Alright, so this week: Well on Tuesday we went over to one of the sisters' investigators' house and we gave a blessing. Pretty sick. The next day, we went less active hunting and we found one. He was baptized in '94 and went to the temple the very next year. He's a really cool member and then on Sunday, he asked me if he could be a member present in one of our lessons. Less active visits work! Later, we set up another visit with a former investigator from the area book, okay, here's where this gets confusing. Okay, so we had an exchange with the ZL's, and my companion and the ZL he was with called the guy on their phone. They set up for the next day at 11:30. The next day comes and at 10:00 we got a phone call from the ZL's. They told us that the guy was at the church right then. So we called him and he totally was. Luckily, a member was there to talk to him while we rushed over there. I was kind of angry about it because the guy just decided to show up at the church an hour and a half early for no apparent reason and it disrupted my day and my schedule and I was already a little grumpy that morning anyway, so basically it was a dumb situation. Anyway, so we showed up at the church and met the guy and talked to him for a bit. He's a medicine professor at the university here, no wife or kids, and he believes that the true church needs to conform to the word of the Bible. Turns out he had a Book of Mormon from 2 years before when the missionaries met with him then. Since he's had it, he's read it twice. All the way through. Needless to say, we were thoroughly impressed. So we went forward and gave him a Restoration lesson, and he totally agreed with everything we said. Literally. He told us after everything we said that he agreed. We challenged him to pray about the Book of Mormon and about Joseph Smith being a true prophet and he accepted! It was a fantastic lesson, and we'll meet up again this week. Then the ZL's called again and told us that the guy, Nicolai, called them and told them that he couldn't meet at 11:30. They had no idea who he was so they set up for 10:00. When they all were at (different) churches on time, they knew something was up, and then they realized that he was in Ploiesti, not Bucharest. So that's where the problem came from and it wasn't Nicolai's fault at all! Moral of the story: never assume anything, ever. You're always wrong. Guaranteed.
There was a holiday this past week on the first of March, called Martisor. Basically, it's Valentine's Day, except more of an emphasis on the girl. What happens is everyone everywhere sells these things called martisoare, and guys buy them to give to girls. They're either pins or bracelets usually, but I saw some necklaces and earrings too. The bracelets get tied on by a string that's red and white, white to symbolize purity and red to symbolize a new beginning. It's a pretty big deal here, and Centru was really crowded with tons of people selling and buying martisoare for their girls. Pretty exciting.
Culture Tip
So there's a word here that is basically the magic word for everything: poftim. It can mean pretty much anything. Well, not really. But you use it and it's like a get out of jail free card. You can use it when someone says something you don't understand or if you're handing something to someone, like Here you go! So I didn't really like using it before because it's kind of a dumb word. When we contact for English classes, we give out cards with the information on it and try to tell people about it. I would go up to somebody on the street and try to talk to them normally, and they'd always ALWAYS give me the waggy finger or just shake their head or something of that sort and it was terrible. But then I started my contacts by saying "poftim!" and then they started begging me for the cards. As soon as you use the poftim, they're all about it. People are desperately grabbing for them and if they're walking in a group, everyone in the group has got to have one. Essentially, that one word made a huge difference in my English contacting and now it's super easy and everybody wants me for my cards.
Two Truths and a Lie
Okay, last week was also too easy. It was the mustache guys.
So for this week, did I:
- Meet a guy who carves cow bones for a living
- Get kisses blown at me by two girls, or
- Leave the phone in my suit when I took it to the tailor's
Pictures
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