family history

Looks like crazy writing? Yeah... So I kind of caught the Family History bug about a year ago. For some reason decided to check out Grannie's mom, Baba's, line because I noticed it didn't have as many names that had been discovered over there. Plus after our big family reunion I got hyped about the 'army of ancestors' Uncle John talked about. So I found a microfilm that is from Baba's old village in what was once a part of Austria (hey- an Unger connection, sort of), and since then I've been trying to figure out how to read it. I thought that Jordan or Uncle John could figure it out, it's in the Cyrillic alphabet after all- but oh no. It turns out that this is no common Cyrillic. It's in 'Old Slavonic'- a language used exclusively by the church during worship services. I think the ordinary chap understood it, sort of, but they didn't use it when they went out to buy borscht. So it's this super obscure language that hardly got any playtime back then, so you can imagine how hard it is to learn now. It's actually a gorgeous language, very poetic and lovely. I've emailed a bunch of professors and priests here in the LA area who still use it. I've taught myself a lot of it, I just need a little help deciphering the last names. For example, in this file here the second column from the left is easy overall- first names. We've got Maria, we've got Sasha, and then we've got something crazy in the middle. It's the columns with lots of words that's hard for me, and of course that's where all the last names are. So... if anybody happens to find a Greek Orthodox church and they happen to meet a priest who seems really cool- please stop in. Shake their hand, and ask if your sister can email them. I need someone who speaks this language to tell me how to read a few of these lines....