So as I've mentioned before, we spend a lot of our time just
street contacting, as tracting is illegal. Sometimes we go on walks through
parks and talk to those sitting on the benches, sometimes we just pick a spot
and attempt to talk to every person walking by. A lot of the time there's long
hours in it. But there are many miracles that we get to see every day from
that, as well as some incredibly funny and ridiculous experiences.
Any church that's not the Orthodox church here has an
absolutely terrible reputation among the average Macedonian. So there's a good
amount of people who will walk by and just say " Ајјјјјј, Тие се од
некојa сектa" ("ohhhh, they're from some sect”). We were walking by a
small park early in the week at night, and we saw 3 guys just hanging out. We
went up and started making some small talk with them, not introducing the
gospel at all, and one of them realized we were from a church. He almost started
screaming bloody murder, saying "These guys are from a sect! Get out of
here! Run! We don't want to talk to you!" He was going totally crazy, but
we just kept standing there, looked at his friends. They looked stunned at
their friend. The friend saw that he wasn't getting any back up, so he just
kept screaming, and he backed away, yelling yelling yelling, until he was so
far away we couldn't hear him anymore. After that, we had a really nice
conversation with his other two friends on the importance of just being a good
person. Elder Chingas and I got a pretty good laugh from that after. We left
them with cards, and one of them said that he was going to wear it on his
forehead when he saw the friend that ran again.
We found a shoemaker, Iso, this week who is an Albanian. We
taught Iso the Restoration, and he wasn't too interested in it unfortunately,
but he's a very kind man, so he still conversed with us about it. We then got
to the part about the Book of Mormon, and he looks at it and says that he already
has one, and he's had it for 10 years. We told him that that's not possible,
because there's only been missionaries here for such a short time, but he maintained
he had one in Albanian. Many times people have told us they already have the
Book of Mormon, and almost every time the person has just been mistaken.
However, when we came back the next week, sure enough, he had an old Book of
Mormon. It had the testimony written in it from a soldier at Bonsteel from
2002. The soldier gave it to Iso's friend, who then gave it to Iso. Iso said
that he read a good part of it about a decade ago. He liked the book, but he
doesn't remember a whole lot of it. That was such a powerful testimony to me of
the influence that every effort we make to share the gospel. That soldier will
never know what came about because of the Book of Mormon given. It got in two
persons' hands, and left such an impression on one that he immediately
recognized the book, and remembered a good deal of the contents within. The
influence we have on each person around us is immeasurably large. Member
Missionaries are Magical
There has been talk of the situation for the Syrian
immigrants lately. Helicopters have been flying by every day from the camp on
the border of Syria to Skopje and vice versa. We decided to take another trip
out to the camp, Tabanovce. When we pulled up, the camp was so full. I guess
the Syrians are in no man's land, where they getting blocked and can't get any
further into Europe. Elder Chingas and I were able to meet with the head of the
operations, and she was very helpful and supportive to us, so we hope that we
can be able to help in some way! The Pulleys are also trying to visit the camp
to see whether there are some projects that they can do.
For a cultural note, a fast food here that's very popular is
called a Gyro, which originates from Greece. They are everywhere, and there's a
new chain restaurant in Aerodrom that sells them now. We've gone there for
lunch a few times, and this last time, I just got some fries, and Elder Chingas
got chicken wings. A long time after I finished my fries, the chicken wings
came out, and they were totally overcooked, with pretty much no meat. The food
here is way better than the food in America, but for chicken wings, I think
they should stay in America.
I hope you all enjoyed conference! We haven't gotten to
watch too much of it yet. There was April Fool's day this week, which is the
Balkan equivalent of Halloween. Enjoy the week!
Elder Rigby
