is revisiting Odessa.

I posted an earlier draft of this personal essay on my travel blog. Now I am revising and this is the latest version. It is now entitled:

"Finding the Courage to Leave the Apartment: One Missionary’s Dilemma"

The tram ran next to my apartment, number 102A, on my street in Odessa, Ukraine. I often heard its bell ring, which brought to mind the image of children riding merrily on an amusement park ride, but the tram only carried people to their needed destinations, providing little merriment in the process. The cramped cabin was musty, the chairs rocked and vibrated, and the sudden stops left people sprawling in the aisles and gruffly adjusting their parcels once more.

We lived in one of the most impoverished parts of the city, Moldovanka—the former ghetto dedicated strictly to Moldavians—but its rawness appealed to me. The cobblestone streets were crumbling, half-covered with asphalt and dotted with old women gathered on the corners selling fresh homemade rolls, black in the center with sweetened poppy seeds. They would bring their vegetables in from the country and carefully place them in handkerchief-covered buckets to sell along with their rolls. Living there was not like home, but the simplicity of that lifestyle was beautiful to me.

Odessa overwhelmed my senses with new experiences. The air smelled warm and putrid in the summer and felt too thick to breathe. Window frames painted bright greens, blues, and reds seemed garish against gray concrete walls. Dingy white dogs ran around on three legs and lounged in the doorways when it got too hot to move. It was like a dismal Land of Oz. My surroundings were so surreal that I felt different too. I didn’t want to blend in with such a place, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself either. However, that was impossible with my black nametag emblazoned on my too-bright white, too-starched blouse.

After my first breakneck taxi ride along the hazardous cobblestone streets of Odessa, we arrived at our apartment and began the hike up to the fourth floor. Of course there was no elevator. My companion paused on the third floor to point out the broken window and faded brown stain on the floor. Pointing to it she mentioned that about two weeks ago there was a huge puddle of blood there. A drunken man had fallen into the window and broken it, injuring himself in the process. I gingerly walked around it and up the last flight of stairs to our door. I reached out and tested the doorbell. It made a sound like an angry bird.

“Home sweet home” my companion said flatly. I surveyed the entrance, taking in the faded pattern of the wallpaper, the shabby rug, and the dust that covered everything. I walked into the bedroom and upon finding the view, pulled apart the yellowed lace curtains. It reminded me of some pitiable tropical place with multi-colored, rotting, plaster buildings capped with rusted tin roofs and crawling with deep green foliage, unlike the barren 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.” My companion interjected from the living room.

“Cockroaches?” I shuddered, searching the corners and imagining that I could see them skittering along the baseboards.

I was the typical missionary straight out of the MTC, filled with too much fire and too little ability. I wanted to get right to work, but was unsure of how to do it. I went to the living room to pester my companion about leaving the house already. She lay face down on the couch looking utterly spent, her fragile shoulders moving up and down with every breath. I couldn’t wake her. I decided to focus my brimming energy on the grime that coated our apartment.

Every empty space was filled with the ghosts of missionary past: ancient discussion booklets with duct-taped spines, antiquated lesson models made of plastic cups, bags of worn out nylons, and an assortment of books left behind because they were too bulky to carry. I pictured myself on the street carrying my Book of Mormon around proudly instead of being stuck inside and frowned at the junk in front of me. Since when is this missionary work? That day I scoured the apartment until my energy was sapped and I could at least try to rest, despite the jet lag that made my pulse race in the middle of the night.

Soon I found out that that day wasn’t out of the ordinary. I felt discouraged by the lack of work we were doing. Before my mission I had imagined that missionaries were constantly out on the streets, endlessly knocking on doors, and teaching lessons nodding in unison with pictures of happy families perched on their laps. I feared that I would never learn how to be a real missionary and that I would somehow be punished for the lack 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 seemed like she went about each day as if she were weighted down with a large pack on her back, but she did not carry one. I saw her struggle with a fear of teaching, but I did not know how to help her. She often remarked that she was a bad trainer and a bad missionary. She had very high standards for herself and was determined that we could somehow improve our discussions without the risk of teaching actual people and making damaging, unalterable mistakes. I observed her spending hours studying the words in the lessons and how to present them. I saw the effort that she put into her study of the language and the gospel. I knew that she could teach, even though I was much less convinced of my own abilities.

One day in particular, I remember we stayed home for the specific purpose of “perfecting” our first lesson. That day, 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 seat facing 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 this lesson is perfect.” At the time it felt like she was trying to torture me. That day she had announced that in place of our usual wandering in the streets and misdirected contacting, we were going to stay inside the apartment to work on the first lesson together. All day. We gathered up all the old stuffed animals left there by our landlady 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. Not to a motley pack of dolls anyway. 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 lay 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!” and quickly glanced away, almost wincing at what I knew would come 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 lesson by teaching freaking 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.”

Her fears had come to a boiling point. I learned in this moment that I could not forcefully make her see my point of view. I also realized that I was afraid too. I was afraid of missing something, of never becoming the missionary I dreamed of being. We were both afraid of failing. Staying home to memorize the first lesson was obviously not a resolution for these problems, but perhaps going out onto the streets wasn’t the solution either.

“So what do we do?” I finally softened my approach and looked at her with my reddened eyes.

I don’t remember the exact details of how we resolved this conflict, but I do remember that we apologized to each other. We sat and talked about our weaknesses and our fears. We cried together and we realized that we both had the same goal underneath all our anxieties. We simply wanted to share our feelings about the gospel with the people in Ukraine. Thankfully, we never taught stuffed animals again and, soon enough, I was standing on a busy street corner contacting at the top of my lungs as rumbling trucks and hissing busses drove by. I smiled and held my Book of Mormon close to my chest as I called out one phrase I knew by heart, “Can I talk to you for a minute?” My companion looked over at me and smiled.