Week 4 in Romania
Monday, May 10, 2010 by Sora Jay
Hey guys,
Hows everything going. I got to talk to some people yesterday on Mothers Day, and that was cool. When I'm out here I kind of forget that I have a family and it's cool to talk to you guys and to get your emails because I remember that there are people like me somewhere. The members and the other missionaries are cool, but nobody else is like all of you guys. So it's cool to talk to you.
When you guys send letters here I get them whenever the APs come out to our city or when we go up for Zone Conference. So I got the letter that Joni sent. It would be cool to have a bunch of pictures of Utah to show to people like what Pete had. They can't really just look up things on the internet for themselves since technology here is a few years behind. Most people don't have computers and the internet is pretty crappy everywhere. So it would be cool to get some pictures from you guys. I have pictures of Rodney & Melissa's family and Joni & Aaron's family but not of anybody else. I only have one pictures that has every sibling in it, and none with Mom and Dad in them. So, if you guys send me some pictures in the mail I can pick them up when we go into Bucharest at the end of this month for transfers. This is my companions last transfer so I know that I'll have to go up for transfers.
Well anyway, things are going pretty good here. Sora Staley gets kind of discouraged pretty quickly, probably because she really wants to make an impact before she leaves, and none of the people that we invited to church have come, ever. We even set baptismal dates but they didn't come to church so we have to postpone them. Every investigator has to come to church at least two times before getting baptized, so now none of our investigators can get baptized before she leaves. Things are going good though.
I guess I should tell you a little more about Romania since lots of people asked questions about it on the phone. The cities here are less town-ish than Springville and Provo. There's no such thing as a front yard in the areas where there are houses (which we call vilas), and there's usually not a front door to anyone's house either. There are big metal gates. But most people live in apartment buildings called blocs. They all look really worn and crappy on the outside, except for a few in Bucharest that they have started painting to look more modern; I saw one that was white with big pink dots all over it. The insides of the apartments are usually nice though, it just depends on how well the people who live there take care of them. They can't really get that bad because they're just made out of cement.
The streets are usually pretty wide. The only city that I've been to that I can compare these cities to is New York, and New York had tiny streets. There is a pretty good tramvai system here in Arad, and in Bucharest there is a nice metro. The tramvais here all have signs written in German because the entire system was donated from Germany. The tramvais are really shaky and bouncy. I didn't notice until a few days ago but the driver has to stop the tramvai and get out with a little lever to switch the rails to make sure we turn where we're supposed to, so it's kind of funny.
We rode on the sleeper trains to and from Zone Conference in Bucharest Thursday night and Friday night. The trains have really little hallways and there are six bunks that you can sleep on. Sometimes we get in the same compartment as the elders but sometimes we're just in there with some random people. You have to wake up plenty before you reach your stop and be ready to go because they only give you like two minutes to get yourself and all of your stuff off the train before it takes off. The trains aren't actually very fast, and you could drive a car from one place to the other faster than you could get there on a train.
We get to look at the scenery from the trains. There are lots of farms and fields and also a ton of little towns. We can see the ruins of castles on the tops of hills too. Next Monday we are planning on going out to some ruins, so hopefully I will have some pictures to send you in my next email. It was really foggy and misty in the morning when our train came in, and it was cool. It feel like you're in a fairy-tale. And when we were at the church in Bucharest it was kind of overcast with little bits of cotton floating all over in the air so that was like a fairy-tale too.
The people here look like regular people, except in general they're not as pretty as Americans, probably just because they smoke and drink and have really hard lives. Mostly anyone who is well-off here in Romania is doing well because they earned money in another country for a while or because they have relatives that live in another country and send them money. People just don't get paid a lot. For gypsies, they are either really poor or really rich. The rich ones are rich because of dishonesty, and usually through money from churches. The gypsy kind lives in Sibiu and has a really nice house and a palace, some of the missionaries there have tried to contact him but he is usually gone. The poor ones live in cheap vilas, a lot of them all together. They usually have more kids than a regular Romanian and they will try to steal from you most of the time, but we have found some that are honest. It's hard to teach gypsies because a lot of them don't have an education and don't know how to read. Some of them have still been baptized though and they just come to church to learn about the gospel. The gypsies always wear gypsy skirts and gypsy batics on their heads if they are traditional. They have their own little culture that is sort of a parasite on the Romanian culture. Romanians are pretty racist against them, even the members in some cities, but not in this one. We have found a gypsy-ish family though that doesn't dress traditionally and can read, and we have been teaching them recently. They want to get baptized but haven't come to church yet.
A lot of people in Romania are what we call 'weefy'. They don't want to commit to do anything because they are afraid that they won't follow through with the commitment and they would just rather not commit in the first place. But when we do commit them they usually fall through anyway, but it's probably like that in most places in the world. Tom and Ed may not have problems like that though. The general authority who came to our Zone Conference was from Brazil and he said that when they first encountered the missionaries they had to wait for two months before the missionaries had time to come to their house and teach them, so there is a greater abundance of willing and ready people in Brazil I guess. There are people here who are ready though, we just need to find them and it's awesome when we do. It's kind of sad though, how communism has changed religion into a cultural thing instead of something that is based on God. A man got mad at us for knocking on his door one time because we were two tall, well-dressed, Americans going around in Romania trying to change their culture. We told him what we were really here for and he liked us by the time we left his door, but he didn't want to meet with us or anything. Most of the people that do get mad at us initially end up liking us before we leave them. But Sora Staley said that they have been thrown out of buildings before and people have hit them with shoes and spit on them, so I guess there are those that are really anti.
It seems like having Zone Conference in this week kind of messed up our plans. We didn't reach a lot of our goals. But also, most of our time was schedules with lessons, and then when those lessons fall through we can't accomplish as much either because we are in weird areas and we have be aware of getting to next appointment on time. We always plan backups, but it's never as good as doing what you planned in the first place. But anyway, that happened a lot this week so we didn't teach very many lessons and only got a couple new investigators.
Do you have any ideas about getting people to come to church? But actually, we want really badly for our investigators to come but a lot of the members don't even come. The church used to be in Centru (like mainstreet) but there were so many people coming that they needed to get a bigger place to meet. So, they found a bigger place but it's in a pretty obscure location so a lot of people stopped coming because it's hard for them to get there.
Well, this is kind of a depressing letter for you guys I guess, but I'm happy. People always said that a mission was the hardest thing that they have ever done, and I thought maybe because of the language and because people don't listen to you and people that you care about don't make it to baptism or progress any further that it would be hard. But it makes me feel good every day that I am out here to help people and that we give them the invitations to read, and pray, and come to church even if they choose to not do those things. It's cool to be a missionary, and it's not as hard as regular life, I think. Well, it's probably because every single day hundreds of thousands of faithful members pray for the missionaries, and this is the effect.
The church is really little here, but it's cool to think of how big it is, and how well it functions, in Utah. We're really blessed.
Okay, I'll hear from you guys later.
Love,
Sora Jay
Hows everything going. I got to talk to some people yesterday on Mothers Day, and that was cool. When I'm out here I kind of forget that I have a family and it's cool to talk to you guys and to get your emails because I remember that there are people like me somewhere. The members and the other missionaries are cool, but nobody else is like all of you guys. So it's cool to talk to you.
When you guys send letters here I get them whenever the APs come out to our city or when we go up for Zone Conference. So I got the letter that Joni sent. It would be cool to have a bunch of pictures of Utah to show to people like what Pete had. They can't really just look up things on the internet for themselves since technology here is a few years behind. Most people don't have computers and the internet is pretty crappy everywhere. So it would be cool to get some pictures from you guys. I have pictures of Rodney & Melissa's family and Joni & Aaron's family but not of anybody else. I only have one pictures that has every sibling in it, and none with Mom and Dad in them. So, if you guys send me some pictures in the mail I can pick them up when we go into Bucharest at the end of this month for transfers. This is my companions last transfer so I know that I'll have to go up for transfers.
Well anyway, things are going pretty good here. Sora Staley gets kind of discouraged pretty quickly, probably because she really wants to make an impact before she leaves, and none of the people that we invited to church have come, ever. We even set baptismal dates but they didn't come to church so we have to postpone them. Every investigator has to come to church at least two times before getting baptized, so now none of our investigators can get baptized before she leaves. Things are going good though.
I guess I should tell you a little more about Romania since lots of people asked questions about it on the phone. The cities here are less town-ish than Springville and Provo. There's no such thing as a front yard in the areas where there are houses (which we call vilas), and there's usually not a front door to anyone's house either. There are big metal gates. But most people live in apartment buildings called blocs. They all look really worn and crappy on the outside, except for a few in Bucharest that they have started painting to look more modern; I saw one that was white with big pink dots all over it. The insides of the apartments are usually nice though, it just depends on how well the people who live there take care of them. They can't really get that bad because they're just made out of cement.
The streets are usually pretty wide. The only city that I've been to that I can compare these cities to is New York, and New York had tiny streets. There is a pretty good tramvai system here in Arad, and in Bucharest there is a nice metro. The tramvais here all have signs written in German because the entire system was donated from Germany. The tramvais are really shaky and bouncy. I didn't notice until a few days ago but the driver has to stop the tramvai and get out with a little lever to switch the rails to make sure we turn where we're supposed to, so it's kind of funny.
We rode on the sleeper trains to and from Zone Conference in Bucharest Thursday night and Friday night. The trains have really little hallways and there are six bunks that you can sleep on. Sometimes we get in the same compartment as the elders but sometimes we're just in there with some random people. You have to wake up plenty before you reach your stop and be ready to go because they only give you like two minutes to get yourself and all of your stuff off the train before it takes off. The trains aren't actually very fast, and you could drive a car from one place to the other faster than you could get there on a train.
We get to look at the scenery from the trains. There are lots of farms and fields and also a ton of little towns. We can see the ruins of castles on the tops of hills too. Next Monday we are planning on going out to some ruins, so hopefully I will have some pictures to send you in my next email. It was really foggy and misty in the morning when our train came in, and it was cool. It feel like you're in a fairy-tale. And when we were at the church in Bucharest it was kind of overcast with little bits of cotton floating all over in the air so that was like a fairy-tale too.
The people here look like regular people, except in general they're not as pretty as Americans, probably just because they smoke and drink and have really hard lives. Mostly anyone who is well-off here in Romania is doing well because they earned money in another country for a while or because they have relatives that live in another country and send them money. People just don't get paid a lot. For gypsies, they are either really poor or really rich. The rich ones are rich because of dishonesty, and usually through money from churches. The gypsy kind lives in Sibiu and has a really nice house and a palace, some of the missionaries there have tried to contact him but he is usually gone. The poor ones live in cheap vilas, a lot of them all together. They usually have more kids than a regular Romanian and they will try to steal from you most of the time, but we have found some that are honest. It's hard to teach gypsies because a lot of them don't have an education and don't know how to read. Some of them have still been baptized though and they just come to church to learn about the gospel. The gypsies always wear gypsy skirts and gypsy batics on their heads if they are traditional. They have their own little culture that is sort of a parasite on the Romanian culture. Romanians are pretty racist against them, even the members in some cities, but not in this one. We have found a gypsy-ish family though that doesn't dress traditionally and can read, and we have been teaching them recently. They want to get baptized but haven't come to church yet.
A lot of people in Romania are what we call 'weefy'. They don't want to commit to do anything because they are afraid that they won't follow through with the commitment and they would just rather not commit in the first place. But when we do commit them they usually fall through anyway, but it's probably like that in most places in the world. Tom and Ed may not have problems like that though. The general authority who came to our Zone Conference was from Brazil and he said that when they first encountered the missionaries they had to wait for two months before the missionaries had time to come to their house and teach them, so there is a greater abundance of willing and ready people in Brazil I guess. There are people here who are ready though, we just need to find them and it's awesome when we do. It's kind of sad though, how communism has changed religion into a cultural thing instead of something that is based on God. A man got mad at us for knocking on his door one time because we were two tall, well-dressed, Americans going around in Romania trying to change their culture. We told him what we were really here for and he liked us by the time we left his door, but he didn't want to meet with us or anything. Most of the people that do get mad at us initially end up liking us before we leave them. But Sora Staley said that they have been thrown out of buildings before and people have hit them with shoes and spit on them, so I guess there are those that are really anti.
It seems like having Zone Conference in this week kind of messed up our plans. We didn't reach a lot of our goals. But also, most of our time was schedules with lessons, and then when those lessons fall through we can't accomplish as much either because we are in weird areas and we have be aware of getting to next appointment on time. We always plan backups, but it's never as good as doing what you planned in the first place. But anyway, that happened a lot this week so we didn't teach very many lessons and only got a couple new investigators.
Do you have any ideas about getting people to come to church? But actually, we want really badly for our investigators to come but a lot of the members don't even come. The church used to be in Centru (like mainstreet) but there were so many people coming that they needed to get a bigger place to meet. So, they found a bigger place but it's in a pretty obscure location so a lot of people stopped coming because it's hard for them to get there.
Well, this is kind of a depressing letter for you guys I guess, but I'm happy. People always said that a mission was the hardest thing that they have ever done, and I thought maybe because of the language and because people don't listen to you and people that you care about don't make it to baptism or progress any further that it would be hard. But it makes me feel good every day that I am out here to help people and that we give them the invitations to read, and pray, and come to church even if they choose to not do those things. It's cool to be a missionary, and it's not as hard as regular life, I think. Well, it's probably because every single day hundreds of thousands of faithful members pray for the missionaries, and this is the effect.
The church is really little here, but it's cool to think of how big it is, and how well it functions, in Utah. We're really blessed.
Okay, I'll hear from you guys later.
Love,
Sora Jay
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