September 17, 2013

September 9:

This week has been relatively uneventful here in Craiova, but now I'm officially in my second transfer and not new anymore!  We have a new Elder here, Elder Hickenlooper.  He's from Alaska and has been out for 14 of his 16 transfers, so he's pretty much a pro at the language, which is good, because now we're going to be able to put ads in the newspaper for our English classes, and we might even be able to do street boarding!  We finally contacted a referral that we got from Iasi a while ago, and his name is Marian.  He doesn't live in Craiova, so it's hard to get a hold of him, but we finally did and we taught him a little on the street and hopefully well be getting a good new investigator.  We're going to Bucharest today for zone training meeting, so that'll be fun.  Oh and before I forget, can you send me your macaroni and cheese recipe?  Romania is severely lacking in macaroni and cheese.  However, it is not lacking in grapes.  There's tons of grapes here, and they're all ripening.  The church here is covered in grapes, so when we go to the church for anything, we get a big ol bunch of grapes and munch on them while we're there.  Elder Lex likes to freeze them, and when you do that, it's just like eating candy.  It's great to eat the fresh fruit here, because they don't put any preservatives in anything, and the freshest of all is when you just pick them straight off the vine.  That's about all the excitement we've had here this week. 

So every time we talk to somebody who's not really interested in the gospel, they always always always ask us if we are allowed to have girlfriends here.  And it's ridiculous, like is that all they think about?  So I asked Elder Lex and he said that he had the same question, and he said he asked a guy in Cluj about it, and he said that the reason everyone asks us if we are allowed to have girlfriends is because probably, out of all the people in Romania, we have the best chance of getting one hahahahaha.  He said "Just talk to them in your American accent and they'll be all over you"  so needless to say, I've been working really hard on my Romanian accent.

September 16:

This week we had zone training meeting, so we got to go down to Bucharest again.  Elder Lex hurt his ankle a long time ago, and it was still bothering him, so we also went to the hospital while we were there.  The doctor spoke some English, so that was good.  However, he seemed to think that Elder Lex was a professional basketball player for some reason, so all of his treatments were based on basketball.  Anyway, all is well with his ankle, so don't worry.  On Saturday, we had a branch activity where we invited a bunch of investigators and well everybody really.  We had a lot of people there and it was a huge success!  We even got an English teacher to come (even though he can't speak English) and now we have that contact so maybe we can gt some posters up in his school an get more students that way.  I baked your banana bread for the activity and it was a smash hit.  It was the only thing that got entirely eaten.  After the activity, one investigator was interested in getting his English better (most Romanians are) so he wanted to talk to us for a while in English afterward.  He kept trying to convince me that he was actually American (through his thick Romanian accent), even though we all knew that he wasn't.  We had a member from a town 2 hours away come to church on Sunday, so that was good.  He brought his friend too, who was very interested in everything.  He even took home with him a Teachings of the Prophet Lorenzo Snow book.  He also said that he wants to receive the Aaronic Priesthood in December.  We had to carefully remind him that he needed to receive the lessons first, and be baptized, and then he can receive the Priesthood.  We'll see what happens with him. It's hard here because the branches are so small and its hard to teach people far away, since they can't ever come to church.  Generally, we just have to focus on people in the cities that can come to church.  But we'll see what happens.  

 I got subway, so that was pretty great.  It's so cheap here. We met these guys with super powers here. There's a romanian fairy tale that includes these guys that have weird powers.  There's one that is always hungry, one that's always thirsty, one that's always cold, one that flies, and one that can talk to birds.  We've met all but the one who can fly and the one who's always hungry.  We will find them though.