Bethany Durham and Dr. Blair Holmes, History
Growing up a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah, I never thought it was significant that my ward had its own building to meet in. I never thought it was significant that I belonged to a ward with several hundred active members to meet with. Members of the church in the Republic of Slovenia, however, have a much different experience. The purpose of my project was to document the unique experiences of the pioneer members of the LDS Church in the Republic of Slovenia.
As I began my research, I quickly realized that the scope of my initial proposal was much too broad for the time and resources I had to carry out my research. I originally wanted to interview members in all three of the branches in Slovenia and do substantial research on legal issues facing the development of a small religion in a post-communism country. Due to the fact that I had very limited time in the country, I decided to focus my research on members of the church in the cities Maribor and Celje. While the branch of the church has grown substantially in the capital city Ljublajana, membership in these two cities has increased very little since the first missionaries arrived ten years ago. Having served as a missionary in both the Maribor and Celje branches, I knew that these members face many challenges and would have valuable experiences to share about being a member in an area where the church is young and inexperienced.
In preparation for my project, I took a course on doing oral history during winter semester. As I learned about oral history methodology and philosophy, I decided to change the main focus of my project. Originally, I wanted to chronicle the church’s beginnings in Slovenia, but I decided that it would be more valuable to talk to the members about how the church is going in Slovenia. Church historians have placed a lot of emphasis on the first members of the church in new areas, but the experiences these pioneer members have had in supporting a small, struggling branch over time are very interesting and are important to preserve.
For the past eight years, Maribor has had the same four active members: Nenad and Vanja Arsenjuk, Mihaela Brosche-Mlakar, and Tilen Fidler. Celje’s membership is comparable, with five active members: Miran Schneeburger, Nada Stojanoviæ, Milka Dimitrijeviæ, Tanja Uzar, and Lidija Kovaè. These are the people I decided that I would interview while I was in Slovenia.
I came across a few unexpected problems once I got to Slovenia and started interviewing the members. As a missionary, I had heard many of their personal experiences, but it was very difficult to get them to share those experiences during the interviews. This can be attributed to nervousness due to having a microphone in front of them or not having enough time to really think of the most important experiences. I think that they were hesitant to talk honestly about some of the problems that they have in the branches. In every interview, the interviewee had a lot to say about what strengths they saw in their branch, but they were very reluctant to share anything negative. I was also disappointed because I was unable to find a time to meet with two of the members I planned to interview, and one of them refused to participate.
Despite the fact that I narrowed the scope of my project, I still didn’t have enough time in the country to interview the members as thoroughly as I would have liked. I had only one interview with each of the members, lasting from thirty minutes to an hour. There are some less-active members that I would have liked to meet with as well to get their perspective on the church’s strengths and weaknesses in Slovenia. I also realized when I got home, that transcribing these interviews (which were conducted in the Slovene language) is a slow and difficult process.
As I interviewed the members, it was interesting how similar many of their experiences were. Besides Nenad and Vanja Arsenjuk (who got married the day before they got baptized), they are all the only member of their family in the church. Many of them received responsible callings, like Relief Society President or Branch President, after being a member for only a few weeks or months. They share a common vision that someday they will have their own church building to meet in (the Church currently rents space in existing business or residential buildings to use as a church) with many members to fill it. I hope to eventually publish or archive these interviews, so that the experiences of these members will not be lost.
Also, as part of my project, I interviewed several people who had served in Slovenia as full-time missionaries. They shared with me their perspective of the challenges facing the members and their experiences with them. These former missionaries, all of whom are from the United States, gave me a more honest perspective of problems in the individual branches than the members themselves gave me. Some of the main things they mentioned were retention, disagreements between members, lack of resources in their language (including no Slovene language Book of Mormon), and lack of support from friends, family, and other church members. They also told me about how faithful these members are, how hard they work, and how much they sacrifice to help establish the church.
In the process of talking to these members, I have had a couple of ideas for how to use the interviews in other historical works. My first idea is to focus on one particular member and tell his story simultaneously comparing it to a pioneer member of the church from the nineteenth century. I would use a narrative history writing style to show the similarities between old and modern pioneers. My second idea was to focus on the branch in Celje, which has members from Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. I would write about the historical conflict between these nations, using the members as symbols of their respective countries and show how these members have become unified in the church despite their ethnic backgrounds. This was a wonderful experience for me. I gained a lot of exposure to the methodology of conducting oral history interviews, and I’m excited to use the interviews as a source for future writing.