it for this week! Hopefully next week I'll be emailing you from Slovenia! Have a great time until then! Here are some photos from Jajce and Zone Conference a while back.

--

Elder Ryan Echols
Adriatic North Mission
Svačićev Trg 3/1
HR-10000 Zagreb
Croatia

Sisters Beus, Orchard, Turner, and myself at Jayce.

Elder Smith, myself, and Sisters Orchard, Turner, and Beus at Zone Conference.