Sofia Bulgaria

It was a crazy week with all the traveling but it was so much fun. Monday night Elder Newsome, Elder Phillips, and I left on an overnight train from Odessa to Kyiv. Tuesday morning all of the missionaries that came to the country with me from the MTC met at the airport and flew to Sofia Bulgaria to renew our visas.

We had a four and half hour lay over in Vienna, a bunch of us wanted to go see town center. It was only 16 minutes away from the airport. The sister missionaries that were with us really didn’t want us to, so we didn’t go. We just spent our time in the airport. SO CLOSE!!

The next morning we started the day early we were out of the apartment by 6:45. We walked around for awhile trying to find town center. People in Bulgaria really didn’t understand Russian at all. All of the signs looked like Russian and it is actually easy to understand written Bulgarian because it is so close to Russian. Spoken Bulgarian sounds like Spanish Russian. It is the weirdest thing in the world. Well we found out that the old people know Russian and that the younger people know English so we were able to get around the city.

We bought a map so we could figure out where we were going to eat!!!!!

Changing of the guards at the Presidents residence

The church is super small in Bulgaria; the office Elders told us that there are about 200 active members in the whole country. It was an awesome trip but it is nice to be back in my own apartment and area!!l

Feeding Frenzy!!!!

In Ukraine we only have McDonalds due to a contract the country signed not letting any other American fast food restaurants into the country for 20 years. So what do you think missionaries, especially Elders do when they visit Bulgaria……..WE EAT!!!

We began our feeding frenzy at the airport in Kyiv, in the terminal we found a T.G.I. Friday’s so we started our trip out right with appetizers. In Sofia we spent a large amount of our time walking around the city and eating. We didn’t eat as much as most Elders that go but we went to Starbucks, Subway twice, Duncan Donuts, a Chinese place, and bought ice cream and Dr. Peppers from vendors on the street. My favorite was the Dr. Pepper, Subway, and Starbucks.

Ukrainian eggs

At the Lavra, we saw this giant ball of hand-painted Ukrainian eggs