3rd Week in Romania
Monday, May 3, 2010 by Sora Jay
Hey Everybody,
I got your letters! Last week the only thing that I had in my inbox was one letter from Rodney but today there were other letters in there that said that I got them before I sent my letter to you guys, so sorry if I haven't responded to anything you asked yet.
So, Argentina huh Ed. Hooray, we're all in third world countries together! And we all get to struggle through the language learning experience. It would be so much easier to teach people in English, but it's fun to learn a new language. Study a lot of vocabulary while you can, because now I don't have very much time to study and I'm really grateful that I did study as much vocabulary as I did.
The weather here is pretty good. It's a lot like Utah because it's really hot some days but kind of cold other days, as we're transitioning from spring to summer. It's going to be really hot when we hit full-out summer I think because it's already hot on the warm days. We live in a fifth floor apartment, which means that the heat from all of the other apartments drifts up into ours making it even hotter.
Romania is an interesting place. It's like there aren't really any laws here. Everybody does whatever they want when they're driving and there aren't any speed limit signs that I have ever seen. We always walk along the train tracks to get to one of our investigators, and there's not really anything wrong with it. Some trains went by and honked at us but it's just because the drivers were guys, and almost all guys driving cars past us will yell something at us. I think I mentioned it before but in all of the religions besides ours the women wear scarfs on their heads at church or when they're preaching/talking about the gospel or praying, so that's one of the things that people will yell at us: "wear a batic!"
We got seven investigators this week, four of them that are progressing really well. One of them, Tina, couldn't come to church because her husband wouldn't let her. We fasted and prayed with her so that she would be able to. On Saturday night she asked her husband if she could go and he said no. But then he went to her Sunday morning and said "Get cleaned up and get dressed and go to church." It was awesome when she walked in to sacrament meeting because we thought she wouldn't be able to make it. She was really happy to be there.
Church meetings are interesting here. When people give talks they call on people in the congregation to read scriptures. I think the elders even talked to them about not doing it anymore but they still do. We usually go to the primary class and then to Relief Society. Primary has like five kids and the teacher is super devout lady but she doesn't know how to handle the kids (who are actually mostly teenagers). She had them get up and practice bearing their testimonies so that they could do it in sacrament meeting next month, and she was telling them exactly what to say. We were like, they got baptized because they had testimonies, and they know what to say already. Most of the kids in primary, in fact I think all of them, come to church without their parents. A couple come with grandparents I think, but the rest just get themselves there.
We went and taught lessons to a couple of inactive people in our branch. It's sad that they stop coming, but it's always something that comes up and then keeps them away forever. One lady that we taught, Ani, just lives really far away and doesn't have a lot of money to come up to church every week, plus she has to work every other Sunday. We told her to try to make it and she would be blessed. She had an experience with tithing that was really cool. The missionaries had asked her and her husband to pay tithing and they agreed to even though they knew that they wouldn't have enough money to be able to take care of their family of three little boys when they did. So, they paid the tithing and on the next morning they found a bag of food on their front porch. It had everything that she needed inside. She asked all of the members at church if they knew anything about it and nobody did, so she decided that it was angels that had dropped it off at her door.
We teach English classes which is where we got one of our investigators. A lot of people here in Romania know a little bit of English, at least the young people. They hear us speaking English to each other and will turn to listen and say things to each other about us and how they can understand what we're saying. They we say something to each other in Romanian and they are always all really surprised. Anyway, the English classes are fun because my companion is in her last transfer so she messes things up in English. We were talking about a story that we read, talking about a tree and the students were all referring to the tree as 'he' or 'she' and they didn't know which one to call it. My companion started talking about it and referred to it as 'she' in an obvious way, so that the class would catch how she referred to it, and I stood there for a second and then said "it?" She was confused for a second but then she realized what she was saying. She always throws Romanian words into her English sentences too. I told her she's going to have a really hard time when she gets back home.
This is her last transfer so she'll be back soon. She is leaving soon so we are going to spend our p-days doing cool things. We are going to the market today, and we are going to go to the ruins of a castle on the 17th.
We got a copy of conference last night when the APs and President Lundberg came through town to talk to the district president who lives in Arad. So now the members can finally watch it. We watched the first session this morning because it's p-day. I already watched everything but the priesthood session at the MTC so it's wierd that it took so long for it to get here, and kind of annoying. There's no other way for the members to watch it so it seems like it shouldn't take that long. At least they get it eventually though.
A lot of the people here have dreams that they get their answers from. One of our investigators called us and told us that she had prayed about the things that we told her to pray about and then she had a dream and she wanted to know if it was her answer. We just asked her if she felt good and she said yes so we told her it was an answer, but then we told her to keep praying and reading to get more responses. There are quite a few members who decided from a dream that they needed to get baptized, from what I've heard from the other missionaries, so it's like a normal thing. Was it like that in Russia?
My advice to those of you entering the MTC is this: practice speaking with a good accent even in the MTC. Most of the missionaries don't try to do any sort of accent except for rolling the r's if it's necessary in their language, but once you pick up a bad American accent it's really hard to get rid of, and it's difficult for people to understand. All of the missionaries in my district have been out for about a year and a half but some of them still have really bad accents. I guess it won't be much trouble for Tom, being in his country when he learns his language, but Ed will have to be careful.
Well, I think that's all I have to write. The pictures that Jennie and Colin emailed me are cool, I'll try to see if I can put any of my pictures in some emails and send them.
See ya,
Sora Jay
I got your letters! Last week the only thing that I had in my inbox was one letter from Rodney but today there were other letters in there that said that I got them before I sent my letter to you guys, so sorry if I haven't responded to anything you asked yet.
So, Argentina huh Ed. Hooray, we're all in third world countries together! And we all get to struggle through the language learning experience. It would be so much easier to teach people in English, but it's fun to learn a new language. Study a lot of vocabulary while you can, because now I don't have very much time to study and I'm really grateful that I did study as much vocabulary as I did.
The weather here is pretty good. It's a lot like Utah because it's really hot some days but kind of cold other days, as we're transitioning from spring to summer. It's going to be really hot when we hit full-out summer I think because it's already hot on the warm days. We live in a fifth floor apartment, which means that the heat from all of the other apartments drifts up into ours making it even hotter.
Romania is an interesting place. It's like there aren't really any laws here. Everybody does whatever they want when they're driving and there aren't any speed limit signs that I have ever seen. We always walk along the train tracks to get to one of our investigators, and there's not really anything wrong with it. Some trains went by and honked at us but it's just because the drivers were guys, and almost all guys driving cars past us will yell something at us. I think I mentioned it before but in all of the religions besides ours the women wear scarfs on their heads at church or when they're preaching/talking about the gospel or praying, so that's one of the things that people will yell at us: "wear a batic!"
We got seven investigators this week, four of them that are progressing really well. One of them, Tina, couldn't come to church because her husband wouldn't let her. We fasted and prayed with her so that she would be able to. On Saturday night she asked her husband if she could go and he said no. But then he went to her Sunday morning and said "Get cleaned up and get dressed and go to church." It was awesome when she walked in to sacrament meeting because we thought she wouldn't be able to make it. She was really happy to be there.
Church meetings are interesting here. When people give talks they call on people in the congregation to read scriptures. I think the elders even talked to them about not doing it anymore but they still do. We usually go to the primary class and then to Relief Society. Primary has like five kids and the teacher is super devout lady but she doesn't know how to handle the kids (who are actually mostly teenagers). She had them get up and practice bearing their testimonies so that they could do it in sacrament meeting next month, and she was telling them exactly what to say. We were like, they got baptized because they had testimonies, and they know what to say already. Most of the kids in primary, in fact I think all of them, come to church without their parents. A couple come with grandparents I think, but the rest just get themselves there.
We went and taught lessons to a couple of inactive people in our branch. It's sad that they stop coming, but it's always something that comes up and then keeps them away forever. One lady that we taught, Ani, just lives really far away and doesn't have a lot of money to come up to church every week, plus she has to work every other Sunday. We told her to try to make it and she would be blessed. She had an experience with tithing that was really cool. The missionaries had asked her and her husband to pay tithing and they agreed to even though they knew that they wouldn't have enough money to be able to take care of their family of three little boys when they did. So, they paid the tithing and on the next morning they found a bag of food on their front porch. It had everything that she needed inside. She asked all of the members at church if they knew anything about it and nobody did, so she decided that it was angels that had dropped it off at her door.
We teach English classes which is where we got one of our investigators. A lot of people here in Romania know a little bit of English, at least the young people. They hear us speaking English to each other and will turn to listen and say things to each other about us and how they can understand what we're saying. They we say something to each other in Romanian and they are always all really surprised. Anyway, the English classes are fun because my companion is in her last transfer so she messes things up in English. We were talking about a story that we read, talking about a tree and the students were all referring to the tree as 'he' or 'she' and they didn't know which one to call it. My companion started talking about it and referred to it as 'she' in an obvious way, so that the class would catch how she referred to it, and I stood there for a second and then said "it?" She was confused for a second but then she realized what she was saying. She always throws Romanian words into her English sentences too. I told her she's going to have a really hard time when she gets back home.
This is her last transfer so she'll be back soon. She is leaving soon so we are going to spend our p-days doing cool things. We are going to the market today, and we are going to go to the ruins of a castle on the 17th.
We got a copy of conference last night when the APs and President Lundberg came through town to talk to the district president who lives in Arad. So now the members can finally watch it. We watched the first session this morning because it's p-day. I already watched everything but the priesthood session at the MTC so it's wierd that it took so long for it to get here, and kind of annoying. There's no other way for the members to watch it so it seems like it shouldn't take that long. At least they get it eventually though.
A lot of the people here have dreams that they get their answers from. One of our investigators called us and told us that she had prayed about the things that we told her to pray about and then she had a dream and she wanted to know if it was her answer. We just asked her if she felt good and she said yes so we told her it was an answer, but then we told her to keep praying and reading to get more responses. There are quite a few members who decided from a dream that they needed to get baptized, from what I've heard from the other missionaries, so it's like a normal thing. Was it like that in Russia?
My advice to those of you entering the MTC is this: practice speaking with a good accent even in the MTC. Most of the missionaries don't try to do any sort of accent except for rolling the r's if it's necessary in their language, but once you pick up a bad American accent it's really hard to get rid of, and it's difficult for people to understand. All of the missionaries in my district have been out for about a year and a half but some of them still have really bad accents. I guess it won't be much trouble for Tom, being in his country when he learns his language, but Ed will have to be careful.
Well, I think that's all I have to write. The pictures that Jennie and Colin emailed me are cool, I'll try to see if I can put any of my pictures in some emails and send them.
See ya,
Sora Jay
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