Well here it's been pretty good. We got to visit a member this week and she made us sarmale, which is the greatest stuff ever. I'll have to make it for you guys when I get home. She told us that her son, who's about 23 wants to come back to church! She said it was out of the blue and she didn't prompt it at all, he just totally wanted it all of his own volition. I thought that was pretty cool and can't wait for him to come. We also got to visit a family who lives out in the boondocks. They're not members, they're just a really great family and we met them through english. They're really cool and incredibly nice. Hopefully, now that we know them, we'll be able to visit them more often.
A missionary from 2001 visited the branch this sunday and he was pretty cool. The members kept giving him a hard time for being fat and bald because apparently he used to be skinny and had hair. He showed them his wife and they asked him if he was the only one who eats in his house and told him to let his wife eat some.
We're also teaching primary here to the american kids. It's pretty fun and we're teaching them how to sing I am a child of God in Romanian, but now I know why they have young couples teach nursery.
Monday, March 9, 2015
Monday, March 2, 2015
March 1, 2015
So this week, we had zone conference in Cluj. That was my first time going to there and it seems like a really fun city. It's kind of like Timisoara, but more hustly and bustly and more college students. But I really like it here in Timi, which is why I'm glad I'm staying here for another transfer. I only have one shot left to go somewhere else now, since I only have one transfer left. Pretty crazy right? I still don't really know anything about where I'm flying in or if I even get a choice or anything. Aparently, those in the group ahead of me also have no idea, so yeah, I guess that's pretty reassuring. I hope they figure it out or let us know or something.
Well, today we went into the cathedral here for the first time since I've been here and it's incredible. Apparently it's the tallest cathedral in some region, like Romania or something. Anyway, it's really tall. And the inside is completely hollow so it's that much more impressive from the inside. My companion was wearing his had when we walked in and some lady came up and scolded him for wearing a hat in the church, and then she kept coming back to us to tell us stuff. Eventually, we got her to take us upstairs, which was really cool. Then she said that if we came back tomorrow she would take us to the bell tower, which would be super cool so we're definitely going to do that. After the cathedral today, Elder Cooper decided he wanted to try to catch a pigeon because people do it all the time here and birdman has trained the pigeons to not be afraid of people. So we thought it would be easy, right? Well, not so. It eded up being really tough. We all thought Elder Cooper was just being too timid, so we all tried to prove that it was easy. You kinda get stagefright when you're out there though because so many people watch you bend down to try to pick up a pigeon. I ended up punching a pigeon (on accident!) and after that I gave up. We ended up not getting a single pigeon, which was sad. And Elder Coopeer ended up kneeling in pigeon poop. But we walked away having learned an important lesson: only birdman can catch the pigeons.
We also found a korean restaurant this week, and since it was full of asians, we thought we'd try it out. We walked in an were greeted by the cook with a cheery "bu-a eewa!" so we knew we were in for a treat. The only non-asian there was our waitress, so of course the food was really good. We were quite pleased with our find.
Well, today we went into the cathedral here for the first time since I've been here and it's incredible. Apparently it's the tallest cathedral in some region, like Romania or something. Anyway, it's really tall. And the inside is completely hollow so it's that much more impressive from the inside. My companion was wearing his had when we walked in and some lady came up and scolded him for wearing a hat in the church, and then she kept coming back to us to tell us stuff. Eventually, we got her to take us upstairs, which was really cool. Then she said that if we came back tomorrow she would take us to the bell tower, which would be super cool so we're definitely going to do that. After the cathedral today, Elder Cooper decided he wanted to try to catch a pigeon because people do it all the time here and birdman has trained the pigeons to not be afraid of people. So we thought it would be easy, right? Well, not so. It eded up being really tough. We all thought Elder Cooper was just being too timid, so we all tried to prove that it was easy. You kinda get stagefright when you're out there though because so many people watch you bend down to try to pick up a pigeon. I ended up punching a pigeon (on accident!) and after that I gave up. We ended up not getting a single pigeon, which was sad. And Elder Coopeer ended up kneeling in pigeon poop. But we walked away having learned an important lesson: only birdman can catch the pigeons.
We also found a korean restaurant this week, and since it was full of asians, we thought we'd try it out. We walked in an were greeted by the cook with a cheery "bu-a eewa!" so we knew we were in for a treat. The only non-asian there was our waitress, so of course the food was really good. We were quite pleased with our find.
Monday, February 23, 2015
February 23, 2015
So I got a haircut this week and it's the greatest haircut I've ever received. It was so great that I thought I needed to tell you guys about it.
Well, the American family is officially moved in and the dad is called as branch president, so there go my days as branch presiding elder. They are a really cool family and I think it's going to be great with them here. They've already fed us twice, which is way more than we're used to, and we played settlers of catan with them and their kids, so we're doing well.
Our English classes are going incredibly well. We actually just got invited to attend a symphonic orchestra tomorrow with a couple of them, which we're really excited about. We're doing this pretty cool thing for our spiritual thoughts actually. An elder in the district came up with the idea of telling stories from the book of mormon and showing what we can learn from them. They make for some really entertaining spiritual thoughts, especially when we reenact the stripling warriors fending off the lamanite army because they did not doubt the truth of what their mothers taught them. I doubt anyone has tried to incorporate belly stabbing or throat slitting into a spiritual thought before, but we managed to get it in and keep it spiritual at the same time. We're excited for the weather to be warming up and we can start going out to the parks and stuff, so that'll be really great.
Sorry I haven't sent pictures in over a month, but here are some now.
Well, the American family is officially moved in and the dad is called as branch president, so there go my days as branch presiding elder. They are a really cool family and I think it's going to be great with them here. They've already fed us twice, which is way more than we're used to, and we played settlers of catan with them and their kids, so we're doing well.
Our English classes are going incredibly well. We actually just got invited to attend a symphonic orchestra tomorrow with a couple of them, which we're really excited about. We're doing this pretty cool thing for our spiritual thoughts actually. An elder in the district came up with the idea of telling stories from the book of mormon and showing what we can learn from them. They make for some really entertaining spiritual thoughts, especially when we reenact the stripling warriors fending off the lamanite army because they did not doubt the truth of what their mothers taught them. I doubt anyone has tried to incorporate belly stabbing or throat slitting into a spiritual thought before, but we managed to get it in and keep it spiritual at the same time. We're excited for the weather to be warming up and we can start going out to the parks and stuff, so that'll be really great.
Sorry I haven't sent pictures in over a month, but here are some now.
Monday, February 16, 2015
February 16, 2015
Well, this past week we had some good english classes. Since saturday was valentine's day, we taught our class how to ask someone on a date. They all seemed to like that, especially when we did some examples for them of good and bad ways to do it. We taught them how to start a conversation on the phone and they seem to love learning that the correct response to what's up? is always nothing. So about the new family that moved in, they're basically the Weasley family, like from Harry Potter. They were in Budapest this week, so we still don't really know too much about them, but we'll find out more tomorrow when we go to their house.
Monday, February 9, 2015
February 9, 2015
A new family from America moved into the branch yesterday and they seem really great. He's the chair of Mormon studies at some California University, and there are apparently only 3 of those in the world, which is interesting. He's going to be doing something with the university here for 5 months, though exactly what I have no idea. Anyway, they have 3 little kids and since our branch consists of only grandmas, they were really excited about them moving in. Oh and he's supposed to be the new branch president once he gets things settled.
We started up English this week and it's going really well. Our students really like the class and some of them even brought their friends for the second class. We played do you love your neighbor for the first class and that seemed to really break the ice and get everyone comfortable with us.
Also, we had a special transmission for the 3rd hour of church for celebrating the land of Romania being dedicated for 25 years. Other than the technological mishaps, it was good. I had to translate for it for the new American family, which was kind of rough because I couldn't hear and I haven't translated in a while, but I warmed back up to it by the end.
Anyway, have a great week!
We started up English this week and it's going really well. Our students really like the class and some of them even brought their friends for the second class. We played do you love your neighbor for the first class and that seemed to really break the ice and get everyone comfortable with us.
Also, we had a special transmission for the 3rd hour of church for celebrating the land of Romania being dedicated for 25 years. Other than the technological mishaps, it was good. I had to translate for it for the new American family, which was kind of rough because I couldn't hear and I haven't translated in a while, but I warmed back up to it by the end.
Anyway, have a great week!
Monday, February 2, 2015
February 2, 2015
So this week, probably the most exciting thing was we went to an orphanage to do service, which was basically playing games with the kids and helping them with homework. Well, I helped them with homework. Everyone else played games with the kids. Well, I asked the girl what homework she had, she showed it to me and it was order of operations stuff. You know, in math. Like you do division before addition and that kind of stuff. Well, these problems were HUGE. Gigantic long strings with parentheses inside parentheses and all kinds of crazy stuff. At first I was like wow she must be super smart. Then I find out she doesn't even know how to divide and that she's just been walked through problems a million times and now has no idea. She was just given wayyyy too difficult of problems. Anyway, so I couldn't just take that lying down and I had to at least teach her how to divide. We started out by drawing balls and circling them in groups and then counting the groups. That seemed to take and then we could work on doing it with just numbers. However, she was the only one doing homework while all the other kids were playing, so it was a losing battle. So she got to go play and math would have to wait I guess.
Monday, January 26, 2015
January 26, 2015
Well, this week was mildly interesting. We had transfers on wednesday so I got to bring back the crew for another one. I got to ride first class on the sleeper train which was super intense. They give you a toothbrush. For some reason, I always sleep amazingly on trains, probably due to the back and forth rocking, so that was really nice. I'm at that point in my mission where all of my friends are now leaving. It was super weird seeing people for maybe the last time out here. Oh another thing, the sisters in our city got removed, so now we have no sisters in this city, which is pretty unusual, since we have almost as many sisters as we do elders. But since they left, we got to move into their apartment, which is basically a grandma apartment. We have chandeliers and really nice beds. It's kind of weird since I'm used to dude apartments with broken couches and spider-bros and nothing in the kitchen. I'm not sure how I feel about it. Anyway, remember how we have no branch president? Well, I got asked by the district president to be the "temporary presiding elder" in the branch, so that's something. It basically means that I have to do all the things that a branch president would do, but I don't have the calling. We're waiting for a guy to move in here from the states to take over as branch president in February. Anyway, that's the news for this week, hope you guys have a great week!
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