February 17, 2014

Hello everyone,

I knew you would want to hear more about the food. Elder Prince and me got some TOCT ("toast"), which is ham, cheese, french fries and ketchup smashed between two pieces of bread. It tasted about how you would expect, so I don't think I'll have any cravings for it in the future but it was fun to experience. I also got a salep (it won't let me type in cyrillics in this internet cafe, ironically, but that's how it's pronounced) which is a drink that is pretty much rice pudding without the rice, or at least that's what it tastes like. It's served hot with cinnamon. At the grocery store here there is an entire section of fruit that I do not recognize. Some of it's spiky or hairy or just weird-colored. I've been terrible at remembering to bring my camera places, but I'll try and send you a picture of something next week. I think they must not have preservatives here, because all the fruit is bruised and/or already starting to go bad when you buy it. The chicken tastes so much better here though, and is even a different texture from back home. Everything is CHEAP. But the other missionaries told me not to think of everything in American dollars.  I'll see how I feel once my card arrives. I don't know why they didn't have it ready when I got here, but in the meantime they just put extra money on Sister Schofield's card and she's been paying for everything. The money here is denar. We went out to an Irish pub one night and my meal cost $1.60 (80 denar. To find the price in American dollars you multiply the number in denar by two and then move the decimal point two places over). It was a sandwich and fries, and granted it was a smaller amount of food than they'd give you at an American restaurant, but it was quite tasty, especially considering a sandwich alone at a gas station in America is more expensive. I'm told that in the summer here the fruit is awesome.

Every Wednesday we go to another part of Skopje and teach English to Roma kids. I decided to teach an older group of teenagers. Elder Krajnc (the one from Slovenia) taught them months and days of the week and then I broke off and helped this girl one-on-one when we realized she didn't speak any English at all. I spent over an hour just teaching her the alphabet and at the end she wanted to learn the days of the week too.  She said she had bad vision, so that hindered her learning a lot. In Macedonian the alphabet is all phonetic and so if you ever ask someone how something is spelled they just say each sound individually. It can sound quite condescending. So to her, I had to explain that even though I was teaching her the names of the English letters (A, B, C...) they didn't always make the same sound. Like in the word February you don't say Fe-Bee-ruary. She asked me to write her name in English, Idafet, and I wrote down two possible spellings of it. I asked her if she understood the principle of English letters having names but different sounds and she said no and buried her face in her hands. It's a foreign concept to her. She seemed genuinely interested in learning though, which was great. She asked if I would be coming back next week and if I had any books or anything written in both Macedonian and English so she could look at them and compare. Oh, do we have them. I'll probably bring her one of our pamphlets which mercifully we do have in Macedonian, not Serbian or something, and English. We give the pamphlets to our investigators to help them understand certain gospel principles and commandments, like The Restoration or The Word of Wisdom. I told her to practice the alphabet. I did have to get Elder Krajnc to help me out a few times to be able to understand each other.

I feel a little frustrated because I feel like I haven't spoken very much Macedonian. Normally new missionaries are paired with older missionaries who know the language, but my companion has only been here for two months.  I do understand the things I hear them say that I've learned, but I still have so much to learn. I need to get better at studying during language hour. At the MTC I focused a lot on grammar and verbs. I need to study more nouns and phrases. The other day I realized I had been here for less than two weeks and needed to be patient. I really hope my contacting skills improve.

The other day when we were out contacting with the elders again a lot of people were out and Elder Krajnc said to me, "I love when people are so busy staring at us that they bump into another person. It's awesome." We get stared at all the time, just because of our nametags, and when we're contacting we get a lot of dirty looks and confused faces. Let me share with you my favorite contacting moment from this week:

"Hi, how are you?"

"Bad."

"Bad? Why?"

"Because there are children in Africa dying from hunger."

I laughed. First joke I have understood in Macedonian! A lot of people get sucked into talking to us because they don't have very assertive personalities, and all eventually pull out their phones to look at the time/pretend to get an important message and tell us they have to go. I tried calling the few people we got numbers from and they all hung up on me. I imagine I would do the same if I got a call from someone speaking horrible English asking if I wanted to meet up and talk about Jesus. Some people do call us because our number is on some of the stuff we pass out, but if the Elders aren't around to help interpret what they're saying our hands are tied. And a lot of them are just creepy old guys asking Sister Schofield out. We tease her a lot for that. I tend to talk to more girls, but last night I offended some guy's girlfriend because she thought I was hitting on him by saying hi to him. It's a funny story but I can't adequately tell it over email. 

We have found investigators through contacting, though. This week we were walking along some residential streets, headed somewhere, and Sister Schofield said hi to another old man (ha ha) and we ended up talking to him for a bit, and then his friends came out and talked to us too. The man we initially greeted was quite intoxicated but gave us his number, and so did one of his friends, whose name is something like Otsen. He wanted to meet and talk right then, but we couldn't because we were busy (and alone) and he pressed for us to meet later that day. We waited outside the mall with the elders for a long time that evening, and were about to give up and go home when they both showed up. We sat at a table in the food court and did a first lesson with them, and Otsen was very interested in what we had to say and said something to the effect of, "I feel very spiritually enlightened," at the end. We gave them each a Book of Mormon and we'll meet with them again. This week, three of our investigators came to church! Including Kate, so we were so happy about that. She even brought her boyfriend and said she wants to bring her brother next week. There are plenty of people here ready for the gospel, and it really isn't us that converts them.

On Valentine's Day both companionships of elders gave us a box of chocolates, one came with a card and one with a cookbook compiled with recipes from former missionaries in our mission. So we got stuff from four boys this Valentine's Day, which beats my previous record of zero.

Yeah, when the elders transfer it's just between the four of them. They just transferred a few days after I got here, and I think they do it every three months. So I don't know if that's less frequent than normal. I imagine so.

The guy I told you about who was the first man to receive the priesthood since the time of Paul is named Elmaz, he's Albanian and he was also the first member in Macedonia. He's in the hospital right now and so we all went to visit him yesterday. I was told several different things as to why he's in the hospital, but he's only there for about a week so hopefully it's nothing serious. Your prayers would be appreciated. 

Every week me and Sister Schofield go visit the Macedonia's two female members, Ana and Gordana. We do have about twenty people coming to church, some are members living in Macedonia so I don't count them as Macedonian members. My first week here they announced in church that we have enough attendance to form a branch. Righteous. It'll be even more solid when we can baptize them someplace other than the hotel swimming pool. Ana and Gordana are roommates and I really like them. Converts are still taught for a year after they're baptized, so usually we just go over and share a thought with them, but end up staying longer because we talk so much. A lot of Macedonians don't really like Macedonia and try to migrate when they can. We've run into a lot of people who were born here and now live elsewhere, and come here from time to time for vacation. A lot of Macedonians tell me about the war in the 1990s that involved Kosovo/Yugoslavia. That was what Gordana was telling me about last night, how in America life is easier because you grow up learning a language you can rely on your whole life, go to school and find work in your own country. 

There's also a castle here that has been here since before Paul, and the other missionaries told me they'd take me one P day. Today we went to a Mother Teresa museum (she was born here) which was free. I took a pamphlet as a souvenir.  It's at least not as smoky in here this week. When we got back from emailing last Monday I could really feel it in my T zone. 

Love, 

Sister Riddle

3 Nephi 14:21, "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven."