Romania, 11 October 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010 by Sora Jay
Hey everybody,
This has been kind of an interesting week. Some missionaries were sent home and a lot of people were transferred to different places. It's really sad. I don't really know anything about what happened though. Tom and Ed, make sure that you never let your companions break the rules, even on little things. I've been in a city where the sisters who were there before didn't keep the rules and it made it really hard for us to set a new standard, and we pretty much started our missionary work from scratch because the sisters hadn't worked hard. I wanted to beat them up.
That's cool that Tom and Ed are going to arrive in their countries at around the same time, they can have somebody to relate to. I remember thinking when I got here that at least I knew that Tom and Ed would be going through the same thing soon (and that lots of you guys had been through the same thing).
On Sunday we invited a ton of people to come to church, as usual, and none of them showed up; or so we thought. We had given one of the elders of a young guy to the elders after he didn't show up and when they called him he said that he had come to the church with his wife and nobody was there outside to greet him like we said we would be, so he left. After he told us that we called him and told him we were really sorry (we actually were at the church keeping a lookout but he might have gone to the other church down the street so that we couldn't see him, because there is another church on the same street as ours that is called "the church of Christ".) He had set up with the elders on Wednesday, but because his wife will be there too the elders told us that we could have them back, so hopefully they'll forgive us for not being there when they came. I felt really bad. On Wednesday we'll make sure that we find them.
So, like I was saying, we invited all sorts of people to come to church and none of them showed up; but, a member came that day with three neighbors. One of them was a fifteen year old girl. I joked around with her and we became friends. She asked if she could sit next to us in Sacrament meeting and asked if we could meet during the week. During Sacrament meeting she turned to me and said "You should go up and speak too." I thought about it for a little while and I told her I would. I figured that if I didn't do what she was telling me to do she probably wouldn't do the things that I would tell her to do, so I got up and bore my testimony. She was really pleased, especially because she had made fun of my Romanian earlier and I still got up and spoke in front of a big group of Romanians. We'll meet with her on Tuesday.
(There was one guy who showed up at the church during Sunday School, but he came because he liked me, not because he was interested in the church. I didn't say anything to him, I just let my companion talk.)
Ed and Tom, here is my language tip: bring questions to church for the members to answer. You can even write out some of your approaches or explanations and have members correct them. I wrote out an entire Restoration lesson one time and gave it to one of the members to correct. She actually really like reading it, probably because it has been a while since she had had someone teach it to her, or she just liked the way that I explained things. Or, now that you're in the countries that speak that language, you can ask any person at any time if you are saying something correct. One time my companion and I disagreed about the conjugation of a verb, instead of waiting to go home that night and look it up we just walked up to some Romanians and asked them which conjugation was correct, and they told us, and then they were curious about who we were so we talked to them about the church. I guess I could use that approach more often.
Tell me your mission addresses so that I can send you pictures of me being a missionary (probably at baptisms) so that you can show them to your companions. You guys can just send me pictures of your ripped arms from baptizing people for me to show to my districts.
I would say happy birthday to Jill and Emily, but then I would feel bad for not saying happy birthday to anyone else ever. I asked a long time ago for a list of birthdays but nobody ever sent it to me. Lame.
Right now the goal in our mission is to have 200 baptisms this year (which is double the number of baptisms from last year). So far we have 101. There will have to be some major baptizing in these last couple months to make up for the rest, although it's pretty much just one more baptism per missionary, so it's not unreasonable at all. We just need miracles to happen more often. I talked about miracles in district meeting; I really like what it says in the bible dictionary.
Thanks for being awesome!
Love,
Sora Jay
This has been kind of an interesting week. Some missionaries were sent home and a lot of people were transferred to different places. It's really sad. I don't really know anything about what happened though. Tom and Ed, make sure that you never let your companions break the rules, even on little things. I've been in a city where the sisters who were there before didn't keep the rules and it made it really hard for us to set a new standard, and we pretty much started our missionary work from scratch because the sisters hadn't worked hard. I wanted to beat them up.
That's cool that Tom and Ed are going to arrive in their countries at around the same time, they can have somebody to relate to. I remember thinking when I got here that at least I knew that Tom and Ed would be going through the same thing soon (and that lots of you guys had been through the same thing).
On Sunday we invited a ton of people to come to church, as usual, and none of them showed up; or so we thought. We had given one of the elders of a young guy to the elders after he didn't show up and when they called him he said that he had come to the church with his wife and nobody was there outside to greet him like we said we would be, so he left. After he told us that we called him and told him we were really sorry (we actually were at the church keeping a lookout but he might have gone to the other church down the street so that we couldn't see him, because there is another church on the same street as ours that is called "the church of Christ".) He had set up with the elders on Wednesday, but because his wife will be there too the elders told us that we could have them back, so hopefully they'll forgive us for not being there when they came. I felt really bad. On Wednesday we'll make sure that we find them.
So, like I was saying, we invited all sorts of people to come to church and none of them showed up; but, a member came that day with three neighbors. One of them was a fifteen year old girl. I joked around with her and we became friends. She asked if she could sit next to us in Sacrament meeting and asked if we could meet during the week. During Sacrament meeting she turned to me and said "You should go up and speak too." I thought about it for a little while and I told her I would. I figured that if I didn't do what she was telling me to do she probably wouldn't do the things that I would tell her to do, so I got up and bore my testimony. She was really pleased, especially because she had made fun of my Romanian earlier and I still got up and spoke in front of a big group of Romanians. We'll meet with her on Tuesday.
(There was one guy who showed up at the church during Sunday School, but he came because he liked me, not because he was interested in the church. I didn't say anything to him, I just let my companion talk.)
Ed and Tom, here is my language tip: bring questions to church for the members to answer. You can even write out some of your approaches or explanations and have members correct them. I wrote out an entire Restoration lesson one time and gave it to one of the members to correct. She actually really like reading it, probably because it has been a while since she had had someone teach it to her, or she just liked the way that I explained things. Or, now that you're in the countries that speak that language, you can ask any person at any time if you are saying something correct. One time my companion and I disagreed about the conjugation of a verb, instead of waiting to go home that night and look it up we just walked up to some Romanians and asked them which conjugation was correct, and they told us, and then they were curious about who we were so we talked to them about the church. I guess I could use that approach more often.
Tell me your mission addresses so that I can send you pictures of me being a missionary (probably at baptisms) so that you can show them to your companions. You guys can just send me pictures of your ripped arms from baptizing people for me to show to my districts.
I would say happy birthday to Jill and Emily, but then I would feel bad for not saying happy birthday to anyone else ever. I asked a long time ago for a list of birthdays but nobody ever sent it to me. Lame.
Right now the goal in our mission is to have 200 baptisms this year (which is double the number of baptisms from last year). So far we have 101. There will have to be some major baptizing in these last couple months to make up for the rest, although it's pretty much just one more baptism per missionary, so it's not unreasonable at all. We just need miracles to happen more often. I talked about miracles in district meeting; I really like what it says in the bible dictionary.
Thanks for being awesome!
Love,
Sora Jay
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