June 28, 2010 in Romania
Monday, June 28, 2010 by Sora Jay
Hello again everybody,
How was Jill's reception? Did you eat a giant pig? I hope so.
This week we had a double baptism. The elders/Zone Leaders/District Leaders who are the only two other missionaries in our city had an investigator, Daniel, and we had an investigator, Dana. The elders have been really busy and stressed out so we planned the baptism and took care of everything except for the 'bazin' that they brought back from another city where someone else had just been baptized. It's cool. Our investigator has three little boys and she brought them all to church the next day; she had never brought them before so it was really cool. She also brought her mom to help her with the kids, but we sent them to primary and had her mom come to Sunday School and gave her a pamphlet about the restoration to take home. It's cool how Dana has already started being a member missionary. Most of the Romanians are pretty bad at it. In fact, the place in this mission where the church is the biggest is in Moldova; missionaries were pulled out of the country for a few years and when they went back the branch was huge. All of the members had had to do the missionary work.
When I was in the MTC there was one missionary in my district who broke his thumb playing basketball and he wasn't able to come out to Romania. He stayed in Utah and they let him serve in the Provo mission. They were thinking about sending him out here eventually but at the end of his first transfer he had 13 baptismal dates set up, so they decided to keep him there. We talked about his success in district meeting. I knew him in the MTC and he wasn't necessarily a better missionary than any of the other missionaries in our district so the only difference is that there are members in Utah to fellowship and to befriend people who are investigating.
In Romania it seems like the branches are on the verge of massive growth, we just need the members to get in gear.
It's weird that you guys are planning on meeting Tom by the fence. But now that I think about it, I guess our family always broke the rules at the MTC because there was usually someone working there while we had missionaries there. I guess the only one who didn't break the rules was Tim, because his MTC was hundreds of miles away. Well, have fun. You should give him a chocolate eclair, and I'll give myself a huge chocolate-filled croissant, or one of a variety of freshly cooked delicious desserts that can be found here in Europe (especially since I live right next to a bakery) to make up for not being able to be there. And maybe someday I'll be invited to a pig-slaughtering party so that I can eat some of one of those giant pigs that people raise in their backyards.
I don't think it's weird that Jennie still calls her old mission companion Sister Needham, I think it's weird that she doesn't refer to her with the Korean title for 'sister'. I guess maybe since it's so close to the English word in Romanian we never say the word 'Sister' in this mission, always Sora. Even when the general authorities come around with their wives we still call them Elder and Sora so-and-so.
Hey Tom, I was looking back through my Tall-book and seeing if there were any words in there that I didn't know. There aren't really anymore. And I actually found that there were a lot of mistakes in that book, or else things that were just translated in a really weird way. So have fun studying in there. One thing that I noticed pretty quickly when I got into the country was that the metaphorical 'you' is always singular. People would be talking to my companion and me and they would start using the singular form of 'you' and I felt bad for a little while because I thought that they had just stopped talking to me and were talking to only my companion, but eventually I realized that they were just speaking in general like if they said "So if you pray about the Book of Mormon, you'll get an answer?" then they would say it in singular. Is it the same in Portuguese? Maybe one of you returned missionaries can tell me.
Well, that's probably it for now.
Love,
Sora Jay
How was Jill's reception? Did you eat a giant pig? I hope so.
This week we had a double baptism. The elders/Zone Leaders/District Leaders who are the only two other missionaries in our city had an investigator, Daniel, and we had an investigator, Dana. The elders have been really busy and stressed out so we planned the baptism and took care of everything except for the 'bazin' that they brought back from another city where someone else had just been baptized. It's cool. Our investigator has three little boys and she brought them all to church the next day; she had never brought them before so it was really cool. She also brought her mom to help her with the kids, but we sent them to primary and had her mom come to Sunday School and gave her a pamphlet about the restoration to take home. It's cool how Dana has already started being a member missionary. Most of the Romanians are pretty bad at it. In fact, the place in this mission where the church is the biggest is in Moldova; missionaries were pulled out of the country for a few years and when they went back the branch was huge. All of the members had had to do the missionary work.
When I was in the MTC there was one missionary in my district who broke his thumb playing basketball and he wasn't able to come out to Romania. He stayed in Utah and they let him serve in the Provo mission. They were thinking about sending him out here eventually but at the end of his first transfer he had 13 baptismal dates set up, so they decided to keep him there. We talked about his success in district meeting. I knew him in the MTC and he wasn't necessarily a better missionary than any of the other missionaries in our district so the only difference is that there are members in Utah to fellowship and to befriend people who are investigating.
In Romania it seems like the branches are on the verge of massive growth, we just need the members to get in gear.
It's weird that you guys are planning on meeting Tom by the fence. But now that I think about it, I guess our family always broke the rules at the MTC because there was usually someone working there while we had missionaries there. I guess the only one who didn't break the rules was Tim, because his MTC was hundreds of miles away. Well, have fun. You should give him a chocolate eclair, and I'll give myself a huge chocolate-filled croissant, or one of a variety of freshly cooked delicious desserts that can be found here in Europe (especially since I live right next to a bakery) to make up for not being able to be there. And maybe someday I'll be invited to a pig-slaughtering party so that I can eat some of one of those giant pigs that people raise in their backyards.
I don't think it's weird that Jennie still calls her old mission companion Sister Needham, I think it's weird that she doesn't refer to her with the Korean title for 'sister'. I guess maybe since it's so close to the English word in Romanian we never say the word 'Sister' in this mission, always Sora. Even when the general authorities come around with their wives we still call them Elder and Sora so-and-so.
Hey Tom, I was looking back through my Tall-book and seeing if there were any words in there that I didn't know. There aren't really anymore. And I actually found that there were a lot of mistakes in that book, or else things that were just translated in a really weird way. So have fun studying in there. One thing that I noticed pretty quickly when I got into the country was that the metaphorical 'you' is always singular. People would be talking to my companion and me and they would start using the singular form of 'you' and I felt bad for a little while because I thought that they had just stopped talking to me and were talking to only my companion, but eventually I realized that they were just speaking in general like if they said "So if you pray about the Book of Mormon, you'll get an answer?" then they would say it in singular. Is it the same in Portuguese? Maybe one of you returned missionaries can tell me.
Well, that's probably it for now.
Love,
Sora Jay
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