Week 4 – 3ashtoto Bulgarski

August 18, 2022

My new favorite phrase, 3ashtoto Bulgarski, means: “Because Bulgarian”. I cannot believe it has been 4 weeks already!! Only 5 more before I take off for Bulgaria.

While I did a lot, it was a pretty average week. We follow the exact same schedule everyday pretty much, and classes take up most of our time.

Bulgarian is hard. We have been focusing on principles of grammar, which is crazy hard. 3ashtoto Bulgarski!

We got TWO new bulgarian teachers this week! There are now a total of 4, which is great! In addition to Brother Cottam and Wesemann, We have Brother Lufthouse and Sister Aarons. Both are RM’s from Bulgaria. Both are amazing people.

In our classroom there is a list of certain words on the board. These words are mostly pertaining to the gospel, but they are all words we have learned in Bulgarian. They are now banned in English. >:( If you accidentally say them in English, you have to do 5 push-ups!

Even our teachers have taken the challenge, and class just got a lot more interesting.

Last Sunday, we had a devotional with the MTC president. He gave an awesome lesson of Faith in the Savior, and how we need to fight fear, doubt, and evil thoughts that can inhibit our faith.

I can’t remember the whole premise of the analogy, but I remember that he had brought little Green Army men to make his point!

Since I’ve been here, The MTC as only put up the Bulgarian flag up once! Argh!

We make it a daily challenge to try and guess what the flags are that are up each day in the courtyard.

The other day we saw the Turkish flag! Elder George was so excited.

I can’t remember if I put in the other emails, but we have a district of 5. There are three Elders and two Sisters. By MTC standards this is a small district. For Bulgarian missionaries it’s huge! Our teachers said they have never taught more than 4 people like this before.

Elder Newbold has earned the Callsign: Elder “Buckets” Because he makes them in basketball, and also sweats them in basketball. He is dedicated, hard working, and generally happy about everything.

Elder Grayson has earned the name of “ICE” because he insists on turning temperatures all the way down and comes from the land of ice, Sweden. Yesterday we caught him jamming out to the Frozen soundtrack.

Sister Evans and Sister Curtis are awesome people. We have been growing closer as a district as we learn the language and go through this experience together.

Yesterday, we played a Scandinavian game called Kupp, taught by Elder Grayson, and we have been challenging other districts to games of Sand Volleyball. It’s been great!

This is a photo from the internet, not Nate's

So far our greatest rivals and best friends have been the Macedonians. They are learning a similar language and have class right next door, so we see them often.

I will admit their volleyball skills are good, second only to the might of the Bulgarian-Turkish Volleyball Allstars!

There are only 11 members in Macedonia right now, so these missionaries could quite literally double the membership in their country! They are awesome people.

I’ve been super fortunate to have music downloaded onto my phone. I’m pretty sure I might be the only missionary with music, so much to my friends dismay, I get to choose what music we listen to! Mwhahaha.

We enjoy selections from: Frozen, Moana, Cuphead, Mozart, and naturally, How to Train your Dragon.

When it’s all you got, it’s pretty great music!