Bulgaria Sofia Mission

Be prepared to be giving talks and teaching lessons frequently. Now the church is two hours less frequently compared to when I did. So I gave a talk in sacrament meeting almost every Sunday, and sometimes if the members didn't show up that were assigned to give a talk, I would just be making up for that. So you'll be prepared to do that. It does seem scary, but gospel principles, if you ever don't know what to do, just refer to gospel principles, and they have it in Bulgarian, and you can just pick things out from that, because as simple as gospel principles is, a lot of the members in Bulgaria are very young in the gospel, so it's perfect. You don't need to go into this deep stuff that you'd hear in conference. Just stick to the basic stuff, especially when you're not giving a talk, because you're going to be giving a lot of them. I know I did.

You will come across gypsies in Bulgaria. Some of them might have bears that they have walking around with them and they play their little tsigulka, is what it's called. They're not dangerous. But I learned my lesson to not give money to gypsies because this six-year-old kid as we were out on the street asked for money. I felt bad for him, he's homeless or at least he looked that way. So I gave him a little bit of money and half an hour goes by and I see him just strutting his stuff right in front of us. Because we were on this, in a specific area, we were talking to people with this big board that has information on it. It's called street boarding. It can be pretty effective, better than tracking. So he walks past like he owns the place and he's got a cigarette in his mouth. He's like five or six guys and he's got alcohol in his hand too. I'm like, I just got stumped by a little child and he's now doing this.

I wanted to talk about teaching new investigators because this isn't a topic and it's super important. Bulgaria is filled with a lot of people that at one point were baptized, went to church, but their favorite missionary, per se, transferred and then went home, so then they lose contact. I want to say that the most effective thing that we had, so I served as a branch president for nine months in Shuman and then Burkas, the most effective way that you can teach someone after the first discussion, is to teach them along with somebody who is also in your same branch. That way they have that connection and it's not just you and the investigator, so that by the time they get baptized, hopefully a priesthood holder that's in the branch can baptize them. It's not all about numbers. It's not all about having the missionaries do it all because we're going to be long gone, you know, but hopefully those members will stay and they'll be friends.

You want to make sure that if Bulgarians are feeding you, if they are, usually they don't, but sometimes they do, that you're buying and you're helping to prepare because it's not like the states where you get fed every night. You're going to learn how to cook your food. Newsflash! So be prepared for that because, you know, it's really a disservice if you rely on people over there to feed you. Just make it a collaborative effort because it's just better that way.