Missionaries

 Yesterday I woke up remembering a dream about the young missionaries.  I seldom remember my dreams, and don't put much stock in them when I do.   In this case, I don't so much remember the specifics of my dream - I just remember that I woke up with a very happy set of thoughts about them.  We work directly with the dozen or so young missionaries in Slovenia.  We are isolated from the rest of the mission because of travel restrictions and isolation due to COVID-19, so we are quite involved with their work and daily lives.  As a consequence, we have come to love them very much as if they were our own grandchildren.  They live by some strict rules, and along with isolation they need more social interaction than they sometimes get.  We try to fill in the gap.  One of the things we do is always invite them to dinner at our apartment on Sunday evenings.  Of course the ones assigned to Maribor get the most benefit from dinners at our house, but all of them hear about it and occasionally participate.

  Yesterday, we had to go to Ljubljana for a medical appointment (travel restrictions allow travel if you have proof of a need, such as medical appointments) and took advantage of our permit to stop at the new Ikea store that just recently opened there.  We were looking at couches as Liz plans for our return next December, and she wanted to measure, try the cushions, check colors, etc.  It took a very short time for me to see everything I needed to see, so I was just waiting for her.  As I did so, I noticed a little display with a tall stack of small blocks of wood with cutouts on the ends.  Then I realized they were cell phone holders.

One of the slots is for thick cell phones like this one in its case.  On the opposite side is a thinner slot for thinner phones.

I have been looking for cell phone holders ever since we lived in Zagreb a year ago.  I used one there to hold my phone while reading as I ate breakfast.  It's a simple thing, but very nice.

When Liz came over we decided to get one for each missionary in Slovenia, as well as one for each of us and one for a sister who arrives this coming weekend.  I happily passed them out as we did apartment inspections that afternoon, and the missionaries were very happy to get them.  I imagine some of them will be neglected and become one of the "dead missionary" pieces of junk that accumulate in missionary apartments, but I think most of them will be very welcome.  They are especially nice when trying to participate in a Zoom call over the phone.  We've noticed in meetings that propping the phone against a book works for a while, then suddenly their picture on the call is of the ceiling or floor and then they have to re-position it again.  This little device solves that small problem.

It gave me a lot of happiness to deliver these and the chocolate chip cookies I baked for them as we visited them.  I am saying this in an effort to describe how my feelings for these young people are very tender.  I LIKE doing little things for them.

The work here is hard.  They are doing a great job of finding people to teach, but they don't teach very many who see the need to join the church.  There are several reasons, among them that the people are culturally Catholic.  The Catholic church is their heritage and they don't want to abandon it, even though the Catholic Church is very much in disfavor and few people attend it.  Their families often oppose them joining another church, and joining ours sometimes severs familial and friendship bonds.

Also, they were in a Communist country for a long time (1945 to 1991) and the communist schools taught them to abhor churches.  Communism in Yugoslavia wasn't violently anti-church like some other places, but it taught the kids anti-religion for generations.  Sometimes, people accept the church when the missionaries teach them, but don't like to make the commitment of baptism because they are afraid of getting their name on a list, which the communists used to use to select people for special attention.

So, the biggest hurdle for people here to join the church is that they don't see a need for a church in their lives.  They've lived without for so long that they don't have an instinctive need for it.  They are happy to see us, and happy to listen to what we have to say, but see no reason for it to go any further than that.  We have people who have been visiting with the missionaries for 3, 4 or 5 years, and are no nearer baptism than when they first started.  And that means the missionaries can get discouraged.  I am very impressed at how our young people carry on, in spite of all the discouragement.  They do their best, and they do have successes.  And I love them for their diligence, and their creative ways of finding people without going out and meeting them first, and for their cheery, positive attitudes.  They are wonderful young people.