Kranj - The Rock-Noggin Epic

Talking about it last week brought up the whole story again in my head, so I have decided to work through it by writing it out.

I need to preface this whole story by saying that I try not to think about this month and a half of my mission very much. I generally prefer the odd, interesting anecdotes that come back to me in flashes, or stories I've told enough times that I've got them by heart now. This experience I never told my family. I never told my ex. I never tell people on Players Anonymous. I didn't even write anything down in my journal during that time, except for one very odd and incredibly obscure entry, made cryptic because I knew there was no place I could hide my journal that it would not be found. Nevertheless, this whole period of my mission is indelibly written in my memory. It was the only time in the whole two years that I felt scared, unsafe and unhappy.

It was February of 2000. We'd survived Y2K and I had been with Elder Newland, who I loved so much it hurt. He was the first companion where I really felt like an equal, and who really seemed to believe in me as a person and as a missionary. And then it was time for him to go. His leaving is another story in an of itself, but suffice to say I was traumatized. I stayed with Elders Jensen and Roberts for two more days in Maribor, and then transfer day happened - I got on the train by myself, said good-bye to my family, and headed out to the city of Kranj. I made it about an hour, to Celje, before I couldn't stand it anymore and had to read the good-bye letter Elder Newland had left me, even though I promised him I'd wait until I was coming home on the plane. I read his letter telling me that for two years his mission had been dull and hard and boring and he'd wanted to quit, and then I came on the scene and everything was exciting and colorful again, and that I motivated him to try again for the first time in two years. He reminded me of some of our inside jokes, about the blueberry juice intended to get us through the collapse of the world, of the hotdogs in eggs, of the Spinach Rice, and of all the wonderful, hilarious things that had happened to us together. I couldn't help it - I broke down in tears, and cried for the next hour and a half, from Celje to Ljubljana. I had just lost someone rare, and wanted so much to have things go back to the way they were, and not move on.

And that, I guess, was my folly. It was with this unfortunate mindset that I alighted from the train in Ljub to meet my new companion, Elder Rognon. I tried to be okay with this new companionship, but right then at that exact moment, I was worn out from weeping, and I just wanted to retreat into myself. I don't know if he could sense that or what. I did try, however, to invest myself in this new working relationship, and on the bus ride from Ljub to Kranj, I asked about the work in Kranj and if he had any investigators who were taking the missionary discussions and what the door-to-door was like there. I tried to ask him about himself and get to know him, too. Found out he was from a privileged family from the next big city above Salt Lake (I've forgotten now, Bountiful I guess though that doesn't seem right).

I'd known Elder Rognon for a couple of months already, he'd gotten to Slovenija about 8 months previous or so, and he'd been trained by one of my favorite elders when he first arrived. I remembered meeting them on the street in Ljub once when he was headed to a doctor's appointment to fix and ingrown toenail. I knew hew was kind of quiet, I had figured because the language was hard for him, and it was all so new. But at the time I was working in my own sphere while in Ljub, and then he moved away to Kranj, and really I didn't have much of a chance to get to know him because then I moved all the way across the country to Maribor. From then on I'd hear bit's and pieces about him through the missionary grapevine - things like he and Elder Towner were doing amazing work in Kranj together and turning out amazing numbers, and also that he'd recently been dumped by his girlfriend back home. Us Mariborcani just figured that the dumping had spurred him on to do well, and the amount of time he'd been in the country just gave him more confidence finally. Up to my meeting him on the train platform in Ljub that day, that was all I knew about him.

Kranj was a half hour or so away from Ljub by bus, and though there was another companionship of elders there, the city was divided in such a way, and there was so much to do on our own turf, that we barely saw the other two. It was a hell of a long walk from the bus stop to our apartment. It was a relatively new apartment to the mission, and I'd heard it was kind of a bait and switch - you see, the lady who got the contract from the church to rent it out to us had to do a bit of finishing touch work to it, so she let the elders live for a time in her other apartment, one neighborhood over. THAT one was FAN-CY! decorated beautifully, and had all sorts of cool amenities, which I can't remember now, having only been in it once, but I think there was a statue of an elephant, and thick carpeting. While I had been in Maribor, she finished the work on the apartment she intended for them to rent, and they'd moved over.

Well, it was still bigger than any apartment I'd lived in before. The Planina apartment had two bathrooms, two bedrooms (one of which was turned into a study room since missionaries had to sleep in the same room), and a large living room. I even had my own walk-in closet.

And yet something was off. The apartment smelled vile, like B.O. and farts made from sugar. Elder Rognon had taken over the study-bedroom and covered one ENTIRE wall with photos of his ex-girlfriend. There was a lawnchair and an ironing board in the living room and that was it. The astroturf on the balcony had a huge burned spot, and melted wax all over the railings. I took it all in, but decided to hold my tongue for now, and see about cleaning it up on our free-day. I went to put all my stuff away, and Elder Rognon came up and stood in the doorway, I realize now, effectively trapping me in the walk-in closet, as he told me some of his house rules. I said ok to everything at the time, figuring I could make a push to changes stuff later when I was more established. He didn't seem threatening at all right then.

I don't remember what else happened then. I assume we went out to knock on doors. No, wait - he hated doing that. We rarely did work the way I thought was most effective. No, if I cast my mind back, I think that very first night we went to meet some of his investigators. We started out from Planina, our neighborhood, to go into Center - along the way I asked about these investigators, and he told me that he and Elder Towner had run into them tracting (going door-to-door) one evening, and that they were a band and had been rehearsing, and invited the two missionaries in to play pool with them. And that's how those two got 6 investigators at once, teaching them all separately, counting playing pool with them as missionary visits. They inflated their real numbers, counting hanging out with these people as missionary discussions. I pursed my lips, but decided I needed to meet them before I decided what to do with them.

And so we got into the Center of town as the night fell. Elder Rognon lead me down an alley and up a couple flights of stairs, and we entered a bar.

By my sorry memory it was probably a very pretty, very classic, traditional European bar, with muted yellow glass and lampshades all about. And I'd actually taught lots of missionary discussions in pubs before, and gone in for a drink of orange juice or blueberry juice many a time before. But there was a different, uncomfortable aura in this one. As soon as Elder Rognon walked in, the three people inside welcomed him heartily. The bartender, the cocktail waitress and a girl sitting on a bench against the wall and near the bar. All three were members of the band, all three were supposedly "investigating" the church. He introduced me, and the girl sitting told me to come sit by her and tell her about myself. She looked at my name tag, and said in English, "Elder Young, what is your real name?"

I never ever used my real name in Slovenija. We were supposed to be professionals, teaching the people about the church and then moving on, and letting the members care for the new converts. Letting people know your first name created an intimacy that I was always uncomfortable with. Nowadays I wouldn't object to doing it that way, but really, in the cases I was familiar with, if the people got too attached to one missionary, when he was inevitably transferred they lost their connection to the church and stopped trying to learn more. It was more 'economical' for me to remain a professional, to remain Elder Young, to remain just a little bit apart. That never seems to stop investigators from finding out anyway, and I had my full name printed on my Bible if they cared to look, but it was something I felt very uncomfortable giving out at first meeting.

So she asked, "What's your real name?" and I said my little joke that I'd come up with, "It's Elder." "No, what is it really?" "It's Elder. Elder Young. They cancel each other out. My parents were weird." Ha ha, barrel of monkeys I was. She dropped it, figuring, pretty correctly, that I was going to turn out to be a stick in the mud. She pretty much dropped all conversation, I was forgotten and all attention went to Elder Rognon (who they all called David), with the cocktail waitress hanging off his shoulder, and the one (who I secretly called Whore in my head from then on) going over to sit on his lap.

Oh yes, that is SO against missionary rules! Improper physical contact with the opposite gender! I looked away, sure I couldn't be seeing what I was seeing, unsure how to proceed. He and I were now companions, which to me had always previously meant that you watched out for one another, helped them keep the rules, and were always ALWAYS a team. I couldn't tell now if he was breaking the rules because he was intending to, or if he was too naive to see what the girls were up to.

Or if perhaps, my viewpoint was out of whack. As much as I wanted to, I couldn't rule it out. And so I held my tongue still, watching the two girls climb all over him, and wondering if I was missing something.


The second day who knows what we did. Nothing of note, I guess, until that evening when I was supposed to be in Ljubljana to baptize someone. David Bunderla, a wonderful wonderful young man who I first met the previous summer when randomly talking to people on the street, was finally getting baptized.

So whatever else we did that day, Elder Rognon and I made sure that we caught a bus in time to get the Ljub that evening. Two other men were getting baptized that same evening in the little room in our rented church that we all jokingly and very aptly called The Dungeon - Jeremiah Mupartusu and Tomaž Something-or-other. It was the first time in Slovenija history that this many men were getting baptized at once. Usually it was bunches of women. This was also going to be my first appearance back in the Ljubljana Branch Society in around 2 months, and I was very excited to see everyone. We got to the church early where I dressed in my white clothes, and was ready.

And yes, it was lovely to see all my old friends, missionaries and members. But at the same time, as everyone expressed gladness that I was back, they also asked me how it was going, and I didn't have a sure answer to that yet. I didn't feel I could really express any concerns to any of the other elders because I didn't want them to think I was weak. So I kept my sadness at Elder Newland's departure and the confusion I felt toward Elder Rognon inside.

The baptism was as lovely as one ever is, and though I didn't know it, it was the final time I'd ever baptize anyone myself. The after-baptism party was wonderful, and had wonderful food, as usual, and had Anton's DISGUSTING fruit soup - as usual - and the members were so kind and nice to David and the other two men. It was a brilliant evening.

As Elder Rognon and I walked back to the bus stop later that evening he said he guessed it felt pretty good to be someone's missionary, to be the one to have baptized them. He said that I could go home right that moment and have been a successful missionary. I remember feeling embarrassed about that, since I didn't feel like a success - I felt like a screwdriver in God's hand. I also remember mentioning to him on that walk back to the bus for some reason that I wanted a Pony - an old-style Yugoslav bike that folded in the middle and was incredibly portable.

The next day we got down to serious business, and I seem to remember the first of several visits to people from the band, our "investigators". We spent a couple hours with one guy who lived with his mother in an apartment right on the edge of Old Kranj and New Kranj. And those hours were spent with me trying to ascertain how much the guy knew about our church, how much he wanted to know, and how much work he truly wanted to put into finding out (not much). Meanwhile he and Elder Rognon watched TV, played darts, shot the breeze and drank huge glasses of Coke.

That was something I noticed about Elder Rognon - he seemed to drink Coke non-stop all day every day. Coke isn't exactly against the Mormon Word of Wisdom but it was kind of an unspoken, unofficial rule. I personally never drank it, mostly because I hate carbonation, but I'd never before had a real problem with anyone who did. However, the more I watched him drink it, the more I felt sure it was affecting him adversely. He was always hopped up on caffeine and since it was his ONLY liquid of choice, I began to realize that he sweat Coke too. I realized THAT was the source of the foul oder in the apartment - his coke-sweat. He was a very sweaty boy, and he even told me once, probably that same day if memory serves, that as a child his high-acid, unbalanced ph caused his cheap-ass CTR ring metal to turn black over and over, and he thought as a kid that it mean his soul belonged to Satan.

At any rate, during those first few days as I observed him and his Coke-habit, I realized that maybe this could account for his mood swings, and other oddnesses. After another visit with an "investigator" where he had drank most of a 2 liter bottle of Coke, I tried broaching the subject with him. I guess I didn't do it right, and he got very defensive. "The prophets don't care if I drink Coke, Elder Young, and neither should YOU!" he yelled at me while we were walking down a street. I quoted something Gordan B. Hinckley (the prophet at the time) had said about how it wasn't against the Word of Wisdom, but he personally wouldn't drink caffeine drinks, and he would hope that we wouldn't either, or something like that. Elder Rognon called me a liar, which I HATE and I went on the defensive, too. He told some fable about an elder he knew back in the Missionary Training Center, who had somehow been interviewed President Monson, the 1st counselor to the prophet in his own office, and how President Monson opened a refrigerator in his office and offered the mysterious friend of a friend of Elder Rognon a Coke and that PROVED it was okay!

Okay, he could do whatever he wanted, and he certainly didn't have to listen to me, but I didn't have to talk to him either, especially not if he was going to call me a liar. So I stopped talking, and needless to say the day was a long one, fraught with stress, and not a single person let us in to talk about the church.

The next day started out with more of the same - terse words at breakfast and on our way out to the country to knock on doors. After arriving at the designated place, and knocking on three doors to no avail, I knew I had to do something. I apologized to him, to get the ball rolling, and when that didn't seem to do it I did what I do best - make an absurd and shocking choice that's difficult to ignore. I told him to follow me, and stepped off the road into a pasture, and walked to the middle where I sat down amongst the cow pies. Shaking his head he followed me and I told him that there I was, trying to be humble, sitting there among manure, ready to get to know, sympathize, and empathize with him.

We both opened up that day, and he explained to me that he suffered from manic depression - he was bi polar, and it ran in his family. I listened as carefully as I could. He told me that he had been depressed for the first several months in the country and that was how I first got to know him. He told me that for a long time, every bridge that he had walked over in Slovenija, he had wanted to jump off. He said that I could never understand what it was like to be suicidal. I told him I thought I could understand actually, and that in high school I had felt so alone during one period that I once wondered what would happen if I opened my bedroom window and just rolled off the bed, out the window and let myself fall two stories to the cement below.

I thought we had bonded, I thought we had understood each other there in the field of cow pies that day. I thought that if I let myself be open to him, emotionally vulnerable, he would be able to trust me, and we could work through his depressions, and his manic episodes, together. I didn't realize what I was doing. I didn't know that he had no intention of giving up control of his show in this town.

For the rest of the week I tried to help him find worthwhile investigators, I was a peppy as possible about going door-to-door, I talked him into finally saying goodbye to the band members, since it was obvious that none of them were really interested in the church and only liked hanging out with the Americans (one of whom acted stoned a lot of the time). I thought everything was going well, but at the same time I was getting more and more confused about Rognon and his interactions toward me. I was technically the senior companion, but I had to run everything by him first. He was the first companion I'd had who was taller than me, bigger than me. I was afraid, somewhere in the back of my head, that if he was unhappy with me, he could beat me up. I kept trying to make each day as normal and productive as possible, and yet I could feel him lagging. I didn't know if it was because he was tired or if he was trying to hold me back.

One evening I was sitting at the kitchen table, studying the Book of Mormon, while Elder Rognon was on the phone in the bedroom talking to one of his friends in Croatia, a missionary he'd arrived with. For some reason he thought it was okay to call Croatia when he felt like it, and he'd always call other elders throughout Slovenija just to chat. I felt that the phone was a tool, and using to idly chat with others where were also supposed to be working was wasteful. Plus, we were expected to pay the phone bills from our own pockets. In the back of my head I knew I was going to itemize this next phone bill instead of splitting it evenly down the middle like usual.

At any rate, I knew I wanted to talk to him again, get us on the same page again, express my dismay at some of his behaviors and see what we could do to compromise. I just couldn't figure out how to, since I was afraid of his temper, though I couldn't even admit that in my head as such. As I was reading the Book of Mormon, a scripture stuck out to my mind, where Alma and I believe Amulek had been tied up by the bad guys and forced to watch as the sacred scriptures, and the believers were thrown into a fire. Amulek was getting high strung about it all, but Alma was all, "If they burn us, then they burn us, but the work WILL go on." It felt like a rallying cry to me - "If he gets angry then he gets angry (and maybe beats me), but the work WILL go on!" I steeled my nerves and went into the bedroom to talk.

And I thought the talk went well-ish. According to my vague journal entry, he tried to burn me, but I persevered, and came out with both of us understanding more...

I thought.

The next day was a P-day, a day off, and we ended up in Ljubljana again. Most of the other elders were going to play basket ball, but I didn't want to, and had prepared to write letters home instead. However, it turned out that Elder Budge didn't want to play basket ball either, but instead invited me to go with him to take a walk around Ljubljana with David Bunderla. That was a pleasant idea AND an escape from Elder Rognon, who was only getting more and more trying by the day. His bipolar medicine made him loopy, he claimed, and ADHD. So I took the opportunity and ran away with Elder Budge.

As we walked to the meeting place Elder Budge had a chance to fill me in. We'd known each other from the very beginning, since the Missionary Training Center, and when he asked how I was, I felt that I could finally open up about how stressful it all was. He told me that everyone could see Elder Rognon's deterioration for the last month, and as the direct supervisor over that area he had wanted to get Elder Rognon fixed. He told me that he had prayed me back from Maribor, that I was an answer to his prayers about how to help Elder Rognon, that I seemed to have a calming influence over anyone I was near, and that he had hoped I could work that same magic over Elder Rognon. He had trained Elder Rognon when he'd arrived 8 months previous and he thought that Elder Rognon was a good missionary who just needed someone like me to guide him. I told him that I had sensed that very very thing from the mission president and all the senior missionaries, too. I could tell that everyone was hoping I could fix him, but I admitted to Elder Budge that I hadn't a clue how.

The Sunday before, I'd spoken to most of the senior missionaries about it all, explaining that I was still missing Elder Newland and I didn't know what to do about Elder Rognon. Sister Hubbard had said to me, "Treat Elder Rognon the way Elder Newland would have, with patience and dignity. You have to be your most calm now, and most mature. He's acting childish, but you and I both know that the only people who are truly allowed to be childish are those who are mature, because they already know who they are."

Elder Wilding patted me on the back, and Sister Wilding clasped my hand in hers and whispered, "If it helps Elder, we all know..." I had wanted to talk to President Strong and find out what he wanted me to do with this situation, but he was in Croatia that Sunday, so I'd have to wait. I decided to hold onto all that the other adults had said to me, and it had gotten me through to this P-day where Elder Budge was now essentially telling me the same thing. I wished I could say, "Why didn't you pray someone ELSE here instead?!" but thinking about it, it did seem like I was the only one equipped to do what needed to be done. The responsibility felt ENORMOUS.

At any rate, Elder Budge and I met up with David Bunderla, and walked around Ljubljana, and on up to the castle (which I think is the only time I ever visited that castle). From the tower you could see the apartments of each companionship of missionaries in the city. I kept looking at my old house way over in Fužineand thinking that as much as I felt like an awkward little kid then, I'd give anything now to go back to that moment. But life can only go forward, as I was wont to keep telling myself those days, and after a couple more deep breaths, I steeled myself to go back and join up with the other elders again, and go back to Kranj with Elder Rognon, and work our tails off, and do what everyone was hoping I could, and fix him.

Breathe, just breathe.

We dropped David off again, and walked back to the park where the rest of the missionaries were. Everyone began to split back up to go home; I saw Elder Rognon coming toward me, gritting his teeth and hobbling.

Elder Rognon hobbled over to me, grimacing, after playing basketball all afternoon. I wasn't particularly sensitive towards his plight since I certainly didn't put it past him to fake an injury just to get out of work. On the way home to Kranj I asked what had happened, and he admitted that he had some shoe inserts that the doctor gave him which he was supposed to wear when playing sports, and that that day he didn't use them. I asked what the inserts were for, and he said that he'd had a known hairline fracture across the top of his foot that they were trying not to exacerbate.

The next day he was moving slow and seemed in a lot of pain, so we reported the Elder Budge, the district leader, that we were taking a sick day, and then Elder Rognon scheduled an appointment with a doctor for the next morning. I think we must have had an appointment set up for that next day, because what I remember was NOT going with him to the doctor - I believe I went on splits with Elder Moss, and ... could it have been Elders Swapp and Begic who took him to a doctor? That's the way my memory is running. At any rate, I went out and worked that day, and arrived home to find Elder Rognon laid up in bed with a giant cast on his foot.

Slovene medicine is not subtle. They put people in casts for everything. I met someone on a buss once who had a cast from his fingertips to his shoulder and covering his head but for right around his eyes and nose, who'd only had a hangnail. They put people in casts for sunburn and cancer.

And now here was Elder Rognon in a walking cast. Whichever elder had taken him to a doctor pulled me aside and said that the doctors, who usually liberally apply the plaster, didn't feel it was necessary in this case, but that Elder Rognon had insisted. Ok, so he had not needed the cast, but instead had gone and added another hindrance? Oh dear. We stayed in that day, too. Someone somewhere had produced a pair of crutches, but Elder Rognon was awkward on them, so when I coaxed him out of the house the next day to go to the old folks home a couple neighborhoods over to visit the old lady we were assigned to for service, he wandered away from her room, leaving me alone with Gospa, and came back eventually with a wheelchair. Yes, he stole a wheelchair from an old folks home even though his cast was equipped to be walked on. I rolled my eyes, but felt I had little control over any of this anymore.

Elder Rognon was a large lad, and the cheap-ass wheelchair was small for him, so he made me push him around in it. I simply conceded and did it. Sometimes, in the story I tell in my head, I say that he made me push him around town until one day I pushed him down a long hill, a la Little House on the Prairie and Nellie Oleson - as much fun as that would make my story, I have to admit that that didn't happen. I didn't stand up for myself. I pushed him around in the stolen wheelchair from place to place, from neighborhood to neighborhood, through the center of Kranj and everything. After a few days I decided the embarrassment wasn't worth it and I suggested that we stay in, to which he gladly agreed, apparently achieving the goal he'd had all along. So we stayed in, doing no work, until more word from the doctor came, which we were expecting the next week.

I continued to get up at 6 or earlier and had personal scripture study, but no companionship study, since he remained in bed until late each morning. The house was big enough that we were able to keep out of each other's way during the day. I found a hand-held electronic solitaire game in one of the kitchen cupboards behind some soup, presumably left there from the previous Elder Towner. I remember one day sitting at the kitchen table playing that game from 9 am to 7 pm, when it got dark. That was the day I felt the most useless. Other days that week, I would read church magazines or study the Bible or the Book of Mormon. Elder Rognon would spend part of each day tying up the phone, calling around to the other apartments in the mission to see if any one was home and would answer, or calling Croatia.

I also remember one day where he sat in the "study" that was actually a shrine to the girlfriend who dumped him with all the pictures all over the wall. He sat there listening to a tape she had made for him pre-breakup, and I could hear her "David, beyond a shadow of a doubt I will always love you." Brzzzzt, as he rewound the tape. "David, beyond a shadow of a doubt I will always love you." Brzzzzt, "David, beyond a shadow of a doubt I will always love you." Brzzzzt, "David, beyond a shadow of a doubt I will always love you." Brzzzzt, "David, beyond a shadow of a doubt I will always love you." It was sad and creepy.

During this period he manipulated the phone, and if I spoke on it at all he'd listen and monitor me, to make sure he knew what I was saying about him. Each week we were supposed to write a short letter/report to the mission president to let him know how the work was going and how we were, but Elder Rognon made me show him the letters I wrote (and I complied WHY?!?!), so I didn't write too much in there. I had no life line to President Strong, I had no way to talk to the other missionaries, I couldn't even see the two elders who lived and worked on the other side of the city. I felt so alone and helpless and trapped. I spent all day inside the house with him, and no one else to talk to.

Sometimes, at night after he went to sleep, I'd get up again, and go stand in my walk in closet. There was a window in there that looked out across the way at another apartment building. I remember a couple of times standing there for an hour or two with my face pressed against the glass, just watching all the other people in their houses, wishing I was anywhere but trapped in a closet in a house with a man I didn't trust. Then I'd go back to bed, having to do it all over again the next day.

The next week Elder Rognon got word from the doctor that he should be fine walking on his cast, so I made him return the wheelchair when we went to visit the rest home again. I could tell he was disappointed, I believe having hoped that the doctor would send him home instead. But he gathered up his crutches and away we went again, to try and be missionaries. His heart wasn't in it anymore though, and we were not very effective at all, tension between us, him a lumbering giant on tiny crutches, knocking on doors. No one wanted to let us in, of course.

His behavior seemed to get more and more erratic and unpredictable. One night we were walking home across town, when he spotted two men together, almost a mirror image of us. "Look, Jehovah's Witnesses" he said. "Mmhmm," I responded. "Hey Jehovci! C'mere!" he yelled, and while I blushed in embarrassment from my crown to my toes, he lumbered over to them, and demanded a copy of the Watchtower. They said no, and that they objected to being called 'jehovci' a nickname they apparently didn't like. They asked how he would like being called a derogatory nickname, and he said he'd respond to it and he didn't know why they wouldn't.

He kept pestering them for a magazine, and they kept denying him, saying that he didn't even know what the magazine was for. I knew the only way to make him stop was to get him a magazine, and since I had actually read that month's Watchtower I asked for one nicely, explaining that I knew it was the issue with the article about the Argentinian Dwarf-ladies who preached, and that there was a picture of one of them being menaced by a large dog. They were impressed with my knowledge of their stuff (but it was really only because Elder Newland and I had received a copy earlier that month and were so amused by the Argentinian dwarf-ladies and cut out the pictures to use in humorous cards to each other before he left), that they gave me a copy, asking that I not let HIM have it. I said I'd do my best.

And of course when we got home he snatched it from me, got bored with it minutes later, and threw it away. I picked it out of the trash and saved the dwarfy pictures to make more funny cards to send home to Elder Newland.

Kranj is such a pretty town, built on a group of hills, bisected in a couple of places by ravines and a river, if I recall. Old town Center looks very European with cobblestones, old square buildings, and three churches within spitting distance of each other. To the north, I believe, is the direction the town grew during communist days, complete with large muscular statues of people farming. To the south-east the town was still growing, much more modern in its building style... relatively. It was a chore, but an attainable one, to walk from one end of town to the other. I was there just as winter gave way to spring. It should have been a lovely time.

A short time after I made him return the wheelchair to the old folks home, Elder Rognon gave up and pretty much set his sights on home. It was nigh to impossible to get him out the door, and when I did I always regretted it or felt ashamed. One day we were actually out, knocking on doors in a lovely neighborhood near where a new grocery store had recently been built. It was maybe close to lunchtime, and Elder Rognon suggested we go grab something to eat at the Interspar. I wasn't too hungry, but had given up fighting him, so we went into the store, and I picked out a good-looking apple. I turned around, satisfied with my choice, and found him running up and down the aisles, loading up a cart with all sorts of food.

"Elder Rognon, what are you doing?!" I said.

"It's called impulse shopping! Elder Hubbard told us to do it at the last zone conference!" he claimed.

"No, he told us about PULSE shopping, which was something about buying grains and how foods that help the heart are generally cheaper." Elder Hubbard was the financial person for the mission, and often gave us lessons about budgeting or wise spending.

"No, he said IMpulse shopping!" Elder Rognon claimed. "Whatever you have an impulse to buy, get it! Don't you listen?" And he kept tossing stuff into his cart. Shaking my head, I followed him all over the store, holding my apple. When we got to the checkout finally, he intended to pay with his American credit card. The girl at the till explained that she could take cash, but not his foreign card, so as he loomed over her, he asked if he could leave all his stuff, bagged, behind her counter and we'd be back for it. She simply nodded, wide-eyed. Watching people not familiar with him was pitiable - they just had no idea what to make of this giant, ox-like American in an ill-fitting suit who sweated on them and spoke funny Slovene. All I could do was shrug at her.

We walked three blocks to the bank, and after quite a lunchtime wait he finally withdrew enough cash to pay for his groceries. I had already eaten my apple, and threw the core away in a bin at the bank. We walked back to the Interspar, whereupon he paid for his stuff and we left. With a bunch of groceries we couldn't get back to knocking on doors now - we'd have to go home. Clever of him to buy bags and bags of food all the way across town when we had a grocery store right next door in the first place. As punishment I made him carry all the bags, some of which were filled with canned food, all the way back himself. I'm not the one who decided to go impulse shopping in the middle of the day, and I certainly wasn't the one to take pity on him as his fingers cramped from the heavy bags as we walked the three or four miles home.

Another day when we happened to be out, near that same grocery store incidentally, he got it into his head that he wanted a set of Slovene license plates to bring home with him. Other missionaries had been gifted some, or found abandon ones on the roads. He didn't have time to wait for some to fall into his lap - he decided to take some that were currently in use. Though I initially protested, I eventually just watched as he tried several plates off cars in the grocery store parking lot to see if he could find any that were loose. Eventually he prised off a set and, with me sighing, we set off home to store them away.

I had mentioned to him once that I wanted a Pony - the Yugoslav folding bike, so he decided that he wanted one too. When one was left unattended in our apartment building's courtyard he took it. He didn't seem to hear me at all when I said that it wasn't his to take, simply saying "You wanted one, I got you one!" When I refused it, he rode it himself, to make it easier on his cast, he claimed. It was such a hassle to go out with him, that I finally gave up myself, and we just planned to stay in most of the time. At least it stopped his heists.

He was sure he was going home any time, and began calling the friends he'd made in Kranj to come over to our house to say goodbye. It was my opinion that people not know where missionaries lived - I'd rather them believe that we formed from the morning mist to do our work, knowledgeable in the ways of God, and when the stars began to winkle in the sky, we faded into the shadows to wait the return of the next day of work. I know, it's silly, but I liked to be private and professional - kind but not overly familiar. That's just me. So I objected to his inviting people over - I had work to do and things to study, and was hardly in the mood to play host.

Especially not with girls. It was a rule, a principle, a law that members of the opposite gender were NOT to be in an elder's apartment, and same with the sisters. When the doorbell rang one night, and there stood his friends Skank and Whore with a plate of cake, I was taken quite by surprise. He was resting in bed, and invited them into the bedroom to see him, which completely short-circuited me. I went into the kitchen and stood there clutching my nails deeper and deeper into my palms. At first I thought, "Well, it's his grave he's digging, let him do whatever he wants!" But then I realized that it seemed to me a very likely possibility that sexual relations might happen in that bedroom, and IT WAS MY BEDROOM TOO! I had every right to take control of that room, of the situation, OF MY HOUSE!

I barged into the bedroom where they were all on his bed, clapped my hands and said, "Okay, time to go!"

"Elder Young, this is their plate," he said, pointing at the food they'd brought him. "They can't go until there's no cake left on the plate."

For all the world I don't know where I got the moxie. I stared at them all, took a breath, grabbed the plate, dumped the cake in the trash can, and slammed the empty plate down on top of the desk in the room. "It's empty. You can go now," I said. They all gave me disgusted looks but got up anyway. I followed them down the hall to the door, saying in Croatian "Idemo Kući," which means "We all go home now", but kind of in the way you talk to children or dogs. They walked out, I locked the door, and then I stayed out of his way for the rest of the night.

He kept claiming that it was his bipolar meds that were making him this way, but I swear by all the Divas on Broadway that he could have controlled his behavior if he wanted, he just plain didn't want to. And for the most part he found in me someone he could walk all over. At this point, when it was time for bed I'd lay down, and he'd get up, saying he just wanted to take a bath. We weren't really supposed to do that, but I was too tired of it all to care anymore. So I'd fall asleep to him running the bathwater every night.

This is how it went for nearly four weeks. We had weekly meetings with our district, but he was always there so I couldn't tell anyone what was going on. We had church in Ljubljana each Sunday, and I got a few private moments here and there with the Hubbards or the Wildings but not enough to explain the depth of it all, and they mostly thought I just still missed Elder Newland.

And I did. One night in the middle of all this I dreamed I was standing on a high, jutting cliff, all by myself, way up in the sky amongst the stars. For a long time I just stood there looking into the blackness, breezes blowing around me gently. Then Elder Newland flew up on a levitating purple couch. I sat down next to him and the couch flew away from the cliff into the dark sky. I leaned on his shoulder and he put his arm around me and stroked my hair and said, "Don't worry Elder Young, everything will be okay." When I woke up all I could do was hope that he was right.

During all this President Strong had been busy in Croatia and so on, so it was with great relief that finally finally finally we were going to have another zone conference, and with zone conference came private president interviews. Somehow I made it through the day sitting next to Elder Rognon, and lunch with everyone, and then the afternoon session of our conference. I remember it was getting on in the evening, with dusk lowering, when President Strong finally called Elder Rognon into the room where he was doing the interviews. I had a blessed few moments alone with the other missionaries, and I remember feeling nervous but not sharing that with anyone.

After a while Elder Rognon came out and told me President Strong was waiting for me now, and as I passed him on the gangway he whispered so only I could hear, "Don't talk about me in there." I looked down at my feet, nodded and knew I was going to do just the opposite. I went into the far office the President was in, shut the door and sat down.

President Strong looked at me in the piercing way he had and asked in his deep rumbling voice, "How are you Elder Young?"

I slouched back into my chair, and let all the tiredness onto my face finally. "I need to scream, President."

He looked back at me with understanding. "Then scream, Elder Young."

For a moment I considered it - it would be such a release. But then I got self-conscious that all the other missionaries and any member who might be in the main part of the church would hear and wonder what on Earth was going on. So instead I breathed deeply for a few seconds, and then admitted, "I'm too tired."

"Tell me what's been going on, Elder Young," he said, and I opened up for the first time in a month, safe, and in private. I told him about all the things that had been going wrong, I said that I felt like everyone was expecting me to magically fix Elder Rock-Noggin, and that I didn't think I was strong enough. I admitted that he was the first companion I'd had who was taller than me, and that there were moments that I really feared for my own physical safety. I told him that I felt like a failure, that I felt like I was letting him down. I told him I'd do whatever he needed me to, but that I was plain tired out by this all.

President Strong listened quietly, and at the end told me that he would be making changes soon, and for now I was to just sit tight. I wanted to cry because there was no indication of how long "soon" was going to be, but as we stood up to end the interview President Strong pulled me into a strong, tight hug. I didn't want that hug to end. Why? Because when it did, I'd still have no idea what to do, and would still have to go home with Elder Rognon alone.

Meta-post: I have GOT to talk about my niece!

Last week I was over at my brother's house. He and his wife were cleaning vigorously, so I was all set to entertain the kids - little did I know Lily intended it to be the other way 'round.

She was carrying a miniature hymnbook, and said, "Ok, I will tell you a story. There once was a boy named Jeremy who was almost sixteen."

I smiled.

"Then, before he blew out his candles Ursula the sea witch came and took his voice and all his breath!"

"Oh dear!" I said.

"Then Ariel came and saved him, and Ursula died because she was bad. The end."

I told her that was a very good story, and wondered at a world that was so black and white that people just died from being evil.

"Ok," she said, "I'll tell you another one. There once was a boy named Jeremy..."

"No," I said, "I don't want a story about me. Tell me one about a goose! Named Crystal!"

Lily looked at me askance, and then said, "Ok, once there was a goose named Crystal. She lived on a river, and she had lots of babies, but one of the babies was blind, and always swam in the wrong direction. Then it got lost and started to cry."

"Wait," I said, "what does a crying baby goose sound like?"

She did a pretty good imitation for me.

"Ok, thanks," I said.

"Now the baby goose was called Blagle, and it was blind, and lost and crying, and then it found it's way back, and Crystal was happy and glided with glee, the end."

Glided with glee?!?! I wanted to clap my hands at her alliteration, and wondered if she did it on purpose or not. I grinned big and told her thank you.

"Now please tell me another story about a pencil," I made up wildly off the top of my head, "named Bob!"

"There once was a pencil named Bob, and he was thiiiiis big," she held up her fingers.

"He was a small pencil, huh?" I asked.

"Yes. He was smaller than a button!"

"Oooh, tell me about Bob the pencil who was smaller than a button!"

"Well, he had an eraser for hair. It was his birthday, and before he could blow out his candles Ursula the sea witch came and took his voice..."

Every story after that contained Ursula being all threatening, and a birthday, and candles at some point. I kept trying to make up crazy characters to stump her but she rose to every challenge, and kept surprising me with her little observant ways, and her seeming natural gift at alliterative prose. It was the best story I've been told in a long time.

Slovene Sunday - Word Play

Tilen Fidler Joined the church in Maribor as a teenager, making the decision alone. Most teenage converts in Slovenija joined with their parents or other family members, or had to wait until they were considered adult and not have to do what their parents said. But Tilen decided all on his own. His parents were both nice and as supportive as they knew how to be. Because he was still just a kid and had no familial support network to continue to be active in the church, the missionaries, especially the elders tried to be as involved as possible with him.

One particular evening my companion Elder Newland and I went to Tilen's house to help him prepare a game for the branch's Family Home Evening later that week. Tilen had decided on a sort of trivia game and we were trying to help him come up with good questions. I seem to recall that it was a geography-themed trivia game, so all the questions we had to come up with needed to do with places and sights to behold or something. We may even have been getting the questions from a book and helping Tilen translate them into Slovene, which would explain our being there, actually.

We came to one question that he wanted to use: Where is the biggest rock on Earth? That would be a rock in Australia. Elder Newland was sitting back in the Fidler's dining nook, and letting me do most of the translating, which was actually a big help to me, as I'd only been there for about a year, and needed work on my language skills.

Where, as an interrogative - Kje? Where is - Kje je?

Biggest - here I had a trick. The word for Big was Velik, but the modifiers for -er and -est, which are adding -či to the end and naj- to the beginning, do not go with the word Velik. Bigger - Velikči? Biggest - Najvelikči? No. That's just stupid. The way to do it is to add the superlative modifiers to the word that generally means More - Več. Veči - bigger. Največji - biggest. There, much better! Kje je največji - where is the biggest?

On Earth was easy, we used that phrase all the time as missionaries - na svetu. Na Zemlji actually made more sense to me because it was an exact translation, but the proper, commonly used phrase was Na svetu. Ok.

Rock. The only word I knew was the word for stone - kamen. Where is the biggest stone on Earth? Kje je največji kamen na svetu?

But no, I couldn't just leave it. Feigning ignorance I added the diminutive -ček to the word kamen. Kamenček didn't mean a rock, it meant a little rock, a pebble. Smiling to myself I said the phrase out loud to Tilen and Elder Newland. My superlatives and my diminutive essentially canceled each other out.

"Kje je največji kamenček na svetu?" "Where is the biggest pebble in the world?" I asked the two of them?

"Kamenček? Kamenček?" Tilen asked. And then he burst into laughter at the literal absurdity I had just spoken. Elder Newland followed suit, and I continued to smile to myself, knowing that my playing with the language resulted in causing them merriment. Eventually we settled down and finished the game questions, but ever after all I had to do was look at Tilen and ask, "Kje je največji kamenček na svetu?" and he would just laugh and shake his head at Crazy Elder Young, who thought that the biggest pebble on Earth lay in Australia.

Slovene Sunday - Giving Thanks

In November of 1999 I was living Ljubljana Slovenija. I'd been there since the previous June and by this time was feeling really really comfortable in the city. There were lots of people whose paths I crossed all the time, and who I had begun to recognize, and/or feel like I knew a bit. One of these was the woman who lived in the red porno booth just outside Tivoli Park on Celovska Cesta. And by 'lived' I mean worked, and by 'porno booth' I mean the red booth where you buy bus zetoni (tokens), and magazines - some of which were porn, and prominently displayed.

When we bought bus tokens we would have to look at her and only her - kind of a game to not let our eyes stray. (Tangent: it was never as big a deal for me to not look at the naked lady magazines as it was for the other missionaries - huh, wonder why...) I went so far as to hold longer-than-neccesary conversations with her. I got to really like her - she spent so much time in that small booth every day, and yet she was never mean or cranky to me. I wondered about her from time to time, and her life.

This November, for English class we were going to have An American Thanksgiving Dinner. Thanksgiving isn't observed in Slovenija and we missionaries thought it would be fun to show our students some of the cultural quirks of the holiday. We missionaries spent a great deal of the day preparing the dinner for the 30 or so Slovenes, and when they started arriving for class we arranged them into 'families'. I thought I was funny, and tried to teach some of the people in my 'family' to use passive-aggressive English. The dinner got underway and we missionaries were serving, back and forth from the kitchen. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food, though most everyone was eating small small portions, as per usual for Slovenes.

I don't know what made me think of her, but The Red-Booth Lady crossed my mind. There we were all in the church eating dinner together, and there she was out in her porno booth all alone. I don't know if she felt alone right then, or if she even cared, but I felt for her. I went into the kitchen and made up a plate of Thanksgiving dinner for her. Missionaries weren't supposed to go anywhere alone, but I couldn't get any of the elders to come out with me, so I asked one of the guys in the English class to come out with me on an errand. We walked out of the church with the warm plate of food, down the stairs and across the courtyard. We walked out onto the street and down a couple yards to the red-booth.

She looked up when I stopped in front of her window, and I held out the plate and a fork. I explained in Slovene that upstairs were were celebrating the American holiday of food, and I thought of her and that she might like a plate. She smiled. She really smiled for the first time since I'd known her. She put her hand on her heart and tipped her head, and said Thanks! Najlepsa Hvala! I smiled back at her and went back inside and continued the English class. Later I went back to get the plate and fork, and she said thank you again, and said it was a delicious dinner.

It would make a more missionaryish story if she had brought the plate back to the church of her own volition, and saw what nice people there were while she was there, and stayed, and came back on Sundays and took the missionary discussions and gotten baptized and was now the Relief Society President. But none of that happened. I didn't get much of a chance to talk to her again, and was transferred across the country to Maribor the next month. When I did come back to Ljubljana she wasn't working in the red booth anymore - I never ran across her again. Not a super-missionary ending to the story. However I don't care - her smile when I gave her the plate is enough. For a moment she was more than the lady in the porno booth to me, she was someone I cared about.

Slovene Sunday - Angelic Ice Cream

A cheery Slovenija story, as a matter of fact.

Once, during my first 4 or 5 months in the country, while I lived in Celje my companion Elder Jensen and I were walking down the street. I forget where we were going, but it was in the direction of our apartment, so I imagine we were going home for lunch or something. I remember the sky was overcast, so the light was making everything more vivid. He and I were walking a block north of our usual route, not past the theatre but on the street that would take us past the hospital instead.

When we were about 100 yards from the hospital entrance two people stepped out the doors and continued down the street ahead of us - a man and a woman, both dressed in white from head to toe and very obviously nurses or hospital staff. With the diffused light making the yellow brick of the hospital glow gold, the leaves of the trees look fluorescent green, and anything grey, black or blue melt together, the white of their uniforms shone brilliantly. I decided immediately that they were angels.

The angels walked about a half a block ahead of Elder Jensen and I. The woman was short and round with dark curls up on top of her head. She wore white tennis shoes. The man with her was taller than she by a good foot, and had dark hair also that fell across his forehead - I could see when he turned to talk to her. I told Elder Jensen that they were the Angels of the Celje Hospital. He, in the spirit of humoring me, agreed and said they they were two really strong personalities, and that they probably handled most of the crises in the hospital. Since no one else walking down the street seemed to notice them, look at them or whatnot, we began to believe they really were angels.

As we followed them down the street, we wondered what they were doing out of the hospital. They crossed the street far ahead of us, and we watched them go over to the red ice cream booth. As we drew neared, they pointed, ordered and paid for two ice cream cones. I smiled at the two angels who left the hospital to get ice cream cones. They turned to head back to the hospital, and I saw the lady angel going HAUM HAUM on her cone and the guy angel had ice cream on his upper lip. We dark-clad missionaries of God nodded to the light-clad emissaries of God, who nodded back while licking their lips. They returned to their business of guarding the hospital of Celje, and Elder Jensen and I decided we deserved a cone each, too. With Angleški Juha flavored ice cream.

Slovene Sunday - Trumpet Out Louise!

Summer of 2000, I was living in Maribor, currently with my companion Elder Wettstein. We were lucky enough to have the neighborhood of Nova Vas in our area, which neighborhood was filled - FILLED - with tall bloks, or apartment buildings. We knocked on doors there very often because of the sheer number of people all concentrated in one small area.



One fine day, as we were heading through the mazes of buildings on our way back to the bus stop so the we could make an appointment at the church back in Center, I heard a trumpeting sound. As we drew nearer to the outer edge of the particular clump of bloks the noise got louder, and I was able to pinpoint it - we rounded one corner, and there, halfway along the avenue, leaning on the railing of her balcony, was an old babica. She seemed to be enjoying the late afternoon air, waiting for the sunset, arms crossed, very relaxed-looking. And she had a bugle in one hand.

Every so often she'd raise it to her mouth, and toot out a merry little melody out into the courtyard, just in general. She was tooting away as we walked directly by her, and I smiled at the sight of this old lady, enjoying herself by playing her bugle. She saw me smile, too the bugle from her lips and saluted me with it. I grinned and waved at her, and she put it to her lips again, and played a jaunty little marching tune as Elder Wettstein and I walked out of sight.

Slovene Sunday - Hypnotized by a Gypsy

Elder Jensen and I had come down on the train from Celje. We were in Ljubljana for Zone Conference with all the other missionaries, but we had come a bit early. I'm not sure why really, but Elder Jensen had lived in Ljubljana just a few months previous, and I'm sure it still felt like home to him, and he wanted some time to just BE in the city he had loved.

So we were wandering around the center of the city, and he was showing me the sights. This wasn't my first time in Ljubljana, but it was the first time I wasn't rushed and there wasn't piles and piles of snow. I could finally take in this magnificent city! We'd walked from the train station, and my eyes had been wide the whole time, looking at all the buildings on our way, and the people, and I'd turned my Slovene ears up all the way so I could try and understand the people. In Ljub they had a different way of speaking than in Celje - it was slower, but also more back in the throat, and it was unfamiliar enough that I really really had to strain to understand what was going on.

We walked to Preseren's Square, and up Copova Street for a bit. Then, since it was so sunny and he didn't want us stuck in the shadows of the buildings for too long, Elder Jensen led me back to the Square, and across one of the bridges over the Lubljanica River. I think we were now on what translated to Fish Street, and it was full of shops and touristy things. The restaurants were one street farther in, which I would learn in a few months when I became a resident of the city myself, but for now I was happy with what I was seeing.

Warmth from the sun radiated everywhere, and it was actually a very very beautiful day. We'd walked quite a ways, and Elder Jensen decided to sit on the low wall that separated the street from the steeply sloping bank to the river. We had been sitting that way in silence for a few minute (or more likely I had been asking him questions about the cit because I was curious and he liked to be the know-it-all) when I saw a gypsy beggar-girl walking toward us.

She was probably 18 or 19 and had a baby with her, and he was, I suppose, pretty. She had long dark hair in a ponytail or braid, and she was skinny without being bony. She came up to us and said something in the whiny intonation that gypsies used. I had been taught by my previous companion to ignore all gypsy beggars, so I turned slightly away. Besides, she had an even differenter accent than the Ljubljanans and I couldn't understand word one without major effort. But Elder Jensen could.

He knew what she was saying, and that compounded on the fact that he was straight Straight STRAIGHT! I don't think any of my other companions were affected by women in quite the same way Elder Jensen was.

I just have to stop here for a second and say that I did not realize I was gay while I was a missionary. Women never held quite the temptation to ogle, that they did for all my other companions. Without a doubt, every single one of my eleven companions were straight males, and they dealt with their repressed missionary horniness in different ways and to different degrees, and I was more disappointed with some than with others. I could never understand why it was so easy for me to ignore women and girls, when it was SO difficult for them to - I just thought I was perfecter or something, more spiritually-minded or that I could see people, whereas they could only see objects to secretly lust over. Nevermind that I would steal glances at the handsome men I happened to meet, and sometimes my companions, too. Shhh.

At any rate, Elder Jensen seemed to be the most strongly affected, and this was the first time I got to see it in action. As I turned away from the guttersnipe, Elder Jensen turned toward her. He gave her all of his attention, and she in turn told him her story, I assume - I couldn't understand much of it. I hear the word for money, so I assumed she was asking for some. He kept saying that he couldn't give her anything, and that's how it went for a few minutes. Her story got more complex and harder for me to follow, and he kept repeating himself, but with a kind of glazed look in his eyes.

Eventually I heard him say OK, and then he stood up. She turned and walked away, and he just followed. Walked completely away from me WHICH YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO! He even left his missionary bag sitting on the bench. She had somehow hypnotized him with her gypsy-voice, and he was off to do her bidding! I was stunned and slack-jawed at the power women could have over men, and also that he seemed to have totally forgotten about me. After a second I snapped to my duty to never leave his side - I grabbed the bag he had abandoned, clutched my own bag, and ran after them. There wasn't much talking between the two, and I trailed behind, forgotten, and misplaced.

We walked back over the bridge and into Preseren's Square again, and all the way up Copova. We crossed Slovenska Street and went into the department store Nama, and took the escalator down to the basement floor where there was a small grocery/convenience store. I still followed behind, and still no one said much. The gypsy girl went to the baby aisle and after a short deliberation picked out a package of disposable diapers. Elder Jensen took them from her, and then we went and stood in line, where he paid for them. She thanked him profusely (that much I DID understand), and then she left our lives, smoothly, up the escalator. Elder Jensen watched her all the way up until she was out of sight.

Then he snapped out of her spell, heaved a breath and shook himself. "Oh!" he said, "I forgot where I was!" I don't know if it was true or just an act for my benefit. He claimed that he had completely forgotten where he was and what he was all about. I was pissed that that included forgetting about me, for a dumb GIRL, which we had sworn off as missionaries. He deflected by thanking me for keeping my head and remembering his bag. I still wasn't sure what to think, but began trying to learn the city so that if anything like that happened again, I wouldn't be completely lost and would be able to take care of myself.

"C'mon Elder Young," Elder Jensen said, "Let me buy you an ice cream from this great shop I know - you'll love it!" So off we went to enjoy more of the city.

Sorry

Again, no Slovene stories this weekend. I'm leaving for LA tonight to see Miss Coco Peru in PERSON tomorrow!



And I get to go with my dear friend Cheri, and stay in wonderful hotels, and meet a friend in Vegas, and visit the beach for the first time in twenty years. And best of all, it's all paid for - I'm not over-stressing my budget. I did it on my own!

COCO PERU!!!

Slovene Sunday - Metapost

Sorry friends - I am beat. As Ethel Mertz once said, "I can't do any more, my finger's worn down to a nub!" New story next week.

Slovene Sunday - The Time I Stabbed Two Guys

A somewhat sequel to the previous story.

*****

A year and a half later I was living in Maribor for the second time. I had been all over the country by now, living in Ljubljana, Kranj, Celje. I'd been homeless for two months, I'd seen 30 baptisms. I'd made friends with all my fellow missionaries, and knew members who I liked, and who liked me in many cities. I'd been through the very first McDonald's walk-thru, and visited a weird old woman in a nursing home for over two months, I'd been to a wedding and two funerals, and leaped off one train in Zidani Most with two large suitcases in my hands and five smaller bags around my neck and within 30 seconds carried all of my possessions by myself underground and up again, and leaped onto my connecting train just as it started moving.

I'd obtained and discarded a paralyzing fear of dogs, and though I didn't realize it, I'd already had my final dog attack experience. I'd irritated Jehovah's Witnesses by asking for extra copies of their literature, and irritated 7th day adventists by talking so much about nothing without taking a breath. I'd been underground in a cave, danced a jig on the Alps, and I'd crossed all four of Slovenija's borders, some on purpose, and some accidentally. I was the only person Jasmina would talk to, and the only person Mandy refused to talk to. I had been to 18 Missionary conferences and spoken at most of them, and I had enjoyed or endured about 70 district meetings. I had been interviewed on television, and also for the paper. I had been to more castles than I ever thought possible for my lifetime.

I'd spoken to drunks, and old people, college students and expatriates. By NOT speaking I caused one girl to become interested in the church and eventually join. I'd claimed over intercoms to be selling honey, and also to be a woman so people would let us into the building. I knew where all the best bookstores were, and which ones had the items I routinely needed (as they were not all equal). I had been about four blocks away from President Clinton when he visited Ljubljana but I didn't care, and I'd brought a plate of brownies to the very cheerful woman who worked in the photolab behind Nama because I wanted her to know I appreciated what she did. I felt like I was home.

It was July of 2000, and a preparation day, so we missionaries weren't out working, but in, resting a bit. We were supposed to be doing chores, but my current companion was of the mind that chores should be done every evening anyway, so we had some time on our hands. The other two elders were over at our place, and we were probably eating lunch and writing letters to our parents.

The phone rang and I answered it. It was Sister Hubbard from the mission office, calling for my companion Elder Wettstein; he would be going home in a month and she needed to go over some scheduling things with him since his mother was coming to pick him up. They talked for a while, and I continued to write my letters and talk to Elders Pierce and Baldwin at the kitchen table. After a few minutes Elder Wettstein said that Sister Hubbard wanted to speak to me again, and I went over to the phone. Sister Hubbard handed the phone off to her husband Elder Hubbard, and he said hello in his very genial way. "Elder Young, I've got some information for you," he said in his British accent. "We've got your scheduled release date now." I protested that I didn't want to know it, and if he never said it out loud than I wouldn't have to leave, would I?

"Sorry elder," he said. "I wish it worked that way."

"Can't you tell me later, please, when it's closer to the actual time?"

"Best if I tell you now, and get it over with," he replied, and told me I would be leaving Slovenija on December 20th, six months later.

I was subdued somewhat after getting off the phone, and when the other elders asked me what was wrong, I told them I had been told my death date - that's what we called a missionary's date of departure, and for me it felt every bit as ominous as knowing the actual date I would cease to live. "When is it?" Elders Baldwin and Pierce asked, delightedly. I didn't want to say, but they soon got it out of me, I shared so I could get some sympathy.

But no, they began to laugh, and have fun. If I weren't so sensitive I could probably have laughed along with them, but I wasn't in any mood to think about it. It was six months away - I still had LOTS to do as a missionary. Elder Wettstein knew how I felt about it, and told the other two to lay off me, but they didn't. They just kept going on and on about leaving and singing Christmas songs. Elder Wettstein warned them again, and I warned them, in the strongest way I knew how. "If you don't shut up," I said, "I will stick this pen in you both!" and I waved the pen I was writing home with. Ooh, threatening.

They went quiet, and we all went back to our letters. Then, after a few minutes Elder Pierce looked up and burst into song, "I'll Be Home For Christmas!!" Elder Baldwin joined in, "You Can Count On Me!" They laughed.

With a blank expression on my face I rose from my chair, walked over to Elder Baldwin clutching my pen, raised it and jammed the point into the back of his hand. "Ow!" he yelled, and Elder Pierce went to block me. With one swift motion I pulled the pen out of Elder Baldwin's hand and stabbed it into Elder Pierce's forearm, and yanked it out again. I returned to my chair, and looked at them, both frozen in disbelief, bleeding.

"I warned you, didn't I?" I said.

"That's right, he did," said Elder Wettstein.

By now Slovenia was my home - getting me out would involve a fight.

Slovene Sunday - Threatened with a butter knife

When I first arrived in Slovenija in 1999, the town I was assigned to was called Velenje. Velenje was, and probably still is a mining town, and drew the kind of people who would consent to mine for a living. It was a town full of Bosnians - the actual Slovenes lived on the edges of the city, in the wealthy and established neighborhoods, in the hills. The city proper, with all the high rises, and businesses, and people and schools - that was very Bosnian. It was a great place to start, as far as the language was concerned - I thought I was hearing regular Slovene, and was surprised at how simple it was, and how much I understood; really I was hearing the simpler Slavic language of Bosnian, or Slovene spoken by a foreigner like myself.



Velenje was a neighbor to the city of Celje, through a tight and winding canyon, a bus trip of about 30 minutes. Because of the tight valley Velenje sat in, it indeed felt pretty isolated. My very first companion, Elder Kelly, did not like to stay there, and tried to wrangle our schedule so that we spent as much time in the larger, more populated, more open city of Celje as possible. Celje had the church building, and it had other elders, and members that Elder Kelly was familiar with and liked. I, however, was new, and was determined to serve the people in the area I was assigned to. I was kind of a nag, I guess, in my regular passive-aggressive way, using my wide-eyed naivete to inspire guilt (or a desire to be a good example) in my companion so I could keep the rules more easily.

One cold February evening within the first week or two of my arrival I managed to make us be in Velenje for the evening, instead of Celje, just hanging out at the McDonald's. With no other elders to waste time with, and no members at ALL to talk to, we were faced with the most daunting missionary task of all - tracting, going from door to door, and asking people on their own doorsteps if we could share our message with them. Up to this point Elder Kelly had managed to keep us from doing too much of that, especially at night, but I thought that tracting was what missionaries were SUPPOSED to do, that that was what we LIVED for.

Unenthusiastic, Elder Kelly said that if we were going to do this, then I had to pick the place we would tract. I smiled, and pointed to the tallest building in the city, an apartment complex right in the center of town, tall enough to keep us busy for the whole evening. Elder Kelly said OK, so we headed on over there in the chilly darkness. I was excited, but dreading it, too, as I was still so new that I didn't know how to do this right. Elder Kelly had up to this time not shown me any good techniques, and I was still so rough with my grammar. But in we went, and up, up 35 stories to the very top floor.

Velenje, I was told, was one of Tito's pet projects, and communist city to a T, designed to be completely self-sufficient. As such, it had many other hallmarks of communism too, the most obvious one being that all the apartment buildings, or bloki, were dark, minimalist structures, of the 70's entirely. Everything about them looked 20 years old, even if they were new. This tallest of all the bloks was no different, oddly dark to the extreme, and quite uninviting. I took a breath and began.

We rang the bell at the one door on the 35th floor and were turned away, and went down to the 34th floor. There were more doors here, and the first two also turned us away. The next door had a nameplate with a very Bosnian name on it, Mustafa Musarbasic. When we knocked, a voice from inside called out for us to wait, and soon the door opened to show a tall, gangly man, longish greasy gray hair. As he stood and listened to Elder Kelly talk he weaved back and forth a little bit, and he looked slightly tired. He said no at first, and then when Elder Kelly thanked him, he changed his mind and invited us in. We walked into his dark apartment, lit only by a candle on the coffee table. I really didn't understand a word of what was going on, so I sat on a low chair across from Mustafa, smiling in the dark and trying to exude happiness. Every once in a while the candle flame guttered, and Mustafa would take a butter knife and move the wick so the flame wouldn't go out. For some reason he never turned on the lights. He was very quiet and agreeable, and when Elder Kelly offered him a Croatian copy of the Book of Mormon, he took it and said he'd read it.

We'd spent, I'm guessing, much time in there with him just chatting, so by the time we excused ourselves to go, it was time to head home. We had the promise of another visit with him in a few days time to find out what he thought about what he'd read, and I walked home in the dark and cold very pleased with myself. People had been whispering that Velenje was a lost cause, that the previous elders has ruined the image of the church there, and that no one in the whole town was interested in the church, and then I arrive, and within one week have a second appointment all lined up! New blood COULD refresh the old and reigning apathy! THAT'S what I was here for! Just my presence could jump-start the work here!

Elder Kelly didn't tell me there had been three empty bottles of wine under Mustafa's side of the coffee table.

We returned to Mustafa's apartment a few evenings later, and this time he was a different kind of drunk. Now he was loud and ebullient, and moody as heck. One minute he was smiling in a loud voice, and the next he was... well, I couldn't understand him, but I felt very threatened. Again we were sitting in the dark, with only the tiniest flame within the puddle of wax on the plate on the table,and Mustafa was wielding the butter knife with much more gusto than before. At one point he kept pointing to me with it, and then waving for me to come nearer. I looked to Elder Kelly, who translated, very unhelpfully, the Mustafa couldn't see me in the dark and to come sit nearer to him. I hugged my missionary bag closer to my chest and said the first thing I could think of, "Jaz sem v redu tukaj." I'm okay here.

I understood Elder Kelly to ask if another night would be better, and Mustafa fixed on the word better. "You think you're better than me?!" it translated to. Elder Kelly told me later that Mustafa then said he would tie me up and kill Elder Kelly with the knife in his hand. Luckily I didn't understand anything, and Elder Kelly kept a very calm tone. Mustafa's mood shifted and he became the host, inviting us to see something in another room. Wide-eyed, I clutched my bag, and ran through it's contents in my head, to see if I could survive if I had to run out of there quickly. I was SURE when Mustafa opened the door to another room it would have a decaying corpse in it, and braced myself for the worst. What was inside was very unexpected - a neat and tidy child's room, with a Lion King poster on the wall. I was informed later that the room was for Mustafa's son, but his mother had taken the child away, and Mustafa hadn't seen him in a while.

I was still standing there, opening my eyes as wide as I could, like it would help me understand the dialogue any better, still holding my bag in front of my heart. The front door was behind us, and Elder Kelly began pushing me subtly backwards, all the while telling Mustafa what a nice time we'd had, and thanks for his attention. Then we backed out the door and made for the elevator. Walking home I was filled in on what had actually gone on in there, and I felt let down by it all. All I wanted was to go home to Utah, to be safe, to not have to walk around in the dark and not understand what the drunk people were going on about. I wanted to not have to talk to a drunk person ever again. I wanted to know what I was doing. I wanted to go home.

Slovene Sunday - Knowing where to find a good Krof

Krofs, or krofi, are Slovene donuts, without holes. I presume they are fried; at any rate I know they are made with hot oil. Sometimes they have fruit or creme in the middle, and the most traditional ones have a topping of powdered sugar, or the tops have been dipped in chocolate.



My favorite were the ones called 'blazinicas', or 'pillows'. They were rectangular, and stuffed full of vanilla pudding. The best ones I'd found were from the Panda deli in Maribor, but you could find them in a few other places if you knew where to look. And I did.

During the last two months of my mission I was living in Maribor. There were six of us at the time - Elder Pierce, who had spent his whole mission in na Stajerskem, meaning in two months in the city of Celje and a year and a half in Maribor. He had only been to Ljubljana for missionary conferences and had never been able to explore the city; he admitted to me once that it kind of frightened him - he was used to the smaller-town atmosphere of the north. His companion at the time was Elder Hancey, who had only been in Slovenija for a month, all of it in Maribor. There was Sister Durham, who had lived in Kranj for a long time and knew that city backwards and forwards, but was mystified by Ljub, even though it was only a 15 minute bus ride away. With Sister Durham was Sister Cook, who had come at the same time as Elder Hancey, and had also spent her month only in Maribor.

And then there was me, who had lived in all five cities that were open to missionaries in Slovenija. I had started in Velenje, and subsequently moved to Celje, Ljubljana, Maribor, Kranj, back to Ljub, and them home to Maribor again. I was no stranger to any of those cities and felt right at home all over (except maybe Velenje). With me as my final companion was Elder Jones, who had spent his whole first year in Ljubljana, and only the month before had moved up to Maribor to be with me.

It was in 2000, probably November. There was going to be another of the monthly missionary conferences, and the missionaries from all over the country would be heading for Ljubljana. Though I was not the district leader in Maribor, I somehow convinced the others to go to Ljubljana a little early so I could look around for potentially my last time. We got up early and met at the Maribor train station that morning. The new Hitri Vlaki - Fast Trains - had just been introduced that September, so we probably took the Hiter Vlak down south, which accounted for an hour and a half or so.

When we alighted from the train in Ljub, at the wonderfully familiar yellow-brick train station, everyone was hungry. Elder Pierce knew there was a McDonald's in the train station, but people nixed his idea of fast food for breakfast. When someone else asked where we could eat then, and the other four complained that they didn't know anyplace in Ljubljana for a good breakfast, Elder Jones and I looked at each other and smiled.

"Will you trust us?" we asked the other four. "We know you're hungry - we all are - but will you trust us? It may be a bit of a walk." When the others agreed to follow where we led them - Ka-PWING! - we were off like a shot!

Crossing Trg Osvobodilne front, we practically ran down Miklosiceva about six blocks or so, until we got to Preseren's Square. Elder Jones and I stopped to make sure everyone was still following us, and when they caught up, we swung a right onto Chopova street. Past the shoe store, past the sport store, past another McDonald's. Elder Jones and I finally stopped in front of an optometrist's sign. Everyone caught up again and someone asked if we were headed to the Nama a little farther on that housed a grocery store. "No," I said, "we're here." Everyone else looked at the optometrist's sign skeptically. "Behind," I said, and lead the way into an inconspicuous alley. Back a ways, under an arch and to the left was a bakery, who's wares were still warm. The smell of fresh bread was enough to knock you over. I wanted to just inhale and inhale.

Everyone bought a little something for breakfast there, either a bun and some jogurt, or a hot pizza-thing. I got a roll with ham baked onto the top, and one of those good good pillow krofs that I loved.

"where shall we eat?" someone else asked, and Elder Jones took the lead this time, taking us up into the older part of Ljubljana, and along down a tight, crooked street called The Old Square, out past Levstikov Square, and across a large street to Zvezdarska street. I smiled when I realized where he was taking us - to an empty field, a park of some sort, where there was statuary on display. They were modern, and yellow and made of cement, and the statue-things kind of all resembled chairs, in a Dali painting. They were squiggled and odd, but you could sit on them like over-large, melting thrones. Everyone chose a statue, and sat down to eat their breakfasts. The sky was cloudy, which made the grass look greener, and it was just such a a perfect moment.

Everyone agreed that this - this out-of-the-way bakery, and the park with mooshy yellow cement chairs - was much better than sitting in McDonald's. "Thank you," they told us. "We're glad you two know this city so well."

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.

Hobo No Mo'

I did it. I don't know if it's perfect, or how long I'll enjoy myself there, or if that even matters, but I did it. I succeeded in obtaining a job.

*sigh of relief*

I'll keep sending out resumes for a while, beause I need to make sure that I got the best there was to be had, but it seems to be pretty good. Telephone/customer service, but as I've noted, though I don't like it, I'm very good at it. The health plan is exceptional, the benefits are beyond decent, it's close. I was offered more wages than I asked for, due to previous experience. And I'm to be trained as a supervisory sort-of-thing. Which makes me feel like I'm progressing instead of standing still. And the company is growing, which is a detail that was important to me.

I can recoup from this, I can take the opportunity to be what they need, and improve upon it.


Please world, don't hate me for selling halloween costumes.

Choices

So, I just posted this on Playersanonymous - 1. to be funny, and 2. to prevent people from really knowing what's going on in my life.

~~~

Well, after a few weeks of being unemployed I finally have two job offers. When it rains, it pours, eh?

Job Opportunity 1: I've been offered a position as a junior-level hobo on a boxcar train that runs from Texarkana to Milwaukee, via Boston. I won't have my own blanket until I've been with group for 6 months, but they promise that some of the perks include a vagabond whose fillings pick up wi-fi - so as long as he's awake, and in the mood to talk to me, I can keep up with you guys here on PA. Perhaps while I'm even travelling through PA! Since the Hobo King was deposed 25 years ago, the position is open to new-hires, and I'm told that people with my drive can obtain the post without the usual buddy-system that was in place in the past, and since opportunnities for advancement are important to me, this is a major draw.

However, just yesterday I was offered

Job Opportunity 2: A band of wild trannies scouted me out and actually created a brand new position just for me. They spend their time ravaging the wooded areas surrounding Suburbia in the mid-west, from Illinois down to Louisiana, searching for cast off stilettoes and used glitter. Their mission statement is impressive - First Do No Harm, Girl - which is a paradigm I can easily get behind. The president of the group, Miss Tentacula Jones nee Splendiflora-fauna, has promised that perks will be provided, such as a bowl of sequins at each meal, and opportunities to bring more understanding re: the transsexual community to the greater populace. As a non-trannie, but a trannie supporter, my role would be a public one, and quite in the realm of PR, which I have never done before, but don't doubt my own abilities.

These are both very good opportunites at this point. But which should I take? Which should I take? Decisions, decisions!

The hairpin-drop heard 'round the world!

Ok, this is just fun. Varla Jean Merman sings of the history of Stonewall! How appropriate, since today it the 38th anniversary. It plays off the Judy Garland myth, but it's still a kick!



Two years ago I read the book Stonewall, and was mightily impressed with the history, my history, our history. I felt as close to those queens and trannies and dykes as I did to the Mormon pioneers when I was growing up. They are part of me, and my history and what makes me. Respect, that's what it is. Thanks, for getting us to where we are today!