June 4th 2012

Hey Mom and Dad,

Can you believe it is June already?! Time is going by so fast! Wow, only 13 more days of school? That is really nice.
So I found out on Friday that I recieved the package that you sent me! My friend in the office, Elder Dropla said he would call and let me know if I got anything. By the way he wanted me to tell you "hi" from him.
Let's see, this week was really good. On June 1st we went out on the Glav to do our normal contacting in the morning, but something was different this time. It was covered with balloons, candy, and kids! It was swrming with children and their parents! My companion and I were so confused. I have never seen this many kids in Sliven before. Well we finally found out that it was "kids day." So, there was no school and parents got to spoil their kids all day.

It is really funny how many holidays Bulgaria has. Normally it is fun, but for some reason people are less receptive to us on holidays. The next day we were out contacting and pumped up to talk to people and then around 12 pm there was this loud siren noise and everyone froze. People who were walking just stopped were they were and didn't move. The people sitting at the outside cafes stood up and froze. No one was talking. This lasted for about 5 mins. It was weirdest thing to see. We had no idea what was going on. Later we found out that it was another holiday. It was their Memorial day. So whenever they hear the siren they are suppost to stand, stop and be silent to remember those who died for their country.

We have been teaching this man who is 32 and his name is Boris. He is really cool and he seems to be getting everything that we have been teaching him. He came to church for the first time and I thought it was neat that he could hear all of the members bear their testimonies about the church. We will keep teaching him and hope for the best!

We did another Young Women's with Annie. She is so cute. I really like helping wer with personal progress. I think it would be a lot of fun to be a Young Women's leader. we talked about the plan of salvation and drew pictures for all of it. Then on Sunday she taught primary about the plan of salvation and she did such a great job. We are the primary teachers in our branch and each week we try and learn a new primary song so that we can have a primary program during sacrament. This sunday our primary kids sang a song during sacrament meeting and I felt like that proud parent in the back smiling and mouthing the words with them, it was great.

Also, we have been meeting with this guy named Jiri (the j is pronounced like a Y). He is from the Czech Rep. He is 24 and is and electrician who is working here for the summer. He only know Czech and ok english. He met with missionaries when he was in czech. We hang out with him on p-days and during our dinner hour somethimes. He is really cool and so nice. Hopefully we are planting some good seeds so when he goes back to Czech he will be more interested in the church.

Well that's all I can think of for this week! Love you lots!

Love, Jodi