Jay Family Missionaries

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.