Slovene Sunday - Vanja Arsenuk

I recently decided that because I can now post from my own home, without traipsing over to my parents' house, I can spend a little more thought, and put a little more focus into my writing, my essays, my posts.

And so, with that, I unveil Slovene Sunday - specifically setting time to remember things about Slovenija - big things, little things, mundane things and things that meant a lot to my heart.

I begin...

When I first moved to Maribor in December of 1999 it was so different than the big city if Ljubljana I had lived in for the previous 8 months. It was smaller, and at first it felt more countrified. If I'm honest, I had a pretty low opinion of the people up there, especially the church members. They just were so small - small in numbers, small-minded. They didn't have the big-city hustle-&-bustle about them, they weren't busy like the folks of Ljubljana were.

I felt like I was being punished in some way. I loved my companion, and I loved the other missionaries I worked with, but... it just wasn't the same. And I had a bad attitude about it. I didn't like the people, I kept away, and aloof. I was mad that where the church building in Ljub had been a nice, open, spacious building above a pizza parlour in a beautiful Italliante courtyard, with wildlife immediate out the south window, the church in Maribor was small.

It was dark. It got almost no sun, the walls were paneled in dark wood, the rooms were laberyntine. The floors creaked, and it was placed above a tailor we affectionatly called "the Sweat Shop". It was quaint, yes, but not the nexus for the church I was used to.

And the members in Maribor were so PLAIN! Nenad Arsenuk, the branch president, and his wife Vanja, who was the Releif Society president. They were not pretty. He was of Ukrainian descent and pale and snaggle-toothed, and Vanja was... well, my first impression of her was that she was really common. She had bad teeth to, and had bulgy eyes, and dark stringy hair that she obviously didn't wash often. She had an over-loud voice AND a stammer. Nenad was quiet, however, but he seemed to only know two subjects to talk about in church - responsibility and authority. Vanja was loud, and seemed to have no decorum, and her ideas for doing things in church meetings were unorthodox and outside of the box. I wished I could ignore both of them.

And so I did. I rolled my eyes when Vanja sang loudly and off key during the meetings, but I ignored her. I tuned out when Nenad spoke to the men about authority, because it was the same every week, yet when he asked me a question, I always had a good reply; because his questions were always stock, so my stock answers would suffice. I didn't put my heart into it, I didn't invest anything in them.

I wanted instead to work with some of the inactive members who were prettier, the handsome handsome Goran, or the doll-like Petra; people who had left because of the way the Arsenuks were, too. I wanted to spend time going out to find NEW people to bring into the church, so Nenad and Vanja could step down from their positions and fade away, and scare new members anymore.

I felt like this for weeks, and it was really getting me down, and I was pretty damn homesick for Ljubljana, and I just didn't feel like I had anything to offer this branch. I wished they would all go away, or I could go back to the big city. It got so bad and noticable in my heart that I eventually realized it was something I had to work on, and not wait for God to fix it. But I had no clue what to do - I did NOT like these people, I had no interest, really, in trying. I was lost.

One Sunday, at the beginning of January, I was sitting there in the first church meeting, all together with everyone, doodling on a scrap of paper to help me ignore the members. It was the monthly testimony meeting and people, if they felt like it, could go up to the podium and tell the rest of us what was in their hearts, unscripted, whatever. In Maribor there had been a couple of these meetings where NO ONE had gotten up to share, and we'd all sat there in polite-coughing silence for 30-40 minutes. This Sunday looked to be more of the same, but we missionaries were determained to not take turns, and leave that to the members; they had to start doing it on their own sometime.

As I was sitting there in the silence, I saw Vanja, who usually wore slacks to church meetings (culturally verboten), stand up to go to the podium. I pointedly looked down at my drawing, focusing on that. She was weird, and un-understandable and I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of paying her one ounce of attention. She began to speak, and I tuned out, which was easy enough, I just had to stop listening in Slovene and I lost any gist of what was going on around me. I drew and drew.

Even though my comprehension was currently at zero, I could still hear her inflections, and she seemed to be stammering more than usual. "Just SPIT IT OUT!" I felt like yelling. "None of us are that interested anyway! Say it and be done!" I glared at the paper in my lap.

Her stammering went on some more, and finally I had to look up, so I could give her a glare and maybe get her to sit down. And when I looked up at her, finally looked up, I saw Vanja holding onto the sides of the podium like she had just been flung from the edge of the Titanic. She had a death-grip on the thing, and she was trembling, shaking in an almost seizure-like manner.

And all my pride and selfishness washed away for a second, and I saw that she was scared. That unscripted public speaking scared the snot out of her, even in front of members of her own church, people she had known for years, and missionaries who were bound to try and serve and teach and not judge (except me). She was scared to death of sharing her soul-feelings with us, and yet she was determined to do it anyway. She was shaking from fright, but she was at least holding herself upright, she was so scared her woulds didn't want to come out, but it was so important for her to share her thoughts and feelings with us that she forced them out anyway.

This woman was brave. She had more conviction than I'd ever displayed up to that point. Something scared her and she barrelled through it anyway. I was an actor, an attention-seeker - I loved public speaking, and had never had to comprehend of this aspect of it. That afternoon I saw through her eyes, felt her heart. I wanted to stand up right there and put my arms on her shoulders so she could have some of my public-speaking stength, and say what she wanted to say without any fear at all.

But it wasn't appropriate, not for an elder to touch a woman besides a handshake, not for me when her husband was there. Stengthening Vanja was his job. But oh, how my heart went to her, wished I could give her everything she needed right at that moment.

Instead, I turned on my Slovene ears and listened respectfully to what Vanja was trying to express. I paid her the respect that this very brave, strong woman deserved.