Another perspective

The tramvai runs next to my apartment—number 102A—on my street in Odessa, Ukraine. It is a huge capsule shaped tram that winds on endless tracks through the city. Every time the tramvai rings its bell, it reminds me of the bells that signal the time is up on old amusement part rides. Our neighborhood is called Moldovanka, and incidentally is also one of the less desirable parts of the city, but its rawness and life appeal to me. There are cobblestone streets with grandmothers, or babushki, gathered on the corners selling fresh homemade rolls, black in the middle with sweet poppy seeds. The babushki bring their vegetables in from the country and carefully place them in handkerchief covered buckets to sell along with their rolls. Living there is not like living here, but it is beautiful. When I first came to Odessa the experience was heightened to all my senses, everything was so different. The pounded dirt on the streets smells warm in the summer and the air feels too thick to breathe. Window frames painted bright greens, blues, and reds pop out against gray stuccoed walls. Dingy white dogs missing ears, tails, and even legs lounged in the doorways and caroused on the streets. This was like no place I’d experienced before. My surroundings were so different that they inspired me to be different. I thought I could hide my old self in my new surroundings—like an animal in the underbrush. It only took me a while more to realize that despite my location, inside I wasn’t any different. I was still scared. I still didn’t understand most people. I still wasn’t the missionary I was dreaming of becoming. The struggle I had to become a sister missionary started in this place. With my first companion, my insecurities became clearer to me, as well as my fears. This piece of my experience in Odessa is about realizing what I feared, and what my companion feared. It is also about deciding what to do with fear.

After my first swerving taxi ride through the streets of Odessa we arrived at our apartment and began the hike up to the fourth floor, there was no elevator. My companion paused on the third floor and pointed to the broken window. “See this? About two weeks ago there was a huge puddle of blood here. We think a drunk man fell into the window or was shot. I couldn’t walk around it without getting blood on my shoes. It’s pretty much cleaned up now, though.”

I looked up from the stained floor to the window, “Do things like that happen often here?” She shrugged and I decided that wasn’t enough to dampen my spirit. I hefted my bag up one more flight of concrete stairs and tested the doorbell. It made a sound like an angry bird.

“It’s home sweet home,” my companion said flatly. I surveyed the entrance, walked into the bedroom, and pulled apart the yellowed lace curtains to find the view of the housetops below. It reminded me of some tropical place with colorful, decaying plaster buildings capped with rusting tin roofs and deep green foliage, unlike the cold Siberian wilderness I’d pictured in my mind. “This looks like Jamaica or something,” I thought out loud.

“Yeah, just like Jamaica. It even has cockroaches,” she mumbled from the living room.

The first thing I realized about my companion was that she had a tangible fear of our surroundings. I was new and a little unsure of everything around me, but it was more exciting than threatening. During the taxi ride I was uneasy, but when we got to our apartment I felt good about what was ahead of me. She, on the other hand, seemed to have a way of focusing on the downside of things, but I wasn’t ready to condemn her. At that point I didn’t want to try to understand why she seemed unhappy. I did the first thing that usually comes to my mind in tough situations. I tried to make up for it with an overly positive attitude. But I found out that wasn’t enough for the challenges that lay ahead.

The moment we walked into the house I wanted to get right to work with all the fire that I’d amassed during the three eternal months in the Missionary Training Center. I called to my companion in eagerness, “Hey Sister? Come over here...” I glanced back over at her and my heart sunk, she had already collapsed onto the couch. Within minutes she was asleep and I was left with few options so, out of curiosity, I started to clean up the apartment that previous missionaries had left in disorder. I wanted to be ultra-effective with my time alone and began sorting through piles of forgotten junk, discarding unnecessary items and organizing what we would keep. In my exploration, I found ancient discussion booklets with duct taped spines, pulled free from their plastic bindings, and bags of worn out nylons that held the mark of hard working sisters who went before me. I wanted so badly to be out on the streets teaching the gospel instead of inside, waiting for my companion to wake up and drag herself off the couch. I didn’t understand what was going through her mind or happening to her physically. She was more than exhausted, and I was, unfortunately, part of the cause. After a couple hours everything was a little more organized—the curtains were hanging straight, but they were still a dingy yellow. I looked into the kitchen and saw a cockroach perched on our pile of drying dishes, welcoming me, with its feelers waving in the air. “Tarakani!” I squealed out loud and I immediately began a siege against it and all the others that lived under our kitchen cupboards.

Soon I found that my situation that day wasn’t out of the ordinary. I felt discouraged by the lack of missionary work we were doing. I imagined that missionaries were constantly out on the streets, endlessly knocking on doors and teaching lessons with pictures of happy families perched on their laps, nodding in unison. I feared that I would never learn how to be a real missionary and I would somehow be punished for the absence of smiling and nodding going on. I didn’t want to waste the time I had, but I couldn’t inject my spirit into my companion. To me it looked like she went about each day as if she was weighted down. I saw her struggle with the fear that she couldn’t teach a discussion. Nothing I said would console her. She told me every day that she was a bad trainer and a bad missionary. She had very high standards for herself and for me as well. And her fear kept her from making mistakes that are necessary to learn. She was determined that she could somehow improve our discussions without the risk of teaching people in an incorrect manner. I observed her spending hours studying the words in the discussions and how to present them. I saw the effort that she put into her study of the language and the gospel. I knew that we could teach a discussion, even though I was much less confident of my own abilities. I knew that she had the ability to teach, but she lacked the confidence.

One day in particular, I remember we stayed home for the specific purpose of perfecting our first discussion.

That day I realized the amount of fear she possessed, and instead of continuing to work cheerfully, I let the joy of missionary work drain out of me completely.

I stared off at the balcony from my place next to a stuffed, floppy eared dog with his felt tongue sticking out derisively. “I can’t take much more of this,” I muttered to my companion in desperation. The reply I received was disheartening.

“Sister, we are not leaving this apartment until we have the first discussion perfect.” I couldn’t believe the torture she was putting me through. That day she announced that in place of our usual wandering in the streets and half-hearted contacting, we were staying inside the apartment to work on the first discussion together. We gathered up all the old stuffed animals left there by our hazieka and placed them on the couch as an audience to teach. I tried to make myself do it, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t speak Russian or teach in the right way. I didn’t find any motivation in their unblinking plastic eyes. So I slumped down in my chair, with my elbows on my knees until that started hurting. Then I laid back and perked my ears towards the noise that came from the street below. I wanted to be out there with my Book of Mormon in hand.

“We haven’t even been out of the house today,” I whined with my head in my hands.

“Do you even want to do this?” she shot back at me. I shut my mouth reluctantly and leaned back to stare at the water stains on the ceiling with tears in my eyes.

Truthfully, I didn’t want to do it anymore but I kept listening while becoming angrier and angrier. I pointed at her and said, “You’re just scared of teaching!” I glanced away, almost wincing at what I knew would be next.

“How would you like to be me? I have a new companion who doesn’t know anything and I’ve only been out for five months! What was President thinking?!”

“Well, you could at least try!” I became bolder in my anger. “You can’t learn how to teach a discussion by teaching freakin’ stuffed animals!” I threw the dog across the room to prove my point. I was freely crying now and my breath was short. “Why can’t we do what real missionaries do?!” I shut my eyes, denying what was really taking place.

My companion then blurted out in defense, “Are you saying I’m not a real missionary? You think I’m a bad companion. Well, I am a bad missionary. I obviously can’t do anything right for you.”

That is what she was afraid of, doing something wrong. She thought so much about how perfectly something had to be done and any attempt she made seemed hopelessly inadequate. I learned in this moment, and others like it, that I could not forcefully resolve her fear or make her see mine. I was afraid of missing something, never becoming the missionary I dreamed of being. She was afraid of failing, not being perfect. Staying home to memorize the first discussion was obviously not a resolution for these problems. Further down the road on my mission I learned that I didn’t have to be afraid of missing out if I did what was asked of me. Tolstoy, a famous Russian author, captured in his own words what I learned about overcoming fear, “‘pushing oneself in where one is not needed does not prove one to be brave.’ ‘Then what do you call brave?’ ‘He who does what he ought to do is brave…’”

Memories of Ukraine

I left Ukraine in October 2004 after serving a mission there for a year and a half. I can hardly sum up the feeling of leaving, it was like abandoning a loved one and I ached daily to be back. I would walk the streets in my mind, recalling people and places I missed, feeling like I could get on a bus and within a couple hours I could see them again.

I wrote in my journal:

"I am sitting on the plane ride home. I can't believe this day has finally come. It's incredibly unreal. Kind of like the feeling that I had as I flew into Ukraine. I knew that there was an amazing experience waiting for me. I knew there it would be hard, but I had no idea exactly what would happen. I was nervous going into a country that had completely different customs and language. I suppose that America will feel like that when I get back there. I'm used to the Ukrainian people and I truly love them and the good things they do."

The feeling of leaving starkly contrasted the feeling I had as I entered the country. I hadn't yet gained the relationships that made the whole experience so wonderful. I wrote an essay a while back which highlights some half-remembered moments of my first impressions of Ukraine, needless to say, they were less than ideal:

"I came to a bumpy and less triumphant halt than I had expected in the Borispol International Airport and I exited the plane feeling nauseous. I was finally in the destination I’d dreamed about for three long months in the Missionary Training Center. With some sloppy Russian skills and an anxious smile I somehow got through customs and out to my awaiting mission president. It was a very humid day and I don’t remember much after the daredevil car chase that led back to the mission home, but one thing I do remember that day was something I had been wondering about the whole exhausting trip—I wanted to know where I would be serving. It was my dream to serve in Odessa after hearing about it from a fellow missionary I met in the MTC who was native to the town. Within five minutes of driving back to the mission office my mission president hastily notified me I would be serving there, and I was definitely pleased with the news.

Odessa is a beautiful, dilapidated port city on the Black Sea: over 200 years old and with crumbling buildings that prove that fact. It opened to my view from the grimy window of a Soviet passenger train. The train station itself was a remnant of grander times, and my focus was immediately distracted from its gray exterior to a glimpse of the nearest Orthodox church glowing yellow in the morning sun with dull silver onion-shaped domes. My companion lay on the top bunk in our compartment looking entirely drained of strength. I quickly snapped a picture of her, chuckling to myself nervously. My excitement manifested itself in the way most tourists express it—I took pictures.

After another death-defying taxi ride, I arrived at my new place of residence. I climbed up the stairs to the fourth floor in a century old apartment, wondering where the elevator was. But there wasn't one. My companion briefly paused to point out the broken window on the third floor and mention a drunken man had inopportunely fallen into it and left a large pool of blood on the floor only weeks prior to my arrival. Only a slight brownish tinge remained, but that was enough to bring me down to reality, if the endless stairs weren't enough to put a damper on my enthusiasm. I hefted my bag up one more flight of stained concrete steps and rang the doorbell to test it. It made a sound like an angry bird. I was suddenly in a completely different world. Gazing out the window, I optimistically thought that the view from our apartment reminded me of some tropical place with its colorful, crumbling plaster buildings capped with rusting tin roofs and crawling with rich green foliage--unlike the cold Siberian wilderness I’d pictured in my mind. It was warm and inviting. Reassured, I felt a surge of energy to go out and work with all the fire I had amassed in the MTC and I soon found myself searching for an outlet for my misguided fervor. My companion had collapsed onto the couch, in her familiar impression of a wet rag. Turning my energy to the rundown apartment that had seen the comings and goings of many other missionaries, I began sorting through the piles of forgotten junk that cluttered every corner of my new home. In my exploration I found hope. The ancient discussions with duct taped spines and bags of worn out nylons held the mark of a previous generation of hard working sisters. I wanted to be one of them. Soon the place was dusted, the sheets were changed, the dishes were washed, the curtains were straightened and I turned my attention to the cockroaches that lived in the dank shelter of the kitchen cupboards and the depths of our ancient washing machine. It was an eternal battle from then on, but that day I made considerable progress by sucking them up with the vacuum cleaner.

After my cleaning spree I imagined we would be back on schedule and get right to work. To my disappointment, however, we met with zero investigators that day and only made the effort to stop by a recently baptized family and teach them one of the discussions for new members. The fire I had felt inside fizzled out and I gladly laid my head down on the sticky table despite the dozens of curious ants crawling around my arms. My trainer opened the discussion and began reading. I’m not sure what she said, but after dozing for a good half hour she nudged me and said 'testify!' I found it slightly amusing and I said smugly, 'I know whatever she said is true.'

That was one of my only chances to do any kind of testifying that week. The next day we didn't even make it out of the house. I sat frustrated, said nothing, and listened while becoming angrier and angrier as my companion was trying to teach the first discussion to a row of sorry looking stuffed animals on the living room couch. It hadn't occurred to me before then that she was afraid to teach actual people. I lost control and blew up at her asking why we couldn't do the things that real missionaries do. My mind was flooding with the images of myself storming fearlessly through the streets of post-Soviet Ukraine; wielding my Book of Mormon in hand; preaching the word of God; and doing what other bold sisters had done. But reality was so different. I stared off to the balcony where dusty sunlight filtered in and I could hear packs of dogs scrapping and yelping while I pitied myself. "