Hey Mom,
It's not every day you run into a Spanish-speaking Icelandic man in Macedonia. But that happened this week. We were in Ramstore doing language study and a guy came up to us and said he talks to Mormon missionaries all the time on the bus in Iceland. "You guys are everywhere," he said. I think he said he lives close to a church there. "It's so weird to have some pretty girl come up to you, flip her hair back, and say, 'Do you know Jesus?'"
So this week was pretty good. Yesterday was Fast Sunday AND General Conference AND Easter AND we got to go to the Nelson's to watch conference with the members and investigators. It was really fun. We had one room for watching it in English and upstairs it was streaming in Croatian (the closest thing to Serbian, which is the closest thing to Macedonian). The night before I had been in the Croatian room and one of the interpreter's accent was so bad people were leaning forward trying to understand him. He sounded like some American guy who had just barely gotten off a mission without learning the language too well. The interpreter last night was a lot better. I came to trade places with Sister Hassell halfway through in the Croatian room. Ana, Gordana, and our investigator Susana and her friend Bogdan were sitting in there. At one part during Elder Uchtdorf's talk we heard everyone downstairs laughing. "It must be funnier in English," said Bogdan.
"I think they're ahead," I told him.
"So soon we'll be entertained."
Turns out it was just that the computer kept freezing during Elder Holland's talk when his face was making interesting expressions. Susana brought some type of burek that I ate and then Ana asked me if I knew what the green stuff was in it. "Spinach?" No, nettles. Which is like poison ivy. I looked it up on her phone and apparently it's ok to eat after it's been blanched. Ironically it works as an anti-inflammatory.
Earlier on Sunday we were waiting outside of Hotel Arka for Kone and some guy walked up to us and started talking to us. He said the elders had given him a card while contacting in Center about two or three months before. His name was Ilitsa and I sat next to him during church. He had a lot of questions and we started talking about grace, so I opened up to 2 Nephi 25:23. "You know the book by memory!" he exclaimed, really impressed. I've always wanted to get to a point where I knew the scriptures well enough that I could have references memorized, like some people do. I guess I'm like them now. Well, kind of. I don't have that many memorized.
Thanks so much for your Easter package! I put Sister Hassell and Sister Barch's baggies on their beds yesterday when they were studying, not even trying to be cutesy about it, and then later when Sister Hassell went into her room she yelled, "Easter bunny came!" Ha ha.
This week I finally got around to making a poster I have been wanting to make for when we table. It's the same picture on the front of Preach My Gospel, of Christ's baptism, and below it has the baptismal invite in Macedonian. Now I just have to get some sort of stand for it for when we use it. I figure it's pretty to-the-point. It helps people understand a little better what we do without having to come up and talk to us. I'm pretty proud of it.
Have I ever mentioned the anti-Mormon Romanian guy? Well I ran into him again and asked him how long he would be working that day and then ran home to get him a Romanian Book of Mormon. When I came back he was gone. Maybe he was playing the how-to-waste-a-missionary's-time game. A lot of people here love that game.
We taught this guy named Zlatko in a Best Western cafe and showed him the Because of Him clip in Macedonian. We taught him the Restoration and he asked, "So in between the death of Christ and His apostles and the time of Joseph Smith, none of the churches were true?"
"Right."
"Oh, wow," he shook his head. Later he asked him what he thought about all that we had been telling him. "It holds water," he said thoughtfully.
We've been finding a lot of promising people lately, which makes me excited. I'm just not very good at contacting. Still I never know what to say to people. But while outside the post office one day I went up to a girl sitting on a curb and started talking to her. "Do you maybe know English?" she asked. She said she was from Hungary. I'm so used to people here being from all these different places and yet speaking perfect English, so I didn't question her lack of an accent until she asked where I was from. I asked if she knew where Maryland was and she said yes because she was from Pennsylvania. She had a job teaching and living in Hungary. Cool! Probably one of the least awkward conversations I've had as a missionary followed.
Well, I can't think of what else to tell you.
Love,
Sister Riddle
