Elder Ryan Echols: Week 54: Slovenia!

Hello everyone! We're terribly short on time and I don't even know why, so this email is going to be a slightly shorter one.

On Monday we had another branch FHE, and only "Jenny" and our most recent member came. It was really good though. They seem like they're becoming pretty good friends.

Tuesday, we went contacting with Haris. When I contacted one guy, he answered in Italian. I started using my long-neglected Spanish knowledge from high school to talk to him. He was really going off in Italian about what a great place Sarajevo is, and then what a beautiful country Spain is. I was having a hard time getting any words in at all so that we could talk about the Gospel, and then the discussion pretty much ended, so we exchanged our names as we were parting. When he heard Haris' name and recognized him as a Bosnian, he got excited and started speaking to him in fluent Bosnian as if Elder Smith and I didn't understand. Turns out that he's actually from Bosnia. I don't know why a Bosnian in Bosnia when spoken to in Bosnian would answer in Italian, but that's what happened. That evening, Elder Leach and his new trainee showed up, and we promptly took them over to ECG and introduced them to their participants.

Me and Elder Smith during our last few days together in Sarajevo.

Wednesday was kinda crazy, but I did end up getting my Slovene visa and then got travel plans figured out to actually go up there the next day. We ran into Sister Orchard and her new trainee during the course of it all, and at the end of the day all 3 companionships had dinner with the Newtons at a Lebanese restaurant, called "Beirut" (which just so happens to be the name of one of my favorite bands).

My Farewell Dinner at a Lebanese Restaurant called "Beirut"

Enjoying ice cream with the Newtons in Sarajevo one last time. I will miss them!!

Pretty early Thursday morning we headed over to the bus station, and there were met by "Jenny" and our most recent member who wanted to say goodbye to us. It was a really long bus ride up to Zagreb, and the whole way there I was sitting behind a Canadian who was reading "For Whom the Bell Tolls". Once we got to Zagreb, there was some confusion about where cars were parked across Zagreb, and we ended up having 7 Elders in the 5 available seats of a stick-shift van that had at least 3 people's luggage in the trunk obscuring the rear view, with Elder Hanks driving as a new AP that had just learned to drive stick that week. It was so awesome. We eventually got stuff figured out, and Elder Smith, Elder Zimmerman, and myself all loaded our luggage into a 5-seater (I still don't know how it fit) and then drove up to Slovenia. We got to Ljubljana, and then I caught a train with Elder Jensen going to Celje, and the train ended up arriving way late, plenty past our curfew.

Squishing all of us and our things into a little car.

We can all fit, right?

Since then it's just been life in Slovenia. I have to be honest and just say that this place seems fake because it's so nice. I feel like I'm in Disneyland or something. Especially when I'm walking through the little European streets and there's music floating through the air from the accordion guy playing on the side of the street like a total professional from Italy, or there's a midieval festival in the town square. I met the rest of the district, which is the Porters plus sisters Crosby and Brown, and introduced myself at church during sacrament meeting. The Elders' Quorum President here is from Peru, so he only speaks Spanish, plus enough Slovene to get by. I think he and I are going to be good friends.

Celje is full of beautiful little cobblestone streets. They are perfect.

Celje is nestled at the bottom of a hill where a beautiful castle is located.

There was a pretty cool thing that happened this weekend. On Saturday we contacted a guy that was from Bosnia, so I talked to him in Bosnian, and he said we could come visit him the next day. He gestured to where his place apparently was and said he'd just be outside. He also couldn't give us his phone number, so we had no idea how we were going to really find him. In any case, we returned on Sunday afternoon like we said, walked around that area a bit and didn't see him. Elder Jensen remembered that there was a lady in one of the nearby apartment buildings that spoke mostly Croatian that'd said that they could come back soon, so we decided to go find her. We go up to the tall apartment building, look at the huge collection of intercom buzzers, push a random one, and immediately get let into the building. That's very rare, in my experience. We go up to the door where the lady apparently lives, ring the doorbell, and the Bosnian guy answers. Apparently it's his apartment too! The chances of that whole thing are ridiculous. Apparently God wants him to hear what we have to say. He said he didn't have time right then, though, so we'll just go stop by a different day.

Part of the Celje castle with a view of the surrounding area

The weather here is a lot hotter than it was in Sarajevo when I left (the weather in Sarajevo was perfect when I left). Learning the Slovene language is going ok so far. I can see how it's obviously a close relative to Bosnian, but they definitely are different languages. I think learning this one will be really fun. For now it's definitely hard for my to speak, but I can understand pretty well, since the words' roots are usually the same as from Bosnian.