There was a huge influx of baptisims, and a drop off. We spent a lot of time, too much time cleaning out branches of people who no longer wanted to be members. I don’t want to be critical of missionaries that came before me, but the things that I always heard was, “If only Elder/Sister So and So would write me” or people just could not handle the persecution and the slander. I think we could have done better at preparing these new members for that and really doing a better job at creating Church families for support. I just know from my own personal whiperings of the spirit that the Devil was/is working hard on those people, very, very hard.

I don’t know if you ever heard the stories from the summers of 1994 and 1995, but both were very violent, earning the mission “The most violent” of the Church for a while. In 1994 everyday for 2 months someone either was hospitalized or had to be bailed out of jail from trupmed up charges. The mission home’s windows were broken so many times they just quit replacing the glass and put up plywood instead. 1995, was similar, but not as bad. Some of the missionaires I served with had very dangerous run ins with punk gangs, police, Pravoslav priests — you name it. One of my companions even had a knife held to her throat, another was maced, and on of my DLs had a fully automatic machine gun pulled on him. Thankfully the only bad thing that ever happend to me was that I was arrested street bording by Alexandur Nevski in Sofia and getting felt up on a bus once.

I do know Pres Galbraith. He was one of my BYU professors, and I loved his class. It was hard, but he was such a good teacher. When I found out he’d be called to be the new president, I was so excited about it. Much of the blessings of our hardships were realized during his tenure as president.

I was in Matt King’s ward when he was called to BG in 1991 or whenever it was. I never had a chance to talk to him much because I was young, but I know that, based on looking at the membership records, there was a huge influx of baptisms in 1992 and then everything dropped off circa 1995. When in Lyulin, there was one companionship and we had 250 people on the branch membership roles and only 4 active. We always wondered what happened but assumed it was a more a return to the status quo after the initial excitement of religious freedom and subsided. Or as my mother-in-law would have said, the dangerous sects will brainwash you.

I was at the tail-end of the Stevens era where everyone was agressive but spent most of my time with the Galbraiths. I am sure you saw just as interesting transitions if not more dramatic while there.

I know who Marqui is. Her family was one of the first to be baptized in Bulgaria. The person your mission president spoke with was Elder Neuenschwander (I know that’s spelled wrong) of the 70s, who was just made an emeritus GA this last conference. Anyway, for the first year the mission was part of the Austria, Vienna East mission, which included most of what had been behind the Iron Curtian. In fact, Marqui’s story, or at least her family being baptized was included in the Bulgaria section of the Church Almanac for a while. Many of the first members in Bulgaria found the Church in Western Europe, were baptized and went back to get their families baptized and taught. So, thanks France!

The Church has grown and does grow. It’s humbeling to know that you’ve been part of the gathering of Israel, that you’ve been part of prophecy come to pass and that the people I taught are part of the Lost Tribes of Isreal.

@Hans
Sounds like the old Nadezhda Srgada in Sofia. I don’t know if they’d already gotten rid of that place by the time you were there, but there was never any water pressure to fill the font. And that would have been the home made font from PVC pipe, tarp and duct tape. They could only ever get it 24″ or so full of water and it would take them three days to fill it to that depth. Thankfully, in Plovdiv we always rented out the town pool for baptisms. The Elders never really had to dunk anyone, just lower their heads a bit. In some cases they had to hold the person up to say the prayer then let them slide into the water.

As for the trials of a Bulgarian missionary. I know that as areas opened up, things were hard in the new areas. Burgas and Varna opened 3 months before I went home and we were so happy about that. I was very fortunate to serve in Plovdiv, less missionaries to Bulgarian ratio. But I will say this, anyone serving in BG has to be as creative as the Bulgarians are at surviving to survive a mission there. There is a reason the Partridge Era is called the Dark Ages of the mission, but not for many of the reasons people who came after us think.

Well, I did almost burn down the blok baking browines once, and there was that time we plugged in a space heater that almost blew up, but other than that….

We almost burned down the building because we filled up the tarp with water for a baptism and stuck those gigantic metal rods into the water to heat it. There as a short in the wall that another Elder had supposedly fixed. We were at a dinner appointment when we got called down there and the fire brigade was putting at the fire. There was no structural damage, but the whole place was black. We weren’t excited about calling president on that one. But what do you expect with three-foot long metal coils to heat up water that are plugged into a contact from Brezhnev-ear wiring?

What an uplifting story, Jolene. Thank you for sharing that comment. Missionary work is awesome!

All of this happened in the first few months of my mission. Before I left to go home in June of 1991, President Anderson let me know that there was a branch of the church operating in Bulgaria under the direction of the Vienna Mission District and that the first full time Elders were serving there. It was all very exciting to hear. It was even more exciting to me to read your story today and realize how fast the church grows. Heavenly Father has a plan for his children (all of them) to hear the gospel and it is amazing to be able to witness his plan working.

I spent two Christmases on my mission – one in the MTC and one in France. They were both wonderful.