Week 55: Macedonians and their Anchovies

Hello everyone! I hope you all have had yet another great week. Over here in Celje, Slovenia, the weather has been really hot, but it's really cooled off the last few days. Hopefully it stays cooler from now on. In any case, I was kinda lazy about my journal-writing this week, so I don't entirely remember when things happened. That means that this email will be slightly less organized than normal. Oh well.

I forget if I mentioned it last week, but on last P-day we went to the Celje castle. It's a pretty big one that's way up on the hill, and they're definitely going for the midieval feel with tourism. It's a pretty cool one.

Celje castle

Celje Castle and the surrounding view

The rest of the day was pretty crazy, so sorry if you sent me an email and I didn't get around to replying to it. At one point on Monday, it was really raining hard and so we were inside making phonecalls and going through the area book, and I called this one Bosnian guy that said to come over right then. So we did! He lives just down the street, actually. We got to know him and his wife, who is a Slovenian, and met their kid, and set up to have a lesson soon. That evening we went over to the Porters' place (they're the senior missionary couple here in Celje) and Sister Porter gave us haircuts! That means I didn't have to try and figure out that haircut vocabulary in Slovene. Yet, haha. Shout out to Sister Porter.

On Tuesday we also had lunch at the Porters' place, also with the Sisters. Got to know everyone a little bit better. Sister Porter made pizza from scratch, and it was great. At the end, I found a little old accordion in the Porters' apartment, and they decided to let me borrow it! So, hopefully I'll get to use it soon for something useful. That night we of course had ECG, and the ECG people here are pretty cool. From there we went over to that Bosnian guy's house and taught them a lesson. It was quite a mix of speaking Bosnian and Slovene. The language mess was pretty fun.

For the rest of the week, we did just a lot of contacting and tracting, plus district meeting on Friday. Here are some funny experiences from that.

One time when contacting, we tried talking to this slightly older pair of ladies, but they just said in mumbling Spanish that they didn't understand and kept walking. I of course told them (in Spanish) that I did speak Spanish. They kept walking. Oh well. At one point we contacted an old guy on a bench that really only spoke German. I don't speak German, so I told him "Ich spreche kein Deutch". We tried to give him a card with our website so he could get it in German, but he misunderstood, autographed the card, and gave it back.

 

Along the river at one point we got stopped by a pair of Catholic missionaries. Two ladies that looked like they were going hiking. One was apparently from Italy, and the other from Croatia. The Croatian one knew Italian, and of course they each also knew their native language. So, the conversation was mostly just me speaking Croatian/Bosnian with the Croatian. Lady. The conversation didn't really go anywhere, but they were nice enough.

We also ended up tracting in this one building where it seemed like not a single soul spoke Slovene. It was mostly Bosnian, but a little bit of Serbian too, I think. In any case, we tracted into this one guy that let us in. His friend was over too, doing some cooking, and after a few minutes a third guy came in. Turns out they were all Macedonians. Either they were all speaking Serbian, or I can't tell the difference between Serbian and Macedonian. Also, they definitely had a lot of Slovene words and phrases mixed in there. As stated by Elder Jensen, they were speaking "Slur-bian". It was pretty fun. The guy that was cooking brought over what he had made. It was a huge plate of "girica" as they called it, and Elder Jensen said they were anchovies. A giant plate of whole fishes. I've never had anchovies, so I didn't know what they were. In any case, they offered us some, and I took one. Pulled the head off, and ate the rest (except for the tail) in 2 bites. Actually not too bad. Anyway, we just got to know them really quick, gave the main guy a copy of the Book of Mormon in Croatian, and then set up a return appointment for the next day. When we came back, only the main guy was there, since the others have their own places in the building. We taught him the restoration, and it was pretty good. I also brought out a Serbian copy of the Book of Mormon, which is remarkably similar to Macedonian, and he gladly took that one and gave the Croatian one back. I think it was because of the Cyrillic ;)

Balkan food is very tasty!

Yesterday was fast Sunday, so people got up and gave their testimonies, and we also got a new Branch President. Since the Porters (the current senior couple here in Celje) will be leaving in a week or so, the senior couple that's in Ljubljana right now, the Monsons, will be getting moved up here. So, Elder Monson is now the branch president here. Because of that we had some visitors from the district presidency and such, and then there was also a "munch and mingle" after church. Right after that we had a little lesson with two members that are going to get married in October. One of them is the most recent member here, and the other one is from Croatia. What cool people. From there we had a lesson with an inactive member and tried to work out with him why he doesn't come to church and figure out where to go from here. It was a really good visit too. After that we went tracting some, and the first door we came to was this cool lady who set up a return appointment with us for this next week. What a good Sunday.

Celje Castle's beautiful view

Your homework today is to read in Preach My Gospel, the section called "Go About Doing Good" that starts on page 168. And then, of course, apply it. Go serve some people. If it helps, pray every morning for an opportunity to serve, and that you'll notice it.

Have a great week!

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