July 26, 2013

Here's a letter from Scott's mission president's wife: 

President Hill and I were delighted to meet Elder Harris as he arrived in the Bucuresti airport with his MTC group. He seemed very happy to finally be in the mission field after his weeks in the MTC. He was surprisingly awake after his long flights. President Hill and I had an enjoyable interview where we learned more about this great young man. It is evident that he is sincere in his desire to serve. Thank you very much for sending him to us. We were impressed by his determination to be a great missionary.

The next day, we went to Cismigiu Park where, in 1990, Elder Russell M. Nelson dedicated the land of Romania for teaching the gospel. We sang hymns and snapped pictures of ourselves with Elder Harris. I'm attaching the picture for you to see.

Then, all the incoming missionaries came to lunch at the mission home, where they tried their first Hungarian Romanian goulash. After that, they worked hard to stay awake through our orientation meeting and then met their first companions. Elder Harris is now with his initial companion, Elder Lex, in the town of Craiova. Elder Lex, a native Austrian, speaks excellent English, is a diligent missionary and will give him an excellent start. 

Thanks again for sending us such a wonderful young missionary. We could instantly tell he will be a very good, faithful, hard-working missionary.

July 17, 2013

This one guy gave the devotional on Sunday, and he was like who was baptized in the last 2 years? And they stood up and he picked on guy to come up to the front, and he goes, whats your conversion story? And the kid goes its weird. And the guy is like "they all are."  "Okayy, so when I was in high school, I liked this girl, so I started talking to her, and then I went to church with her a couple times"  Classic right?  "And then her family adopted me" WEIIIIIIIIIRD! And the guy goes, "So are you going to marry her when you get back?" WEIRD. "Nope, we're already sealed." WEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRD. Anyway, that's the best story I've got this week.

Our flight plan is from SLC to JFK to Amsterdam to Bucharest.  24 hours total of travelling.  Should be super fun.  Yes it seemed really fast for me too.  On the first day, our branch president said that the mission has 3 parts: the first 4 days, the next 6 weeks, and then the other 2 years, and they all seem like the same length to you.  If he's right, I'm almost 2/3rds of the way done!  We learned some funny things in Romanian, like when you do a past tense accusative statement, like "I desired a shirt," you put the indicator after the verb if the object is feminine, which is weird because normally you would put it before the verb.  Anyway, the reason this is funny is because when you say "I desired a shirt" it translates to: "Am dorit-o o camașă." We thought it was funny because its dorito, like the chip. Anyway, its probably not funny but we thought it was.  My teacher always tells us that were her weirdest group of missionaries, but that all missionaries think that dumb things are funny because they have no relation to the outside world, where things actually are funny. Another thing that we thoguht was funny was when we were practicing saying sentences, my companion could NOT handle how to use the word pe, which is used with the accusative case for the stressors, or on top of.  So we were practicing discerning between acusative and dative, and my campanion kept using the accusative stressors, so he said God and Jesus Christ appeared on top of Joseph Smith, and one of our teachers, who actually is Romanian, thoght it was just THE funniest thing ever and we had to stop class for a couple minutes so he could pull himself together. 

Apparently Romania has very storng nationalism, so one of the biggest holidays is Romania Day, where they have huge parades and they drive tanks though the streets and the Romanian teacher said that people just get to climb on them and stuff.  Anyway, cant wait to talk to you on monday!

July 14, 2013

Hey, I'm Elder Harris' sister, Holly, and I will be keeping you posted with all the e-mails, letters, and pictures Scott sends. So far, Scott has been in the Missionary Training Center in Provo, UT for about 5 weeks. He will be shipping out for Romania a week from tomorrow, on July 23. 

Here's what Scott has sent so far: 

June 26:

So last night we went to a devotional and the speaker was Janice Kapp Perry.  She told this story about what her husband's first line to her was. She was about to audition for a clarinet part, so she was practicing a little.  her now husband goes up to her and says: Those lips look like they were made for something much better than playing the clarinet.  At that point we all laugh, and her husband, who is 78 ps, starts running up to the podium as fast as he can, and it looks like he's about to say something into the microphone, li9ke nonono that's not what happened, but instead, he just pulls her aside and gives her a big ol smooch.  The crowd went WILD hahahaha.  He turns around and walks off the stage with one fist raised triumphantly in the air as we gave him a standing ovation.  Of course, once he realized this, he gave us an encore performance haha.  Anyway, he's just my new hero, that's all.

My companions are super cool.  My teacher, Fratele Sandberg is the coolest guy.  He has this beautiful hair that swooshes over to the side and he actually laughs at our jokes.  Oh and we figued out how to say animal noises.  dog = hăm hăm (hum hum), duc = mac mac, bear = moar (mowarr), and my personal favorite, the pig = guiz guiz (gweez gweez), oh and the mouse goes chis chis (kees kees).

July 3:

Ummm okay so we teach "investigators" (our teachers) and one time I went in there and the guy, Gheorghe, went to shake my hand and I didn't know what he was doing so I just gave him a bro-hug instead.  It was super terrible.  I like ruined our lesson before it started.  Also, we told him that the water in California isn't boiled, and that Moses built an arc.  So we're doing great, preaching misinformation and nonsense.

July 10: 

Ummmm story of the week, we learned how to sing the birthday song:

 

La mulți ani și sanătate

sa-ți dea Domnul Tot ce dorești

Zile senine și fericire

La mulți ani să traiești

Mulți ani traeasca

Mulți ani traeasca
La mulți ani

Cine să traeasca?

Cine să traeasca?

La mulți ani

(name) să traeasca

(name) să traeasca

La muți ani!

 

Basically, the ț makes a sound like zz in pizza, the ș makes a sh sound, and you don't pronounce the i at the end of the word, and you pronounce every syllable.  The song goes to the tune of the Swedish birthday song, not ours, so you can look it up on youtube or something.  

And here are the latest pictures: 

Scott's district at the Provo Temple. 

I'm pretty sure this is his companion getting a terrible haircut. 

Language training

They've been having some fun pretending to be Ghostbusters. 

If there's something strange in your neighborhood, who you gonna call?

Capturing some ghosts

Scott recommends looking up the talk "The Character of Christ" by David A. Bednar. He says it's his favorite talk ever. Here's a link: 

http://www2.byui.edu/Presentations/transcripts/religionsymposium/2003_01_25_bednar.htm