August 11, 2008

Dear Family and Friends,

I'm exhausted... It took one Russe sacrament meeting to kill me. Last week I just had to bless the sacrament because no one had ties.This sunday... It started as I prepared a talk to give, and Kraci is out of town so I got some songs ready that I could play on the piano. There were three ties in the office, so we got an old guy to play priest...then i learned that the other three guys arent even members, but they come every week... so now I have to be deacon. part way through the start(sacrament hymn) an american elderly couple walks in... my companion wispers to me while im playing..."you need to translate for them" (my companion is acting branch president because the one that should be there isnt...or hasnt since ive been in Russe.)so i was all over the place, botching everything! I played horribly and had to simplify it... then I had to jump onto the passing the sacrament...and forgot someone, the lady caught me right before we finish so that was ok... then right when i was going to sit down next to the americans to translate my comp calls me up for the first talk...I FORGOT I HAD A TALK! I opened up my notebook and stare at what i wrote, translated: "Good morning brothers and sister, if you dont know me cauce im new, im elder briggs from st. george and im glad to be here ive gotten used to "so now i didnt have a talk. so i thought really hard for a few seconds and remebered a talk that my boss sent me and a story about a french village that got bombed and the people rebuilt it. during the rebuilding they restored a statue of jesus without hands that read.. I have no hands but yours. then I applied it somehow to everyone being a representative of christ.. it rocked!! a freestyle talk in bulgarian! It was hard because i didnt know the word for build and some others i wanted so i had to work around it...but it worked!! then i was down to translating. Holy cow i never want to translate again... i had to stop myself because sometimes i wouldnt translate...just repeat the same thing the speaker said. its wierd runnin two languages in your head its just mixing.. and then i translate it literally without thinking and this guys looking at me..."what?"...."I dont know, hes speaking turkish now i think." I find that to be a good excuse.I would also tell you about investigators if we had any.... so until then i love you all.. i hope you enjoyed this