June 14, 2010 in Romania
Monday, June 14, 2010 by Sora Jay
Hey,
It has been really hot here in Romania for the past week. I'm a lot browner now, even though I wear like spf 30 every second that I'm outside. On the first day that it was super hot I just felt sick and light-headed because I think my body didn't know how to handle it, but now I guess I've adjusted. I'm just soaked with sweat all the time. That's probably something that Ed and Tom have to look forward to as well, but at least for me the winter will eventually come back. It might for Ed too, I'm not sure where he will be in Argentina or what the weather will be like there. People don't like to wear very much clothing when the weather is hot. And there is a giant park place across the river where everyone goes to go tanning and I told my companion that considering how scantily dressed they are on this side of the river we should never attempt to go over there. One time a girl asked us why we didn't go over there to tan, and we were just like "umm...we're missionaries, we don't do stuff like that."
We met with the Branch President last week at his house with the elders to tell him about our investigators and his band was there. His rock band. I guess I never told you guys but whenever he's not wearing a suit he's wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses. He's really new at being a branch president so he's really cool because when we tell him how things go he takes it. The elders told us that one of the first questions he had was whether or not he could call women to be his counselors in the branch presidency. We are working on starting a Young Womens program right now in addition to missionary work so that we can try to get the inactive girls to come to church. It's hard when the members are kind of complacent about missionary work. The problem is, I think, that every single one of them was found by the missionaries and that's how they joined the church. But I think that the branch would explode if the members started finding people for us. One of the less active members that we visit was telling us about how she had been reading her Book of Mormon at work one time and her coworker asked her about it, and she told us that she didn't have "chef" (like energy or motivation, but there isn't really an english equivalent) to explain it to her, and I just stared at her and we were like "Next time just give her our number." One of her other coworkers actually found us on her own and searched us out and we met with her, without finding out until later that she knew somebody who was mormon.
When we met with her she actually told us that her husband had just been arrested. So we threw our lesson plan out the window and improvised. I remembered the verse that is written on the missionary plaques of all of you older siblings: Helaman 5:12, and shared it with her. She started reading it in a kind of bored way and then got more interested and then after she finished reading it she just looked at me and smiled. She said that whenever the missionaries wanted to meet with her she didn't have the chef to meet with them or she had other things that she wanted to do, but that every time that they came over they told her exactly what she needed to hear. And then she was happy and she told us to go and find other people and make them as happy as she was now.
But the elders had a baptism on Saturday, Marinela, and since she is brand new to being a member we are planning on teaching her to be a good one right from the start by having her at member-present lessons already. We also have a baptismal date set up for a lady who has been an investigator for a long time, Dana. Sora Walker was kind of a jerk to her when we left her house last time and she seemed mad when we left so I figured we wouldn't be visiting her anymore because the argument had been about baptism. But when she came to church on Sunday she said that after we left she knew that she needed to do something and told us that she wants to be baptized on the 26th of this month. She has had all of the lessons now so it just depends on her following through with the commitment. She is the lady that we blocked knocked into, who had let us in immediately and we had found out she was a previous investigator. We used a little strategy that I remember Jill talking about: we gave her the checklist from the investigator progress sheet and went over each of the topics again to show her that she knew everything and had her check them off. So our lesson last time was the one where we taught her the only things left to teach her and we were either going to drop her or get her baptized. We thought we were dropping her, but then she told us on Sunday that she would get baptized.
When I was at the MTC my room was on the top floor of one building, and my classroom was on the top floor of another building, Tom, so I know how it goes.
The food that I eat the most in Romania is sandwitches, at lunchtime. I haven't tried a lot of the native food. I did eat stomach soup once though, and it was disgusting.
Love,
Sora Jay
It has been really hot here in Romania for the past week. I'm a lot browner now, even though I wear like spf 30 every second that I'm outside. On the first day that it was super hot I just felt sick and light-headed because I think my body didn't know how to handle it, but now I guess I've adjusted. I'm just soaked with sweat all the time. That's probably something that Ed and Tom have to look forward to as well, but at least for me the winter will eventually come back. It might for Ed too, I'm not sure where he will be in Argentina or what the weather will be like there. People don't like to wear very much clothing when the weather is hot. And there is a giant park place across the river where everyone goes to go tanning and I told my companion that considering how scantily dressed they are on this side of the river we should never attempt to go over there. One time a girl asked us why we didn't go over there to tan, and we were just like "umm...we're missionaries, we don't do stuff like that."
We met with the Branch President last week at his house with the elders to tell him about our investigators and his band was there. His rock band. I guess I never told you guys but whenever he's not wearing a suit he's wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses. He's really new at being a branch president so he's really cool because when we tell him how things go he takes it. The elders told us that one of the first questions he had was whether or not he could call women to be his counselors in the branch presidency. We are working on starting a Young Womens program right now in addition to missionary work so that we can try to get the inactive girls to come to church. It's hard when the members are kind of complacent about missionary work. The problem is, I think, that every single one of them was found by the missionaries and that's how they joined the church. But I think that the branch would explode if the members started finding people for us. One of the less active members that we visit was telling us about how she had been reading her Book of Mormon at work one time and her coworker asked her about it, and she told us that she didn't have "chef" (like energy or motivation, but there isn't really an english equivalent) to explain it to her, and I just stared at her and we were like "Next time just give her our number." One of her other coworkers actually found us on her own and searched us out and we met with her, without finding out until later that she knew somebody who was mormon.
When we met with her she actually told us that her husband had just been arrested. So we threw our lesson plan out the window and improvised. I remembered the verse that is written on the missionary plaques of all of you older siblings: Helaman 5:12, and shared it with her. She started reading it in a kind of bored way and then got more interested and then after she finished reading it she just looked at me and smiled. She said that whenever the missionaries wanted to meet with her she didn't have the chef to meet with them or she had other things that she wanted to do, but that every time that they came over they told her exactly what she needed to hear. And then she was happy and she told us to go and find other people and make them as happy as she was now.
But the elders had a baptism on Saturday, Marinela, and since she is brand new to being a member we are planning on teaching her to be a good one right from the start by having her at member-present lessons already. We also have a baptismal date set up for a lady who has been an investigator for a long time, Dana. Sora Walker was kind of a jerk to her when we left her house last time and she seemed mad when we left so I figured we wouldn't be visiting her anymore because the argument had been about baptism. But when she came to church on Sunday she said that after we left she knew that she needed to do something and told us that she wants to be baptized on the 26th of this month. She has had all of the lessons now so it just depends on her following through with the commitment. She is the lady that we blocked knocked into, who had let us in immediately and we had found out she was a previous investigator. We used a little strategy that I remember Jill talking about: we gave her the checklist from the investigator progress sheet and went over each of the topics again to show her that she knew everything and had her check them off. So our lesson last time was the one where we taught her the only things left to teach her and we were either going to drop her or get her baptized. We thought we were dropping her, but then she told us on Sunday that she would get baptized.
When I was at the MTC my room was on the top floor of one building, and my classroom was on the top floor of another building, Tom, so I know how it goes.
The food that I eat the most in Romania is sandwitches, at lunchtime. I haven't tried a lot of the native food. I did eat stomach soup once though, and it was disgusting.
Love,
Sora Jay
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