YSA Conference

YSA Conference couldn't have been in a better setting; mountains, trees, a small lake with croaking frogs, and wonderful people to work with. We had Elder and Sister Senkans, our Area Authority Seventy and friends from Latvia, come to speak to us. Our Supervisor, Igor Poddubny, from the Ukraine, also came and gave a wonderful presentation. President Bennett gave a scintillating talk on how Joseph Smith received the plates. With dancing in the evenings, and great workshops, the young adults had a marvelous time. John put on his bridge-building activity and everyone, adults included, were seen frantically working together to create a bridge out of newspapers strong enough to hold a 35 pound box for 10 seconds, and big enough for the box to pass under. Exhilarated and exhausted, we are now home and basking in the pleasant memories and preparing to do it all over again for the youth of our mission this weekend.

YSA Conference - Momino Resort

An Interesting Time to be in Bulgaria

Ever driven down a country road to the smell of roses? On a P-day we took a trip to the Valley of the Roses, near Kazanlak – the place where the world famous rose oil is produced. There we toured the museum and drove through the acres and acres of Damascus roses which produce more rose oil than any other kind. The picture below shows us and Elder and Sister Mace as we stopped to smell the roses. Since we last wrote we have attended 2 baptisms, which are always the highlight of any mission experience. It is too bad that we don’t seem to have more of them. Our main focus is on the seminary and institute programs. These past 3 weeks we held 2 Super Saturdays and teacher training, along with committee meetings for our YSA and Youth conferences. As we prepare for the conferences we are fearful that the numbers of those who will attend will not be anywhere near as high as the potential. Many of the young people leave the country for England and the US for work, marriage, or whatever. Hopefully they stay active, but the percentages of that are not very high. But we will have a great time, and it is occupying our efforts.














We are giving firesides in the branches every chance we get. Our message has been to keep journals using our family journals as examples. The Church has been here only about 17 years and so the members here are the Pioneers of the Church in Bulgaria. They need to write their stories for their posterity as did our ancestors. We tell a story of a man who, in 1963, felt a need to leave the country of Bulgaria, but it being communistic was not able to leave until there was a job-related opportunity in Algeria which the Government wanted someone to fill. His name was miraculously drawn for the job. When he was required to return to Bulgaria he defected to France where the missionaries found him and taught him the gospel. He later immigrated to America. He became the first mission president in Bulgaria after the government became a democracy. Recorded stories like this are great examples the Bulgarian saints need to help them understand the importance for keeping journals.

Our biggest thrill since coming here has been the CES Sr. Missionary Conference, held this year in Kaunas, Lithuania. We were so excited to return to our first mission area, even if it was only one of our cities. Our Area Supervisor, our dear friend, Henry Kosak, was the leader of the conference. He really filled us with the spirit to go back to our mission and increase our impact, and exposure, and involve the leadership of our branches. We feel we can make a difference in the numbers if we just follow the guidelines he presented to us. They even taught our husbands some self-defense tactics, the Haka. We are sure feeling a lot safer now. Along with 3 days of inspiration, we did a little exploration. In Kaunas, the place to visit is the 9th Fort, a place we had been to twice before, but still interesting. This was not a concentration camp, as we called it, but an extermination camp during the war, and a prison before and after. Here 9000 children were killed along with others totaling 37000 people in all; they were lined up against the wall and shot just because they were Jews. The monument is impressive and can be seen for miles around.

Pictures are: Kaunas 9th Fort monument. The night before the conference with Henry and Elke.

The Church here in Bulgaria is experiencing a great deal of opposition at the moment. The news media have associated the Church with the FLDS situation in Texas, and it has really caused some problems for the missionaries who proselyte. The local churches have picked up on the tempo, and this past week one of the local priests made sure two of our missionaries made the national news. An “investigator” invited two Elders to visit her church in the city of Burgas (near the Black Sea). When the Elders arrived at the church, they entered the building looking for the lady who had invited them; soon a priest approached them and they were told to leave. Whenever we enter another church, we are told to remove our name tags; the Elders involved had done so; they never mentioned to the priest they were Mormon Missionaries. Nevertheless, they did leave where they met their investigator outside. They told her they were not welcomed; she went inside the church and moments later came out and said it was OK for them to enter. They followed her inside and this time when the Priest saw them, he began yelling at them to leave the building. (He was at the pulpit yelling at them). They turned and left the building without saying anything. As they exited the building, they were met by the press asking what had happened in the church. (Who called the press?)This was obviously a set up, and the report that hit the news was the Elders had entered the church and tried taking over the meeting by preaching to the people while the priest was fighting to keep order and physically trying to throw the Elders out of his church which took 30 min. to accomplish. Maybe you have already heard of this incident, but it makes work here interesting. In another of our cities, the one in which we live, the city council is voting to see if it is legal for our missionaries to pass out tracts as they meet people. At the moment it is illegal, not a written law, but one of the Mayor’s, and the police are always stopping our missionaries and telling them to move out of the areas where they are trying to meet people. This is not true for all areas of Bulgaria, but in the areas where the Mayor of that city doesn’t like us, or has been influenced by a priest, we are finding all kinds of hurdles.

Life is good; the Lord is on our side, and no unhallowed hand will stop this work!

Love,

Elder and Sister Andersen, Peggy and John

Mission Highlights

There aren't many institute age young adults and even fewer seminary age youth in the mission. We have been seeing more people at church, and this last Sunday, we doubled our Primary attendance when a family who have been members for a long time came with their 5 children: 4 boys and a girl. The husband works in England, so the mother doesn't come often. Her twin babies keep her quite busy. The oldest boy looks like he should be Seminary age next year. That would make 2 of that age in our branch, maybe 3, and we are constantly encouraging a young man named Christian, who is a friend of a member, to come out to church. The youth are just so much fun to be around. There is a baptism scheduled for this Saturday and we are excited, as this will add to our YSA count in our branch. Our primary efforts are to increase the attendance in our seminary and institute programs. It is quite a challenge. We have asked the missionaries to concentrate on re-activating those in that age range. Most of our efforts this past week have been directed in the area of advertising our up coming YSA and Youth Conferences. We finally received the posters from our committees, and they have now been printed and are on their way to the various Branches throughout the mission. We need to have an accurate count of who is coming by the 10th of June, and so the push is on.

Curves and Potholes

CURVES AND POTHOLES

Several weeks ago as Sister Andersen and I traveled from Stara Zagora to Velico Turnovo, we couldn’t help but admire the beautiful scenery. The fruit trees were in bloom; the grape vines were shooting out green leaves, and the mountains were shrouded in living green toned colors. As our car sped along with a constant hum, I began meditating upon the blessings of the resurrection. “Spring, is to the earth, as Christ’s resurrection, is to man’s physical death, I mussed. As spring returns greenness and life to a sleeping plant world, so will the resurrection bring beauty and life to those who sleep in the grave.

The sound of the car’s engine brought me out of my trance and how beautiful the resurrection will be. The engine was beginning to labor; we had left the straight and level plain of roadway, and were ascending into the mountains. I quickly went from fifth gear to forth and as the car encountered a steeper slope and multiple curves, I was forced to gear down even more. Soon, all my attention was focused on just keeping the car on the road. As we converged upon the mountain with all its dangerous curves, we also faced numerous deep pot holes, and creeping semi trucks which, at times, brought our travel to a near stop. “How much more enjoyable our trip would be if the road was straight and without hazards”, I sighed. Without warning, the thought struck me, “It was you who chose to use this road, “my conscience was whispering. “You knew the mountains would be steep, full of obstacles, and slow traveling. You could have chosen a straighter road to get to Velico Turnovo, but you thought the shortcut over the mountains would get you there faster.”

Every elementary student knows that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. The Savior taught that, “Straight is the gate and narrow the way that leads to eternal life.” Joseph Smith reminds us in D&C3:2, that, “God doth not walk in crooked paths, neither doth he turn to the right hand nor to the left, neither doth he vary from that which he hath said, therefore his paths are straight, and his course is one eternal round.”

It is my prayer that we be not fooled in taking shortcuts in our journey back to our heavenly Father. By keeping the commandments, we stay away from those dangerous curves and pot holes that Satan has strategically placed in our paths, in hopes we will lose control, even lose our very eternal lives.

Elder Andersen

Weeks 10, 11

Though the pictures may not indicate that we do any work, we were instructed by President Bennett to take the time to visit some places of cultural interest so that we get to know the people and their history. So on our trip to visit our class in Shumen we went to the 3 places he told us to visit. No arm twisting needed. The first is of a fortress built on a mountain overlooking the city. It is 3000 years old, first occupied by the Thrashings, then probably conquered by Alexandre the Great, then the Romans built a new wall after breaking down the old. The Byzantines built a wall around the Romans', then the Crusaders broke up those 2 walls or at least damaged them and conquered the fortress. The Poles, Lithuanians and Ukraines next conquered and then the Turks. The picture shows the Roman outlines of the city.
The monument below was built 4 km away from the fortress on the same mountain. The drive to it was through a beautiful forest with spectacular flowers covering the forest floor.

We next went to the village of Madera where on the cliffs above the town was a carving of a man on a horse with a dog at its feet. They only discovered this art work 18 years ago. We had to climb 225 steps to get to the base of the cliff. It was less than spectacular to look at until you realize what it took to carve it so high up on the cliff face. It is several hundred years old. Last week the Eastern Europe Humanitarian missionaries came to Sofia for a 4 day conference. The Sr. Couples were invited to come along on their excursion to the Bulgarian History Museum. We went specifically to see the Gold Book. This is something many people had been emailing us about. It is also the only gold book or any metal book for that matter that has been found that is older than a few hundred years old. This book dates back to 4 to 600 B.C. It is bound by gold rings and has only 6 pages. The pages have only pictures on it, no writing and they have no idea of its function. It was discovered a few decades ago and was anonymously donated by a man now living in Macedonia. It was found in his field as he was plowing. It is only 2" by 3".

Our main activity has been pushing the Enrollment program for Seminary and Institute. This can be very frustrating as the missionaries have to be the middle man between us and the Branch Presidents, and sometimes they don't have the vision of what needs to be done. We went, this last week to two District Leadership training sessions to push the program with the Br. Presidents who have the main responsibility of getting their youth and YSA signed up to take Seminary. Both of us had to speak in Plovdiv District Conference (like a Stake Conference) yesterday. John was sick with the flu but he made it through the day, but just barely. We hope he is on the mend. Today is P-day but we will be staying in until he recuperates. At District Conference, John was sustained as Mission Clerk; we really don't know what this calling means, but it does give him authority to step into any branch and act for the Mission President should the need arise.

Another two weeks in Bulgaria

To the delight of millions, we too had the privilege of watching certain sessions of General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. What inspired talks we heard. You could just see on the face of President Monson that he now carries the mantel of the Prophet. Because of the time difference between Bulgaria and SLC, we tape the sessions, but were able to see two of them last Sunday, and the final two sessions today.

Missionary work is going great. Last evening Peggy and I were able to fellowship a couple who have lived in Utah. They both understand English, and the husband speaks it fluently. They are both members of the church, but the wife is having difficulties. We took them out to dinner, and had a great time. Today the family was at church, and the husband told me his wife was so excited with our taking them to dinner, and being a friend to them, that she said to him, "This is the first time in the past two years that I have felt like a human being". These are highly educated people; the husband received his MBA degree from BYU, and the wife has a degree in Chemical Engineering. It's not too often we get to work directly with the older members of the church due to the language difference.

We are excited with the changing weather; yes, it is spring, and the fruit trees have already shed their blossoms. The internet projects local temperatures in the high 70's low 80's for the next several days. Bring it on!!!!

We continue to see new and exciting places as we travel around the country. One thing we have noticed, is no matter the weather, we can always tell when people do their washing. The included picture tells you how we know.

Our big push now is Seminary and Institute registration for the coming school year. We need to have it completed by the end of May; we are asking the full time missionaries to assist us and the Branch Presidents; we couldn't do it by ourselves anyway, we don't know where all these potential students live. One of the problems is when the Communists left Bulgaria, the Bulgarians removed all the street signs that had Russian names on them. On many streets, no new names have replaced the old. The locals know where things are, but we sure can't find them. Within time, we're sure all the streets will have names, until then, it's just a guessing game for us.

A Sr couple had to return home for family reasons and before they left the Sr.s took a tour of an old village run solely on water power. It is now a tourist attraction and we enjoyed a couple of hours visiting the craft vendors and looking at the old houses and shops. Bulgarian history dates back to at least 700 b.c. The people who lived then were called Thracians. When people died, especially people of wealth and fame they were buried in tombs that were just mounds of earth some maybe 50 feet tall, but most were closer to 20 feet tall. These mounds can be seen all over the country side. Buried with the dead were their riches and through the ages the tombs had been dug into by grave robbers. Some of the tombs were found untouched and the precious items sent to museums. We went into one of the tombs that was open to the public. We also went to one of the Orthodox cathedrals. The picture shows how elaborate the cathedral is on the outside, the inside, though dark is also elaborate, but not our favorite tourist attraction.

Elder and Sister Westbroek at the water distribution center.

Looking down the main street of Etar where we bought souveniers and enjoyed a nice Bulgarian meal.

At the thracian tomb a bust of the ruler was found. Everything within the tomb had been taken out to a museum. It was small and consisted of only 2 small rooms and a hallway between.This cathedral sits high on a hill in the town of Shipka. It can be seen for miles around, not only because of its location, but because of the bright gold leafing and tall spire to its. left. It is truly beautiful outside. We also visited their freedom monument which is on the top of a mountain. Thankfully we were able to drive to the base of the monument and only had 200 + steps to get to it. No problem. But the weather was cold, which helped us make it to the top.