2nd Week in Romania
Monday, April 26, 2010 by Sora Jay
Hello everybody,
Things are going okay here in Romania. We haven't had a lot of success as far as finding people after knocking hundreds of doors or anything like that, and our progressing investigator hasn't come to church and her husband doesn't want her to get baptized, but everything is going well. We keep working hard and we know that we will find the people who are ready.
Here's a cool story: we decided earlier this week that we would start focusing our knocking in an area called Micalaca which has a ton of blocks. One door we knocked on a girl said, "Oh yeah I have a book of Mormon. Two boys gave it to me." We asked her when and she said it was about two years ago; then we asked her if she read it and she said she did when she felt the need, so my companion told her that we were sent to her door to tell her to read it and she said "Now do you feel the need?" I don't understand everything so I'm not exactly sure what her response was but we gave her our number and told her to read and call us, because she said she didn't want to meet with us right then. So, I always wonder about what things might be happening that we do that we don't know about. Because my companion told me a story about how one day someone had come up to them and said that she saw them all over the place and she was finally curious about who they were and what they were doing and they were able to set up with her and teach her. So when we get lost in the city or delayed somewhere because of the tramvai I wonder if it is so that some less-active member or previous investigator needed to see us out walking around to remind them about the church. And when we went into that block where nobody else even took a pamphlet from us we found that one girl who had met with the missionaries before and needed to be reminded about it.
On Thursday we had been out knocking doors all day and it was getting late so we decided to head home but it turned out that because we had moved closer toward our home while knocking the area it didn't take us as long to get home as we had expected so we walked a little way behind our apartment building and randomly found a block and walked into it and randomly walked up some stairs and randomly chose a door and somebody let us in. It turns out that they didn't actually live there and were only there for one night watching the house while their friend was at a wedding. They didn't want to go to the wedding because there would be drinking and stuff. So we talked to them for a while (we got home really late actually even though we told them a ton of times that we needed to leave) and got their numbers. They are moving to England in a couple of days so we told them that we would find the address of the nearest church and send the missionaries in England over to meet them, they gave us their address and phone numbers for England. Both Sister Staley and I know missionaries in England who speak Romanian. So that was cool how we were guided directly to the house that they were temporarily in and they were interested.
And finally, yesterday we had to finish our planning so we didn't have a lot of time for knocking but when we got out there we tried to get into a couple of blocks and couldn't (you have to ring up one of the apartments and ask them to unlock the doors for you) so then we were about to try one and a lady came out so we caught the door and got inside. We knocked all of the doors starting at the top and then we got to door 3 and nobody answered so we were walking down the stairs when we heard it open and then close. We decided to go back because we had nothing to lose. So we knocked on that door again and started with our message like usual but then the guy was like "wait let me get my wife." And when she came to the door she told us to come in without asking any questions and had us go sit down in the kitchen and asked us if we needed some water or anything. We were really confused and Sister Staley said really quick in English "I think these guys think that we are somebody else. It's going to be awkward when we have to explain." Because she had had that happen before where somebody thought that they were Jehovas Witnesses and let then in until they talked about Joseph Smith and then threw them out. But then the lady reached up and grabbed something off the top of her fridge and said "Albert gave this to me before he went back to America." And we were even more confused but when she opened it up there was a little message written on a cardboard covering that had a little message and said "-Elder Sandburg." Sister Staley remembered that she had actual seen this lady, Dana, at church but had thought that she was a less active member but as we talked we found out that she was an old investigator that had never been baptized (and I guess we were too stupid to stop her at church and talk to her so we had to go find her at her house). She asked us how we knew where she lived and what we said was "God knows where you live so he showed us." The reason why she hadn't been baptized before was because she had three little kids but wasn't married to her boyfriend, but she told us that she is getting married May 8. So I guess now that she's ready to get baptized we had to find her again. The elders have her teaching record and when we told them about finding her they said that she had moved and they didn't have her address. But now we have it.
So that was really cool.
But for Tom and Ed to know, most of the day is just walking from door to door inviting people to listen to us and testifying right there. But usually something good happens every day.
This city, and I think all of Romania, is super religious. I feel like this is what it was like in Joseph Smith's time. There is the default religion, Orthodox, which usually means that they aren't really religious at all, but there are also churches of lots of different kinds with really devout followers who yell at us when we knock on their doors or who invite us in and try to tell us that we're wrong. Catholicism is pretty big but the Pentecostal members stand out because the girls all wear skirts and shawls on their heads, the Jehova's Witnesses girls wear shawls only to pray or talk about the gospel. Some people feel bad if we pray with them because they think we are sinning by not wearing a shawl/scarf-thing on our heads. Also, when you pray with a pentecostal person they add to your prayer which almost made me start laughing the first time, but is actually kind of disturbing. I'll be saying a short simple prayer and during it they will say things like "Oh, we're thankful!" and "Oh God!" and "Amen!" really emphatically. And then when I finished saying the prayer and closed they immediately started their own prayer, and they are really emphatic the whole time to the point where I almost laugh and almost want to say "Woah, calm down." One of our investigators talked about going to a Pentecostal church and she said "I really liked the singing and the friendly atmosphere but when people started praying and jumping up and speaking in tongues the Holy Ghost ran from the room, and so did I."
So it's not the way that I expected a previously communist country to be.
You can really see the effects of communism here though. Everything is really run down, and a lot of people don't have much hope or motivation to do anything. I am glad that they are as religious as they are but it is still really hard for them to see why it would matter that we have more truth to share with them, and I kind of hate it how their experience with doctrines and the bible has been messed up by the other churches that have been here for hundreds of years. Everyone here misinterprets the bible really well and they have all sorts of questions but when we tell them that all they need to do is read the Book of Mormon to have their questions answered they quote another scripture from the bible and refuse to try it. But I guess some people are prepared and some people aren't.
Anyway, that's probably it for now.
I'll hear from you guys later.
-Sora Jay
Things are going okay here in Romania. We haven't had a lot of success as far as finding people after knocking hundreds of doors or anything like that, and our progressing investigator hasn't come to church and her husband doesn't want her to get baptized, but everything is going well. We keep working hard and we know that we will find the people who are ready.
Here's a cool story: we decided earlier this week that we would start focusing our knocking in an area called Micalaca which has a ton of blocks. One door we knocked on a girl said, "Oh yeah I have a book of Mormon. Two boys gave it to me." We asked her when and she said it was about two years ago; then we asked her if she read it and she said she did when she felt the need, so my companion told her that we were sent to her door to tell her to read it and she said "Now do you feel the need?" I don't understand everything so I'm not exactly sure what her response was but we gave her our number and told her to read and call us, because she said she didn't want to meet with us right then. So, I always wonder about what things might be happening that we do that we don't know about. Because my companion told me a story about how one day someone had come up to them and said that she saw them all over the place and she was finally curious about who they were and what they were doing and they were able to set up with her and teach her. So when we get lost in the city or delayed somewhere because of the tramvai I wonder if it is so that some less-active member or previous investigator needed to see us out walking around to remind them about the church. And when we went into that block where nobody else even took a pamphlet from us we found that one girl who had met with the missionaries before and needed to be reminded about it.
On Thursday we had been out knocking doors all day and it was getting late so we decided to head home but it turned out that because we had moved closer toward our home while knocking the area it didn't take us as long to get home as we had expected so we walked a little way behind our apartment building and randomly found a block and walked into it and randomly walked up some stairs and randomly chose a door and somebody let us in. It turns out that they didn't actually live there and were only there for one night watching the house while their friend was at a wedding. They didn't want to go to the wedding because there would be drinking and stuff. So we talked to them for a while (we got home really late actually even though we told them a ton of times that we needed to leave) and got their numbers. They are moving to England in a couple of days so we told them that we would find the address of the nearest church and send the missionaries in England over to meet them, they gave us their address and phone numbers for England. Both Sister Staley and I know missionaries in England who speak Romanian. So that was cool how we were guided directly to the house that they were temporarily in and they were interested.
And finally, yesterday we had to finish our planning so we didn't have a lot of time for knocking but when we got out there we tried to get into a couple of blocks and couldn't (you have to ring up one of the apartments and ask them to unlock the doors for you) so then we were about to try one and a lady came out so we caught the door and got inside. We knocked all of the doors starting at the top and then we got to door 3 and nobody answered so we were walking down the stairs when we heard it open and then close. We decided to go back because we had nothing to lose. So we knocked on that door again and started with our message like usual but then the guy was like "wait let me get my wife." And when she came to the door she told us to come in without asking any questions and had us go sit down in the kitchen and asked us if we needed some water or anything. We were really confused and Sister Staley said really quick in English "I think these guys think that we are somebody else. It's going to be awkward when we have to explain." Because she had had that happen before where somebody thought that they were Jehovas Witnesses and let then in until they talked about Joseph Smith and then threw them out. But then the lady reached up and grabbed something off the top of her fridge and said "Albert gave this to me before he went back to America." And we were even more confused but when she opened it up there was a little message written on a cardboard covering that had a little message and said "-Elder Sandburg." Sister Staley remembered that she had actual seen this lady, Dana, at church but had thought that she was a less active member but as we talked we found out that she was an old investigator that had never been baptized (and I guess we were too stupid to stop her at church and talk to her so we had to go find her at her house). She asked us how we knew where she lived and what we said was "God knows where you live so he showed us." The reason why she hadn't been baptized before was because she had three little kids but wasn't married to her boyfriend, but she told us that she is getting married May 8. So I guess now that she's ready to get baptized we had to find her again. The elders have her teaching record and when we told them about finding her they said that she had moved and they didn't have her address. But now we have it.
So that was really cool.
But for Tom and Ed to know, most of the day is just walking from door to door inviting people to listen to us and testifying right there. But usually something good happens every day.
This city, and I think all of Romania, is super religious. I feel like this is what it was like in Joseph Smith's time. There is the default religion, Orthodox, which usually means that they aren't really religious at all, but there are also churches of lots of different kinds with really devout followers who yell at us when we knock on their doors or who invite us in and try to tell us that we're wrong. Catholicism is pretty big but the Pentecostal members stand out because the girls all wear skirts and shawls on their heads, the Jehova's Witnesses girls wear shawls only to pray or talk about the gospel. Some people feel bad if we pray with them because they think we are sinning by not wearing a shawl/scarf-thing on our heads. Also, when you pray with a pentecostal person they add to your prayer which almost made me start laughing the first time, but is actually kind of disturbing. I'll be saying a short simple prayer and during it they will say things like "Oh, we're thankful!" and "Oh God!" and "Amen!" really emphatically. And then when I finished saying the prayer and closed they immediately started their own prayer, and they are really emphatic the whole time to the point where I almost laugh and almost want to say "Woah, calm down." One of our investigators talked about going to a Pentecostal church and she said "I really liked the singing and the friendly atmosphere but when people started praying and jumping up and speaking in tongues the Holy Ghost ran from the room, and so did I."
So it's not the way that I expected a previously communist country to be.
You can really see the effects of communism here though. Everything is really run down, and a lot of people don't have much hope or motivation to do anything. I am glad that they are as religious as they are but it is still really hard for them to see why it would matter that we have more truth to share with them, and I kind of hate it how their experience with doctrines and the bible has been messed up by the other churches that have been here for hundreds of years. Everyone here misinterprets the bible really well and they have all sorts of questions but when we tell them that all they need to do is read the Book of Mormon to have their questions answered they quote another scripture from the bible and refuse to try it. But I guess some people are prepared and some people aren't.
Anyway, that's probably it for now.
I'll hear from you guys later.
-Sora Jay
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