Jay Family Missionaries: July 2010

Week 8

Monday, July 26, 2010 by Sora Jay

We didn't get to email on P-day so I am emailing today (monday). I got reassigned to the Texas McAllen mission while I wait for my visa, it was pretty disappointing. Of the 14 elders that started out in my district 10 have gotten their visas now, but me and my three roommates haven't. I will go where I am asked to go though. The elders that got their visas are staying in the MTC a week longer than I am, so one reason I wish I had gotten was because I would have been able to see Ed in here. Everyone always talks about how glad the are to be leaving the MTC, but I really like it here and it will be tough leaving to go somewhere that I didn't expect to go. I will still do my best though, because the people in McAllen Texas need the gospel just as much as the people in Brazil. I don't really have much to write about this week, but I do have a question for Mom. What should I do about my Driver's License? How do I renew it? I don't have my passport and I am not sure that my Driver's license will work for I.D. when I fly to Texas because it has holes in it. See ya.

Elder Jay

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July 19, 2010 in Romania

Monday, July 19, 2010 by Sora Jay

Hey everybody,

How is everything going? Some of you guys I haven't heard from in a while, so I wonder if everything is okay during those few moments that I have to think about things besides missionary work.

One day this week we were going from door to door knocking at people's houses and we knocked on this one lady's door and I don't remember how we started the approach but we started talking to her. The door approach went a little like this: we introduced a little message (I don't remember what) and asked if we could have a few minutes to share it; then the lady told us that she was orthodox, so we said "Great, then you believe in God, and in the Bible, and the Bible is written by prophets, so you believe in prophets just like us." And then we told her that there is a prophet on earth today, and she stepped back and looked at us incredulously and said "Are you joking?"
We both said "No" and we kind of stood there for a second and then said "Do you want us to tell you about him?" And she invited us in to talk to her and we gave her a restoration lesson a Book of Mormon and some commitments.

It was really cool to find someone who grasped the 'profoundness' of our message. We knock on hundreds of people's doors every week and they are always like "yeah, yeah, sure" or they just don't listen at all, but seeing this lady's response even made me realize how cool it is that we have the knowledge that we do.

Here in Galati we spend most of our time looking for people because there were no investigators when I got here, because one of the sisters before had 'health problems' and it was her last transfer. Fortunately, my companion Sora Hupp is willing to work hard and we are outside all day long looking for people.
I was thinking one day that it's a good thing that God is a lot more patient than me because I would have destroyed this city already because everybody is wicked and set in their ways...and then I realIzed that this city is currently being destroyed by flooding. So I thought about that for a while.
There are areas in this city where the missionaries are not allowed to go becuase it's too dangerous.

People actually do listen to us though, we just have to persuade them to a lot of the time. Some people just let us right in though; one day this week some young people let us in and we taught a lessons to like ten people who were sitting in the courtyard. I thought about how earlier on in my mission I might have been nervous being in front of so many people, but now I don't really care. We try so hard to get people to listen to us that when they are willing to listen we talk to anyone and everyone.
We have been able to find a few new investigators this past week though, and someone came to sacrament meeting.

The branch here is pretty small, and the previous missionaries in this area have set sort of a low standard. There was one member who wanted us to hold her little boy and help her carry him home which would have taken an hour. For Sora Hupp it was really hard to say no, because she had done it before, and the member kept telling us that she wouldn't get us in trouble for it or tell anyone and that she couldn't do it without us. I just told her that I couldn't because it was against mission rules. She kept trying to persuade us but eventually she got distracted and we just left. It's too bad that there aren't any members who could help her because I believe her when she says she needs help, but as missionaries we can't and that's just the way it is.
Sometimes when we are asked to do certain things to be obedient we don't always understand why or we feel that there are exceptions, but whenever we are obedient, no matter what comes of it, it will be "accounted unto [us] as righteousness", just like the Nephites who kept the Law of Moses. The Branch President here has asked us to help people to have the faith to pay their tithing so that they can recieve the blessings. It's one of those things that we just need to do out of obedience without trying to come up with reasons and excuses. But we also know that we will recieve blessings from doing so, both temporally and spiritually, so it makes it worth it anyway. It's like what President Hinkley said "Do what is right, no matter the consequences."

Well, that's my little missionary moment for this week's email. Except I guess that the whole email is a missionary moment.
I wish there were members out here like you guys to be good examples and teachers for everyone else.

Well, I'm running out of time. I just have one question for you guys. Everybody here, and mostly everybody in all of Europe I think, has a big pock-kind of scar on their left arm and I found out that it is from the TB vaccine. In America I think the doctors hate the TB vaccine, so I am curious to know why if it seems to have been embraced by Europe. I'm sticking with the Americans but I am curious. So, let me know.

Love,
Sora Jay

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July 12, 2010 in Galati

Monday, July 12, 2010 by Sora Jay

Hello Family,

I've moved here to Galati (which is actually spelled with a t-cedille so that you can find it on a map). Galati is next to the Danube river and it has been flooding like crazy. When you look over at the river there are trees in it and Sora Hupp said there used to be islands in the river but they are long since covered by water. It has been effecting a lot of people. When I was over in the west I had no idea that there was flooding over here except on my last day there when somebody told us about what they had seen on the news after I told them I was going to Galati. We have some service t-shirts so we may be able to do a lot of service, but we are letting the senior couple, the Van Wagners, set it up for us.

Last week I passed for a Romanian on my last day in Arad. The lady we were talking to thought that I was a translator for my companion, even though I hadn't actually translated anything for her. Then when she asked where my companion was from, and she said England, she asked her if I taught her Romanian. I said "No, I'm from
America." Then I told her that I came into the country in April and she just stared at me. I felt cool. Now I've been moved to the other side of the country though, so whatever accent I may have been able to pick up is now wrong. Moldova is in my mission just so you know. I may be transferred there someday. Moldoveasca is a 'language' but it's more a dialect of Romanian, it's just Romanian that's really hard to understand because they don't pronounce the words the way that they are spelled, like Romanians do.

I came into this area and it was dead. The sister that was here before me had health problems so they didn't do very much work. Sora Hupp said that they taught about 4 lessons a week. I don't even understand how that is possible, but Sora Hupp was really excited when I wanted to go out and teach people. We had 11 lessons in the past four days. Sora Hupp seems really cool. I think we will get along great, and hopefully we can help the branch here to grow. It's really tiny so the missionaries have to help a lot. I get to give a talk on the 25th just like Ed. It will be my first one here in Romania. Sora Hupp gave one this week. This will be her fourth transfer, she was in the MTC district just ahead of me. The mission, as far as sisters are concerned, has just become really young so a lot of the sisters from my district will probably go senior and train in the next couple of transfers. Two of the sisters from my district are co-senior companions right now.

I got some dearelder letters from the Mission Office when I was there for transfers. Actually I got 9 of them. It takes forever for them to get to me because I can only get them during trasfers or Zone Conference if the Assistants remember to bring them, they're nice to get though, and I can read them at my leisure which is really cool.

Love,
Sora Jay

P.S. It actaully is forbidden to read The Miracle of Forgiveness for missionaries, at least here, but there are copies of it around in the apartments.
And I don't have permission to look at your blogs so you can email them to me to read if you want.
And I finally weighed myself again, I haven't since April, and I weigh the same.
And, I was reading in the Book of Mormon in Romanian and I noticed that when the King held a 'feast' that Lamoni didn't come to, the word was actually translated as 'party' in Romanian. So the king was like "Hey, Lamoni, why weren't you at that party that I threw last week." And it was funny.

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5 Iulie 2010, in Romania

Monday, July 5, 2010 by Sora Jay

Hello.

In this mission we have a goal of teaching 20 lessons every week. This transfer Sora Walker and I have taught at least 20 lessons every week and we are the first companionship in the mission to do it from everything I've heard. Our Zone has been getting a fourth of the lessons and baptisms in the entire mission (ca sa stiti ca lucram din greu).

Well, for the fourth of July we went to a wedding, of one of our investigators. She is married to a member now, and the only thing that was keeping her from being baptized was the law of chastity...here we usually just fix that problem by making people get married. So now her husband can pass the sacrament again. She will definitely be getting baptized next transfer, but I won't be in this city because I'm getting transferred tomorrow.

The wedding was really quick. We went to the Primaria, or city building, and they said something really quickly and signed some papers and that was it. They took some pictures with everyone that was there so we were in them. Unfortunately, we were all standing near the back so we didn't know that we weren't supposed to smile in the pictures. So it will be pretty obvious to everyone that we are foreigners in that picture; standing in the background and smiling really big when everyone else has serious faces.
Afterward we went to the church for her reception and I got to eat sarmale (cabbage rolls) for the first time. They are classic romanian food, and they just tasted like ravioli, but not actually very good. There were big trays of assorted cakes and treats for everyone to eat, and there are still some left-overs at the church so I think I will convince my companion to go over there with me and eat the desserts before they all go bad. But I'm also going to try to convince her to go play in the 'children's park' with me today too so maybe I'll just go for one of them.
Anyway, the relief society sisters were in charge of all the food at the wedding and something happened in the kitchen so that people got offended and left crying, so this evening we are going to try to fix people's hurt feelings and make sure that they keep coming to church. One of the sisters is just kind of a jerk, even to the primary children.

At one of our lessons with some recent convert little girls we taught about having faith like a mustard seed. I can't remember which verses we used but they had the word 'drac' in them which means devil, and the little girls thought it was hilarious because it's a pretty bad swear-word in Romanian (dracula is actually the vocative form of the word).

So, I'm getting transferred to Galati (gah-lah-ts) so that you say it correctly. I don't really know anything about it right now, so I'll let you know next week.

Cu drag,
Sora Jay

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