Beating Culture Shock

This week went by pretty fast. First, yes the shooting was in a southern province still in Belgrade boundaries but nowhere near any of us, I'm in the northwestern section of Belgrade called Novi Beograd, it's across the bridges that span the Sava river, right under where the Dunav and Sava meet. So, we are safe!

I beat culture shock this week. However I realize that in a mission like this, every time I transfer somewhere I run the risk of culture shock, and I'll share an experience of such later on. But, for now, Beograd is my home and I am getting the hang of things. Barely. I can navigate to the church in Stari Beograd, so if I ever get lost I can get there. The public transportation is nuts, you get on a bus and can get anywhere. It's real nice. So I've figured out which buses take me to the church and home, so that's a plus. I can communicate decently, though not nearly well enough yet. There's a giant mall by our house and I was in there last week and let me tell you...I forgot I wasn't in America. It was surreal. I wouldn't have been surprised in the slightest if I had walked out into Phoenix or something, it was nuts. So we left, cause I was much more comfortable remembering that I'm here :) I'm going through one of my journals that keeps the day to day stuff, so that I remember what to write you, because everything's blending together and it's hard to remember what happened when, and I will go through the week and be like "dang, need to write home about that!!" And Monday comes, and I've forgotten. But the journal is a blessing! So...

I had a freaky experience. This may sound racist, but it's not. It's no joke here. So we teach English classes, right? Well, Elder Marks and I don't right now because there's not enough students, so the other Beograd Elders and Sisters teach for now and Elder Marks and I just go hit the streets and whatnot. But anyways, Elder Bates and Mulder had to split up cause they had 2 appts at once, so I stayed with Elder Bates and Elder Marks went with Elder Mulder. The appt I stayed at was an individual English lesson with a student named Achmed. Don't ask me why they teach him individually, I have no idea. But, he's from the middle east. So he's not just like the Muslims we meet out here, he's hardcore Muslim  He has listened to lessons, but has expressed he's only willing to listen, but won't change from his religion. He's like 16 or something and his family has worked at the embassy here for six years. His Serbian is fluent, but obviously has an accent from back home in wherever he's from, I've forgotten. But anyways, when that lesson was over, I looked at Elder Bates and said, "I think we might have just given an English lesson to the next (name I won't use for fear of a filter throwing up red flags, who knows. But you get the picture)." Hear me out, the kid had us translating sentences for him into English that had every ounce of anti western, anti american, and anti other groups sentiments in them, pro Islam supremacy stuff. While I am not really concerned, it was pretty freaky!

Now to the work! We had a Zone Conference on Wednesday, so the whole Serbian Zone met here in Beograd. Which MEANS I got to see Sister Matthews (Novi Sad) and Sister Mortensen (Osijek)!!!!! It was like a family reunion!! It was way good. President Rowe and the AP's instructed us and we learned so much. After the conference, President Rowe pulled me aside. I think he may have been concerned that we hadn't taught a lesson yet, and wanted to make sure I wasn't dying. But after a good talk with him, he told me he had an assignment for me. He said that we have been trying to emphasize member missionary work, and he believes (rightly so) that Beograd has some of the strongest members here. I believe firmly that the members out here in the whole mission have burning testimonies, and I base that off of what I've seen in Beograd. The ward missionaries (Vladan, Katarina, and Viktorija) (nailed all the spellings this time) drop everything and come to everything that we need them to. They accept every assignment, and are willing and happy to serve. I have stories of such that I'm getting to. So, President Rowe told me that if this mission is going to grow as it should, we need to take it there. He talked of the great missionaries who have laid the foundation here and who have done a marvelous work. He specifically mentioned Brat Hansen and Freeman, who he said specifically built up the branch here in Beograd. He said I'm working in their territory, and what an honor that is! We have probably the most members in the mission, or close with Zagreb and Ljubljana, and so President has extended the assignment here to launch the member-led missionary work. He asked me to head it. Which is great! I can't speak well, and I'm not very good at missionary work, but I can get by with the members, they're great! 

So Elder Marks and I made plans. We took our plans to Viktorija and Vladan and shared them with them, and asked if they would join us. They did. We are planning on meeting with a member a day, or member family a day, and share the message of the Restoration again with them, in addition to the talk from conference that President Eyring gave, prophesying of a temple here in our mission and how the members will be the cause of the work leading up to that. We then will follow the Spirit in how to invite them to join the work, whether it be through holding a family night with them and a friend or friend family, or having them take a Book of Mormon and prayerfully consider who they could give it to, then to write their testimony in it and give it to them, promising them that it is a book that has changed their life. We look to the story of Alma and Amulek. The people wouldn't accept Alma, but then the Lord sent him to Amulek. Once Amulek was converted, he joined Alma in the work. The people listened and many were converted, because Amulek was one of them. So many times out here, people hate us because we're from a "cult" or because we're Americans and they're Serbs and we have nothing to give them that they want or need, and etc. But we believe that they will soften their hearts to their friends and neighbors, and that's all it will take to invite the Spirit and then we can teach them as directed. We shared these ideas with Viktorija and Vladan, and then I felt prompted to challenge them to do these things. They agreed both of them, and this week are planning on giving their Book of Mormon to a friend that they've been praying to know who (English grammar, yikes) to give to, and then on Sunday we plan on having them share their experience with the Branch. We know that they will rally around the positive experiences of these faithful young members who are devoted to serving the Lord who has given them so much.

They also come on splits with us and go tracting and contacting, so they see the unsuccessful results too, but these 3 are strong and can handle it, they understand and nothing will shake them from their testimonies. One night this week, Vladan was with us contacting. One couple stopped and listened to us, and seemed semi interested, whether in us or in our message, we weren't sure. We left them a pass along card and our number, because we couldn't get theirs, and then we were on our way. Later that night, Vladan texted us that he had run into that couple again at a bus stop, and they opened up to him. They asked him, "hey, we ran into you earlier, you were with those Americans, right?" then they proceeded to ask him about us and the church, and were very interested in listening to him because he was one of them. It was awesome to hear!! So, this week we will kick start the member driven work here. President Rowe says that if Beograd succeeds in this, and we WILL, then the other branches will see a success story and build towards it, gaining strength from it, like an army with banners. My favorite analogy. But yeah, he knows that Beograd has the capacity to do this and do it first, so here we go!

We have an investigator. Her name is Nena. She is our neighbor and she came to us looking to hear our message. She's older, maybe 50's-60's. We taught her a little bit, but it was in unfortunate circumstances. She has been  busy, and only had so much time to talk to us, and she lives alone and we couldn't get Vladan or anybody over to our area in time, so at 10am on Friday we taught her outside. We really just introduced the Book of Mormon and gave her a copy, and heard her story. She is not of any religion, just believes in God and Christ and is such a good person. She wants to hear more about us, and has always been so kind to us already. She about died when we gave her the Book of Mormon, she wanted to pay us but we wouldn't let her. She is so great, and we have her baptismal date set on our calendar, even though she doesn't know about it yet :) She's the best. 

That day, though, was perhaps the hardest day of the mission so far. When Elder Marks and I went out after meeting with Nena, a weight just dropped on us. Like, physically and mentally and emotionally we were just burdened. Every person was hostile, nothing was working out. It was painful! We traveled about 20-30 minutes on foot out to a member who hasn't been seen in a long time, and when he opened the door he was very much not happy to see us, told us never to come back and threatened to call the police, among other things (which totally happened to Elder Mulder 2 weeks ago and he got arrested cause he didn't have his passport on him. They let him go after getting to the station, but haha it was so funny to hear that night.) 

But yeah, the day was hard. THEN that night we met with the Jovanovic family. They're the gypsy family that I think I've talked about before, their two daughters served missions, one in Russia and one in Florida, and they're so kind and gracious. They live in the most humble of circumstances, but the Spirit is there. I love going to see them. Well, that night, we got to meet with the whole family and extend our message about the work we needed them for. They all agreed, except little baby Lena, who was the cutest 3 year old gypsy girl I've ever seen. She has about as much attitude as Gwen. That family is great, and while we're working on getting them to be more active, they accepted with determination our challenge to them, and each took a Book of Mormon. We will be meeting with them twice a week and see how it goes. After that long day of suffering, the Lord blessed us with an experience with the Jovanovic family that I'll never forget, and I was very grateful for it.

So on Saturday, I ran into a guy in Centar that spoke English. Heck yeah, he's getting baptized now, poor guy didn't realize the consequences of that conversation. We spoke and turns out he's been to Tucson and Santa Barabara and Ventura and everywhere I've been? Weird! But, hearing his life story (Serbs like to talk when they're in the mood to) was awesome, and we got his number and he's expecting us to come teach him. He's a nondenominational Christian, and his wife is hardcore Pravoslav. I am learning that the Pravoslavs are harder to work with than atheists. Atheists all you have to do is get them to feel God through the Spirit, and they're hooked. Pravoslavs are like the equivalent of die hard sports fans. It has more to with "being a Pravoslav because I'm a Serb" than it does about the religion itself. It's frustrating, but it's how it is. I made a decision to change my attitude, though. Saturday I said, "Elder Marks, I will not be negative anymore, even when joking." And we lit it up after that! We even got let in tracting! The old man gave us mineral water (which I love) when we told him we couldn't drink whiskey with him, but he had to go but wants us to come back and meet with him. And then we ran into a previous investigator family randomly and they were so excited to see us, asked us to come meet with them again and invited us to a barbeque. Heck yeah! Success came because of the attitude change, I know it! 

Last story. We went to Cacak (chachak) yesterday, where we are to go every week now. It's a 2 hour drive from Beograd, and yes I did drive one way, so consider me legit for surviving driving in Serbia. We met with the Zadic family, who are 5 of I believe 6 members in Cacak. They were so happy and anxious with our message of missionary work. They were baptized last summer with Vladan, and they will be able to go to the temple in Germany in just a few months! I loved them, and it was so good to see their burning testimonies, as they are alone out there really. The drive there, and being there though, almost sent me into a homesick culture shock spiral again for a tiny bit, but I beat it again. See, Beograd is this huge city, and I've never really lived in the huge city, so it's so foreign to me anyways that I feel like I'm on another planet. Nothing's like home, so I'm not reminded of home. It's been rainy and overcast and so I've just been here in Beograd, no worries. But then one day the sun came out. And I said, "Whoa. That's my Arizona sun...what's it doing here?" And then when we went into the Serbian countryside, I saw green pastures, and forests, and for a moment or two I could pretend I was in the canyon up in Utah! I saw the mountains and said to myself, "the valley is just over those mountains back home..." but then I had to keep readjusting my brain to remember it's location on the planet. So just seeing the absolute differences from Cacak to Beograd was a surreal experience. Once I got over that, though, it was awesome. It's what I picture Scotland or Ireland countryside looking like. It was breathtakingly beautiful. Cherry blossoms everywhere, red tiled rooftops dotting the green hills, it was real nice. 

But when we pulled up to Beograd city limits again, I sighed in relief, "home sweet home." Then I coughed on some cigarette smoke that blew past. 

Heck yeah! Good week! 

I love you all, and am grateful for you and your prayers on my behalf. I can't thank you enough, and we'll meet again soon.

Love,
Elder Hixon

P.S. Fountain lights for mom's birthday! (I imagine that's what the European countries embassy like building was doing it for :)