PLEASE I NEED YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE AND TRUSTR, AUDITING AND ACCOUNTING MANAGER, BANK OF AFRICA (BOA), OUAGADOUGOU BURKINA-FASO, WEST AFRICA . MAY PEACE BE UNTO YOU AND YOUR FAMILY I am writing to seek your cooperation over this business, please due welcome this letter Greetings to you and your family. I am Mr. Rufai Garba, auditing and accounting manager, Bank of Africa Ouagadougou Burkina Faso . I need your assistance in transferring the sum of ($22M) twenty two million US dollars into your account within 7 to 10 banking days. This account belongs to one of our foreign customer by name, Mr. Alan Williams who died along with his entire family in a plane crash some years ago. You can view the link below for more details: I agree that 50% of this money will be for you in respect of the provision of a foreign account, and 50% would be for me. Thereafter, I will visit your country for disbursement according to the percentage indicated. Reply me if interested and I will furnished you with details information as soon as I get your response. My Allah be with you and your family. Regards Mr. Rufai Garba |
Monday, January 31, 2011
PLEASE I NEED YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE AND TRUST
Não sei
Querida familia,
I don´t have much time to write today because I wrote a special letter to President Hall today. Everything is going well. Today we went to a statue of the Frei Damião (a catholic priest that lived here). They have a giant statue of him on a hill by Guarabira. I had already gone twice but this time we went with our zone. On the trail that leads to the statue they have 16 smaller statues depicting the trial crucifiction and ressurection of Jesus Christ. It is pretty cool, but is sad that the focus when you reach the top is the Frei Damião. They have a room called the "Room of Miracles" where they have a photos of the people who recieved a "miracle" from the Frei. A lot of the photos are little kids naked, its pretty gross, and they have fake arms and legs and heads in the room as well.
Tchão,
Elder Jay Brazil
I don´t have much time to write today because I wrote a special letter to President Hall today. Everything is going well. Today we went to a statue of the Frei Damião (a catholic priest that lived here). They have a giant statue of him on a hill by Guarabira. I had already gone twice but this time we went with our zone. On the trail that leads to the statue they have 16 smaller statues depicting the trial crucifiction and ressurection of Jesus Christ. It is pretty cool, but is sad that the focus when you reach the top is the Frei Damião. They have a room called the "Room of Miracles" where they have a photos of the people who recieved a "miracle" from the Frei. A lot of the photos are little kids naked, its pretty gross, and they have fake arms and legs and heads in the room as well.
Tchão,
Elder Jay Brazil
NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.
Romania 31 Jan 2010
Hello again everybody,
Sounds like things are going good there. This week is trasfers, and I've just found out that I am getting transferred to a city called Iasi (yash) which is like the Salt Lake City of Orthodoxism in Romania. It should be fun. The companion that I am going to replace is actually a Romanian, so I am a little nervous about filling her place, especially because the members there probably all love her because she can communicate well with them. I'm sure it will be fine though.
It has been pretty cold this week. It snowed a little and there is ice all over the sidewalks and streets. People have been pulling their little kids around outside with those little sleds with the metal 'ski' things on the bottom because it works perfectly on the ice. My companion slipped and fell down once on the ice, but I haven't fallen down yet. We always wear sweaters and coats and gloves and hats, and the investigators and members actually get mad at you and tell you that you'll get sick if you don't. One time one of the elders used their own reasoning against them; there was a kid that was going to leave church early but it is always super hot in the church so he was a little sweaty and Elder Ott told him that if he went outside when he was sweaty he would get sick, so he decided to stay for the rest of church.
I don't remember what exactly I told you about Alin, one of our investigators, in our last email, but we have set a baptismal date with him now. We told him to pray and so he started to pray every night and ask to know if the church is true. I was on splits with him and a member girl, Luiza, at their house teaching their family (and all of their neighbors) and afterward he told us that he had prayed really sincerely. He said that in the morning he woke up and had tears in his eyes. He said that it hadn't ever happened to him before, and all the time that he was telling us he was grinning. He asked us if it was a response to his prayer, and we told him that God knows how to talk to him and that if he considered it to be a response it probably was one. He seemed really happy when he was telling us. I think that he already knew that it is true and it made him really happy to have some sort of physical evidence. He said that he will get baptized the Saturday after this one, but that we have to be the ones to ask his mom. We know her and have taught her and she will probably definitely say yes, so he'll get baptized soon. In fact his mom might want to get baptized with him.
Ever since we have found Alin he has been giving us referrals, either getting us to talk to his friends or the people who live around him, even though he is a really shy kid. I think that the sisters actually asked him to be baptized when they taught the first lesson and he said he would once he found out it was true. When he came to church on Sunday today he came early and when he left he walked with us for a while and said that when he is at church time goes by really quickly, and that he feels really good. He said that he felt the best that he has ever felt when he was at church today. (Which kind of made me feel bad because I had kind of a crappy day at church because my companion and I still don't get along really well). He said that something 'pulls' him to go to church now.
He is from a gypsy family and he lives in a really crappy bloc that was assigned to his family by the government. I though that they just lived there because they were able to get in there and hook up a wire to have a light bulb, but his mom told us that the government gave them that place. I was shocked that the government would give anybody such a crappy place to live in, it's a really terrible place to live.
Their housing is really open (and the door to their room is broken by Alin's dad who is an alcoholic) so all of his neighbors who are equally poor and humble come in and listen to us teach whenever we come over. When I went there on splits with the member girl she seemed really nervous as more and more people started coming into the room, but she did a really good job answering questions and explaining things, and I tied things back into the lesson so that we could keep on subject.
Anyway, it's interesting to relate that experience to one that we had with an English student recently. We met with a girl after English and taught her the restoration lesson and she understood everything really well and followed the logic and everything. She understood perfectly at the end of the lesson that she just had to ask and she would get a response and know whether or not it was true, and said that she had actually gotten responses in the past when she had prayed about things. She understood everything perfectly, but didn't have an actual desire to do anything about it. Whereas Alin and his family didn't understand everything perfectly the first time we explained it, but as soon as Alin understood he really had a desire to know. It doesn't matter what kind of a person you are, you just have to be willing.
Recently I have been wondering about why some people receive special help to join the church (they will have a dream or something that prompts them to keep going) and other people don't and eventually disappear, and I noticed that a lot of the people who have special experiences are the ones that have something really valuable that they can do for the church, or eventually end up doing something really valuable for the church like being a branch president or a missionary. Sora Ausen's dad had a special experience and joined the church and now he has two kids on missions, and I think that all of the people in the district presidencies in Romania all have intense conversion experiences. So when we were working with Alin and we saw how many people he talked to about the church and how much of a help he would be to us, and how good of an example he would be to the other members, we prayed that he would have a converting experience because he would be very valuable to the church. He was definitely prepared beforehand, and he definitely seems to have had his experience because he is so happy and wants to be baptized, and when we set a baptismal date for him he said "And then after that I can go out contacting with you guys?" (We told him he could go contacting with the elders).
He's one of those awesome investigators who will become an awesome member just like the girl in Tom's city. Unfortunately I'm not going to be able to be here for his baptism, or to help the rest of his family (and his siblings that live in the orphanage) get baptized too, but he will be a sweet member.
Love,
Sora Jay
Sounds like things are going good there. This week is trasfers, and I've just found out that I am getting transferred to a city called Iasi (yash) which is like the Salt Lake City of Orthodoxism in Romania. It should be fun. The companion that I am going to replace is actually a Romanian, so I am a little nervous about filling her place, especially because the members there probably all love her because she can communicate well with them. I'm sure it will be fine though.
It has been pretty cold this week. It snowed a little and there is ice all over the sidewalks and streets. People have been pulling their little kids around outside with those little sleds with the metal 'ski' things on the bottom because it works perfectly on the ice. My companion slipped and fell down once on the ice, but I haven't fallen down yet. We always wear sweaters and coats and gloves and hats, and the investigators and members actually get mad at you and tell you that you'll get sick if you don't. One time one of the elders used their own reasoning against them; there was a kid that was going to leave church early but it is always super hot in the church so he was a little sweaty and Elder Ott told him that if he went outside when he was sweaty he would get sick, so he decided to stay for the rest of church.
I don't remember what exactly I told you about Alin, one of our investigators, in our last email, but we have set a baptismal date with him now. We told him to pray and so he started to pray every night and ask to know if the church is true. I was on splits with him and a member girl, Luiza, at their house teaching their family (and all of their neighbors) and afterward he told us that he had prayed really sincerely. He said that in the morning he woke up and had tears in his eyes. He said that it hadn't ever happened to him before, and all the time that he was telling us he was grinning. He asked us if it was a response to his prayer, and we told him that God knows how to talk to him and that if he considered it to be a response it probably was one. He seemed really happy when he was telling us. I think that he already knew that it is true and it made him really happy to have some sort of physical evidence. He said that he will get baptized the Saturday after this one, but that we have to be the ones to ask his mom. We know her and have taught her and she will probably definitely say yes, so he'll get baptized soon. In fact his mom might want to get baptized with him.
Ever since we have found Alin he has been giving us referrals, either getting us to talk to his friends or the people who live around him, even though he is a really shy kid. I think that the sisters actually asked him to be baptized when they taught the first lesson and he said he would once he found out it was true. When he came to church on Sunday today he came early and when he left he walked with us for a while and said that when he is at church time goes by really quickly, and that he feels really good. He said that he felt the best that he has ever felt when he was at church today. (Which kind of made me feel bad because I had kind of a crappy day at church because my companion and I still don't get along really well). He said that something 'pulls' him to go to church now.
He is from a gypsy family and he lives in a really crappy bloc that was assigned to his family by the government. I though that they just lived there because they were able to get in there and hook up a wire to have a light bulb, but his mom told us that the government gave them that place. I was shocked that the government would give anybody such a crappy place to live in, it's a really terrible place to live.
Their housing is really open (and the door to their room is broken by Alin's dad who is an alcoholic) so all of his neighbors who are equally poor and humble come in and listen to us teach whenever we come over. When I went there on splits with the member girl she seemed really nervous as more and more people started coming into the room, but she did a really good job answering questions and explaining things, and I tied things back into the lesson so that we could keep on subject.
Anyway, it's interesting to relate that experience to one that we had with an English student recently. We met with a girl after English and taught her the restoration lesson and she understood everything really well and followed the logic and everything. She understood perfectly at the end of the lesson that she just had to ask and she would get a response and know whether or not it was true, and said that she had actually gotten responses in the past when she had prayed about things. She understood everything perfectly, but didn't have an actual desire to do anything about it. Whereas Alin and his family didn't understand everything perfectly the first time we explained it, but as soon as Alin understood he really had a desire to know. It doesn't matter what kind of a person you are, you just have to be willing.
Recently I have been wondering about why some people receive special help to join the church (they will have a dream or something that prompts them to keep going) and other people don't and eventually disappear, and I noticed that a lot of the people who have special experiences are the ones that have something really valuable that they can do for the church, or eventually end up doing something really valuable for the church like being a branch president or a missionary. Sora Ausen's dad had a special experience and joined the church and now he has two kids on missions, and I think that all of the people in the district presidencies in Romania all have intense conversion experiences. So when we were working with Alin and we saw how many people he talked to about the church and how much of a help he would be to us, and how good of an example he would be to the other members, we prayed that he would have a converting experience because he would be very valuable to the church. He was definitely prepared beforehand, and he definitely seems to have had his experience because he is so happy and wants to be baptized, and when we set a baptismal date for him he said "And then after that I can go out contacting with you guys?" (We told him he could go contacting with the elders).
He's one of those awesome investigators who will become an awesome member just like the girl in Tom's city. Unfortunately I'm not going to be able to be here for his baptism, or to help the rest of his family (and his siblings that live in the orphanage) get baptized too, but he will be a sweet member.
Love,
Sora Jay
NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Não sei
Querida familia
When I came here a little more than 3 months the number of people in church every week was about 70. Yesterday there were 110 people in church even though it was raining a lot. The secret is that the members are visiting the inactive members and inviting them back to church. When the members are working and visiting each other the church grows but when people get lazy and stop visiting the church shrinks. I have been able to see the importance of members in this area, they have been lazy for a while now and even though more than a hundred people were baptized into the branch in the last two years the branch shrunk. 109 baptisms since January 18, 2009, and none of them are active except the ones that we baptized in the last two months and a few others because no one took care of them after their baptisms. We have to help the branch before we can help the non-members.
On Saturday we took Rayssa (the girl I wrote about last time) to teach some of her friends. She already teaches better than most of the missionaries that I know. She was asking questions, teaching simple doctrine, bearing testimony, and she wasn´t afraid. It was pretty cool. Good investigator = Good member = Good missionary:)
Yesterday we had lunch with the first counseler in the branch. I ate so much food I almost died. I just kept eating and eating and eating, but I felt fine until the very end I drank a glass of water and for the next couple of hours I wanted to puke. But I didn't because if I did it would have been a waste of food and I don´t waste food.
It has started to rain a lot here in the past few weeks and it is a lot cooler outside. I get wet every day, but it is better to get wet from rain than from sweat.
Here is a scripture for mom, 2 Nephi 18:12-13, it talks about conspiricies.
Tchão até a proxima semana,
Elder Jay Brazil
NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.
Romania 24 January 2010
Hello everybody,
I tried to write down some cool things that happened in the past little while in my planner during the week so that I could tell you about them.
We had a member present with a sister, Sora Dobrin, who is the wife of somebody in the mission presidency and she was super awesome. As soon as we had a Romanian at a lesson with this investigator, Vali, she asked her all of the questions that she always asks us again to see what them member would say; questions about infant baptism, about crossing yourself, about saying The Lord's Prayer, etc. Sora Dobrin told her everything the way it was in the normal super-blunt Romanian way, and Vali took it really well. We even found out that they actually knew each other before through work.
We have one investigator who is an old guy who came to English classes named Mihai. He used to get super defensive in all of the lessons, especially when we brought up baptism, but in the past couple of weeks he has changed a lot. He listens to a christian radio station that is nondenominational and he said that he left it going one night when he fell asleep, and when he woke up in the middle of the night somebody was talking about baptism, and that seems to have changed his perspective. He still hasn't set a baptismal date even though he is willing because he says he wants to be sure that he won't be one of the less-active members that he always hears about at church.
At church yesterday one of the Young Men, Andrei, told us about one time when he was at church and he decided not to cheat on a test and one of his teachers found out about it and she said "You should become a mormon," and he said "I am a mormon." She had no idea, but it shows that the people here do have a good perspective of us. But actually, one of the members told us that when the chapel in this city was dedicated there were crowds of people outside of the area and she said that some really high-up guys in the orthodox church were there too, and she said that people actually threw rocks at them. She said that the high up guy, she called him "popa" but I don't think he was the guy over the entire country or anything, anyway, she said that he calmed down and actually was nice to them afterward. It was kind of intense. I think that more people know about mormons in this city than they do in most cities, so there is a little more persecution. When an orthodox priest came to baptize our apartment and we told him that we were from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, he said "Mormons?" and I was really surprised.
When we were at the church for the CES fireside (we had to set all the stuff up and run it because the Branch President was out of town) one of the members came with her kids, and one of them is just a little girl who is "five years and seven months old," that's what she said when I asked. Anyway, when we were sitting in the missionary room watching in English with an investigator she came in there and opened up one of the cupboards and pulled out one of the baptismal suits and said "abia astept sa ma botezez" which translates as "I can't wait to get baptize-ized" because she conjugated the verb wrong. It was really funny, and cool because she must be well taught at home, plus she's probably been to a ton of baptisms and she must have already seen how happy people always are after they get baptized.
And, we went and looked up an inactive family and we just happened to get there when the dad got home and he invited us inside, where his cousins were just about to start serving up a bottle of Vodka and some cigarettes. The member said something along the lines of "it's not bad if it's just one glass or just one cigarette" and we told him and all of his friends to never drink or buy Vodka again or touch cigarettes. They really seemed to respect us as well. I think that he is one less-active member that we can definitely help progress back to activity, and he has a son that is not a member that we can work with too.
And, I finished reading the Book of Mormon in Romanian. It took me exactly 100 days.
Hopefully we can have some baptisms soon because we got some solid, progressing people.
Love,
Sora Jay
I tried to write down some cool things that happened in the past little while in my planner during the week so that I could tell you about them.
We had a member present with a sister, Sora Dobrin, who is the wife of somebody in the mission presidency and she was super awesome. As soon as we had a Romanian at a lesson with this investigator, Vali, she asked her all of the questions that she always asks us again to see what them member would say; questions about infant baptism, about crossing yourself, about saying The Lord's Prayer, etc. Sora Dobrin told her everything the way it was in the normal super-blunt Romanian way, and Vali took it really well. We even found out that they actually knew each other before through work.
We have one investigator who is an old guy who came to English classes named Mihai. He used to get super defensive in all of the lessons, especially when we brought up baptism, but in the past couple of weeks he has changed a lot. He listens to a christian radio station that is nondenominational and he said that he left it going one night when he fell asleep, and when he woke up in the middle of the night somebody was talking about baptism, and that seems to have changed his perspective. He still hasn't set a baptismal date even though he is willing because he says he wants to be sure that he won't be one of the less-active members that he always hears about at church.
At church yesterday one of the Young Men, Andrei, told us about one time when he was at church and he decided not to cheat on a test and one of his teachers found out about it and she said "You should become a mormon," and he said "I am a mormon." She had no idea, but it shows that the people here do have a good perspective of us. But actually, one of the members told us that when the chapel in this city was dedicated there were crowds of people outside of the area and she said that some really high-up guys in the orthodox church were there too, and she said that people actually threw rocks at them. She said that the high up guy, she called him "popa" but I don't think he was the guy over the entire country or anything, anyway, she said that he calmed down and actually was nice to them afterward. It was kind of intense. I think that more people know about mormons in this city than they do in most cities, so there is a little more persecution. When an orthodox priest came to baptize our apartment and we told him that we were from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, he said "Mormons?" and I was really surprised.
When we were at the church for the CES fireside (we had to set all the stuff up and run it because the Branch President was out of town) one of the members came with her kids, and one of them is just a little girl who is "five years and seven months old," that's what she said when I asked. Anyway, when we were sitting in the missionary room watching in English with an investigator she came in there and opened up one of the cupboards and pulled out one of the baptismal suits and said "abia astept sa ma botezez" which translates as "I can't wait to get baptize-ized" because she conjugated the verb wrong. It was really funny, and cool because she must be well taught at home, plus she's probably been to a ton of baptisms and she must have already seen how happy people always are after they get baptized.
And, we went and looked up an inactive family and we just happened to get there when the dad got home and he invited us inside, where his cousins were just about to start serving up a bottle of Vodka and some cigarettes. The member said something along the lines of "it's not bad if it's just one glass or just one cigarette" and we told him and all of his friends to never drink or buy Vodka again or touch cigarettes. They really seemed to respect us as well. I think that he is one less-active member that we can definitely help progress back to activity, and he has a son that is not a member that we can work with too.
And, I finished reading the Book of Mormon in Romanian. It took me exactly 100 days.
Hopefully we can have some baptisms soon because we got some solid, progressing people.
Love,
Sora Jay
NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Hey
Querida familia,
The package still hasn't arrived. I can only hope that the postal worker who stole it is sharing the goodies with his family and friends. I think that now it would be alright to tell me what you sent, since I will never see it with my own eyes.
This week was wierd, I don´t remember much. I think I am losing the ability to remember because I am always so tired. I drew a T-rex in my planner and it turned out pretty good. Here´s a story that happened a couple weeks ago that I forgot about. We always have district meeting in the church and we have keys to a side door so we can get in. The problem is that you can pull the doorknob out. Anyway, someone left the doorknob inside the church so we couldn´t get in through the door. I had to climb up on top of the church and it was a little difficult because all of the walls have spikes and glass on top, but I managed, and then I found a window that someone had left open. I climbed in through the window and opened the church from the inside. I think I could be an alright burglar.
Now a good story. The girl that we baptized last week told her mom how she felt when she was baptized and her mom told her that we must put something in the water to make the people think they are feeling the Holy Ghost. She figured us out! We always give the people a little electrical shock while they are under the water. Then her old pastors went over again to try to dissuade her, but she came to church yesterday and recieved the gift of the Holy Ghost. She said she felt like she did when she was baptized only this time instead of being an instantaneous thing, she said it came more slowly and stayed. I could feel it just sitting by her and talking to her. She has a really strong testimony. Yesterday she told us that her mom bought some cookies and she started to eat them, but then she felt bad because her mom bought them on Sunday, and repented of eating cookies purchased on the sabbath. She already has standards higher than most of the members here and in Utah.
We are making the members work now, because President Hall said that he won't dedicate the new chapel until the branch has a frequency of 120 member for a month straight. We divided some of the members in companionships and assingned neighborhoods to them, and gave them the names and addresses of all the inactives. This week a lot of people that hadn´t come to church for a long time came, just because someone visited them. I´m learning on the mission how to be a good member.
Nothing else.
Love,
Elder Jay Brazil
The package still hasn't arrived. I can only hope that the postal worker who stole it is sharing the goodies with his family and friends. I think that now it would be alright to tell me what you sent, since I will never see it with my own eyes.
This week was wierd, I don´t remember much. I think I am losing the ability to remember because I am always so tired. I drew a T-rex in my planner and it turned out pretty good. Here´s a story that happened a couple weeks ago that I forgot about. We always have district meeting in the church and we have keys to a side door so we can get in. The problem is that you can pull the doorknob out. Anyway, someone left the doorknob inside the church so we couldn´t get in through the door. I had to climb up on top of the church and it was a little difficult because all of the walls have spikes and glass on top, but I managed, and then I found a window that someone had left open. I climbed in through the window and opened the church from the inside. I think I could be an alright burglar.
Now a good story. The girl that we baptized last week told her mom how she felt when she was baptized and her mom told her that we must put something in the water to make the people think they are feeling the Holy Ghost. She figured us out! We always give the people a little electrical shock while they are under the water. Then her old pastors went over again to try to dissuade her, but she came to church yesterday and recieved the gift of the Holy Ghost. She said she felt like she did when she was baptized only this time instead of being an instantaneous thing, she said it came more slowly and stayed. I could feel it just sitting by her and talking to her. She has a really strong testimony. Yesterday she told us that her mom bought some cookies and she started to eat them, but then she felt bad because her mom bought them on Sunday, and repented of eating cookies purchased on the sabbath. She already has standards higher than most of the members here and in Utah.
We are making the members work now, because President Hall said that he won't dedicate the new chapel until the branch has a frequency of 120 member for a month straight. We divided some of the members in companionships and assingned neighborhoods to them, and gave them the names and addresses of all the inactives. This week a lot of people that hadn´t come to church for a long time came, just because someone visited them. I´m learning on the mission how to be a good member.
Nothing else.
Love,
Elder Jay Brazil
NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.
Romania 17 Jan 2010
Hey Everybody,
It's nice to hear that Tom has an easy mission. But actually, being a missionary is a lot easier for me than is was being a normal person, because in normal life you have to balance and juggle a lot of things and here you only have missionary work to do.
Our mission has set goals to visit all of the active members in the branches every once in a while to give them support and to convert their friends and family. So far we have already gotten a few new investigators from visiting less-active members. One of the elders told us that when you start visiting someone regularly it is really easy for them to invite someone to come to a lesson with you because when somebody asks about their religion they will probably tell them that the missionaries come and visit every once in a while and they can stay for the lesson, and then the next day a recent convert that we meet with every week randomly brought a friend to her lesson.
We went to the house of an active member because we found a teaching record for his mom in our area book and when we got there she was there and we talked to her and she knew almost nothing about the church and had tons of questions about it. It was cool to talk to her because she seemed super golden, but it was also really disappointing in a way, because obviously her son had never talked to her about anything to do with the church (we talked to his sister as well, who also knew very little about our church). But, I guess that's why our mission goal is to teach the members to be better member-missionaries.
I don't have a ton of things to write about that wouldn't be really boring for you guys, because we don't have much fun. My companion and I mutually dislike each other. The only thing I think that has kept us from open warfare is that we both want to do missionary work. She's super manipulative and condescending, and she's the oldest sister in a family of eight little kids so she thinks she has to take care of everything all the time, so that she just gets super stressed out about everything. Her solution to any problem is banana bread. We just don't match in any way.
I've tried telling her things and she gets offended and cries. The district leader has told her things too, and she gets offended and cries.
One time in one of our lessons my companion and the member present were attacking the investigator and I was fighting to bring the focus back to the lesson by asking the investigator questions, the other two would just jump in and fight some more though. I don't remember what I asked, but eventually the investigator said the he would rather find out on his own if he would go to hell (when he got there) than try getting baptized or living the other principles in our church.
After the lesson he apologized and said that he felt really stupid for what had happened. It wasn't really his fault that it went horribly though.
The member who was there at that lesson walked out of church with his wife on Sunday because the lesson came up in branch counsel that morning and he is the ward mission leader. He told us we shouldn't work with that investigator anymore and it started a fight with other members, because he has kind of an abrasive personality. Hopefully they won't be permanently inactive.
I guess that this transfer has been teaching me to have a bigger perspective of everything though. I would be a lot more angry with my companion all the time if I didn't try to think of her with a bigger perspective, she's probably just insecure and that's why we have problems. When we were able to go up to Bucharest for the Zone Leader Conference I was able to be with some of the sisters and remember that normal people aren't like her, and I just have to give her special exceptions to some social standards.
The transfer is only seven weeks as well, so it's not too bad. I think our capabilities as missionaries are severely limited this transfer though. We have lots of good people to work with, but we're kind of handicapped.
This is kind of a depressing email. But, I'm still happy, don't worry about it. I have lots of cool members and investigators that are normal people and that I get along with really well.
Love,
Sora Jay
It's nice to hear that Tom has an easy mission. But actually, being a missionary is a lot easier for me than is was being a normal person, because in normal life you have to balance and juggle a lot of things and here you only have missionary work to do.
Our mission has set goals to visit all of the active members in the branches every once in a while to give them support and to convert their friends and family. So far we have already gotten a few new investigators from visiting less-active members. One of the elders told us that when you start visiting someone regularly it is really easy for them to invite someone to come to a lesson with you because when somebody asks about their religion they will probably tell them that the missionaries come and visit every once in a while and they can stay for the lesson, and then the next day a recent convert that we meet with every week randomly brought a friend to her lesson.
We went to the house of an active member because we found a teaching record for his mom in our area book and when we got there she was there and we talked to her and she knew almost nothing about the church and had tons of questions about it. It was cool to talk to her because she seemed super golden, but it was also really disappointing in a way, because obviously her son had never talked to her about anything to do with the church (we talked to his sister as well, who also knew very little about our church). But, I guess that's why our mission goal is to teach the members to be better member-missionaries.
I don't have a ton of things to write about that wouldn't be really boring for you guys, because we don't have much fun. My companion and I mutually dislike each other. The only thing I think that has kept us from open warfare is that we both want to do missionary work. She's super manipulative and condescending, and she's the oldest sister in a family of eight little kids so she thinks she has to take care of everything all the time, so that she just gets super stressed out about everything. Her solution to any problem is banana bread. We just don't match in any way.
I've tried telling her things and she gets offended and cries. The district leader has told her things too, and she gets offended and cries.
One time in one of our lessons my companion and the member present were attacking the investigator and I was fighting to bring the focus back to the lesson by asking the investigator questions, the other two would just jump in and fight some more though. I don't remember what I asked, but eventually the investigator said the he would rather find out on his own if he would go to hell (when he got there) than try getting baptized or living the other principles in our church.
After the lesson he apologized and said that he felt really stupid for what had happened. It wasn't really his fault that it went horribly though.
The member who was there at that lesson walked out of church with his wife on Sunday because the lesson came up in branch counsel that morning and he is the ward mission leader. He told us we shouldn't work with that investigator anymore and it started a fight with other members, because he has kind of an abrasive personality. Hopefully they won't be permanently inactive.
I guess that this transfer has been teaching me to have a bigger perspective of everything though. I would be a lot more angry with my companion all the time if I didn't try to think of her with a bigger perspective, she's probably just insecure and that's why we have problems. When we were able to go up to Bucharest for the Zone Leader Conference I was able to be with some of the sisters and remember that normal people aren't like her, and I just have to give her special exceptions to some social standards.
The transfer is only seven weeks as well, so it's not too bad. I think our capabilities as missionaries are severely limited this transfer though. We have lots of good people to work with, but we're kind of handicapped.
This is kind of a depressing email. But, I'm still happy, don't worry about it. I have lots of cool members and investigators that are normal people and that I get along with really well.
Love,
Sora Jay
NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Re: cont.
I guess my companion who's skirts were never long enough was just ahead of her time :)
On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 4:29 PM, Joan Olson <jonibalogne@gmail.com> wrote:
YES!!!!! Flowery patterns!!! Maybe we should send something flowery to Ariel.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Re: cont.
Ariel,
Hey, now you can wear flowery patterns:
"Sister missionaries get a new wardrobe
ALEXIS SANDERS - 9 HOURS AGO
SOURCE: LDS LIVING
For years, the dress standard for sisters missionaries has been a
consistent guideline and entirely unchanging. In recent months
however, the Church has implemented new changes to the approved
apparel.
Encouraging brighter colors, patterns and even accessories, the Church
hopes to make sister missionaries' appearance more inviting to
investigators. With completely new photos, the changed apparel
guidelines have proliferated as they have been sent out to sisters
recently receiving their mission calls, and current missionaries have
been notified by their mission presidents.
In addition to the unchanged guidelines of retaining modesty by
ensuring clothes are neither too tight or too loose, sheer or sloppy,
the new standard is meant to enhance the perpetual tradition of
presenting oneself as dignified, well-groomed and clean in appearance.
"The Church provides dress and grooming standards for Elders and
Sisters alike, which are current with acceptable styles yet maintain
an appearance of dignity, professionalism and modesty," said Scott
Trotter, spokesperson for The Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day
Saints,
In conforming to current acceptable style, the updated guidelines
encourage sisters to wear brighter colors and patterns, simple
accessories and dub nylons as optional. Skirt length has also been
modernized with the rule that they can rise above mid-calf, but are
still required to cover the knees when sitting or standing.
Although there are revisions, sisters are still required to maintain
their appearance of modesty, wearing conservative outfits that consist
of professional suits, skirts, blouses, jackets, sweaters and
dresses."
So I guess "frumpy" is no longer acceptable for sisters.
Colin
On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 3:01 AM, Ariel Natalie Jay
<ariel.jay@myldsmail.net> wrote:
> My keyboard wouldn't let me write anything else in that letter, so I guess
> I'll just send some pictures if I have any.
>
> Love,
> Sora Jay
>
> This is the Relief Society here in Ploiesti.
> A picture of my and one of our investigators, Cristina.
> And my companion Sora Ausen inside of the church, which has a cool red
> theme.
>
>
> NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s)
> and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized
> review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the
> intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all
> copies of the original message.
>
Re: oi
And I still haven´t gotten my darn package!
On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 11:58 AM, Thomas Jay <thomas.jay@myldsmail.net> wrote:
Querida familia
I´m sorry to hear that Stewart´s dad passed away de um abraço para Stewart por mim. I remember President Monson´s talk in April, he said that death comes to everyone, some when they are old, some in their prime, and some when they are young, but because of Christ everyone will live again. "The sting of death is swallowed up in Christ." And there are also lots of good things, a new baby, and two more on the way! It shows the importance of sharing the gospel so that evreyone can have the hope that we have when a life starts or when it ends.
Things are going really well here. It makes me sad to here the difficulties that Ed and Ariel have with the people, I can´t complain about a lack of success. Right now we are focused more on strengthening the members and bringing inactives back to church, but we still baptize. You guys just chose the wrong mission.
This week we had a really good baptism. Three weeks ago we found a teenage girl that went to the Assembly of God (the Assembly of Men) and she told us that she felt like something was lacking so she prayed to know what she should do and then we knocked on her door. It was difficult because her cousins and aunts are all evangelical and her pastor and the people in her church told her lots of lies about us, but she left all of her doubts and the criticisms behind, and was baptized. She said that when she was baptized she felt what had been lacking before, and she no longer has any questions or doubts.
Anyway, I didn´t get transfered, I think I will stay in this area for a long time. It´s good because I like it here. Everyone thought I would be transfered but they were all wrong.
Tchão,
Elder Jay de Brazil!
NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.
oi
Querida familia
I´m sorry to hear that Stewart´s dad passed away de um abraço para Stewart por mim. I remember President Monson´s talk in April, he said that death comes to everyone, some when they are old, some in their prime, and some when they are young, but because of Christ everyone will live again. "The sting of death is swallowed up in Christ." And there are also lots of good things, a new baby, and two more on the way! It shows the importance of sharing the gospel so that evreyone can have the hope that we have when a life starts or when it ends.
Things are going really well here. It makes me sad to here the difficulties that Ed and Ariel have with the people, I can´t complain about a lack of success. Right now we are focused more on strengthening the members and bringing inactives back to church, but we still baptize. You guys just chose the wrong mission.
This week we had a really good baptism. Three weeks ago we found a teenage girl that went to the Assembly of God (the Assembly of Men) and she told us that she felt like something was lacking so she prayed to know what she should do and then we knocked on her door. It was difficult because her cousins and aunts are all evangelical and her pastor and the people in her church told her lots of lies about us, but she left all of her doubts and the criticisms behind, and was baptized. She said that when she was baptized she felt what had been lacking before, and she no longer has any questions or doubts.
Anyway, I didn´t get transfered, I think I will stay in this area for a long time. It´s good because I like it here. Everyone thought I would be transfered but they were all wrong.
Tchão,
Elder Jay de Brazil!
I´m sorry to hear that Stewart´s dad passed away de um abraço para Stewart por mim. I remember President Monson´s talk in April, he said that death comes to everyone, some when they are old, some in their prime, and some when they are young, but because of Christ everyone will live again. "The sting of death is swallowed up in Christ." And there are also lots of good things, a new baby, and two more on the way! It shows the importance of sharing the gospel so that evreyone can have the hope that we have when a life starts or when it ends.
Things are going really well here. It makes me sad to here the difficulties that Ed and Ariel have with the people, I can´t complain about a lack of success. Right now we are focused more on strengthening the members and bringing inactives back to church, but we still baptize. You guys just chose the wrong mission.
This week we had a really good baptism. Three weeks ago we found a teenage girl that went to the Assembly of God (the Assembly of Men) and she told us that she felt like something was lacking so she prayed to know what she should do and then we knocked on her door. It was difficult because her cousins and aunts are all evangelical and her pastor and the people in her church told her lots of lies about us, but she left all of her doubts and the criticisms behind, and was baptized. She said that when she was baptized she felt what had been lacking before, and she no longer has any questions or doubts.
Anyway, I didn´t get transfered, I think I will stay in this area for a long time. It´s good because I like it here. Everyone thought I would be transfered but they were all wrong.
Tchão,
Elder Jay de Brazil!
NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Romania 10 Dec 2010
Hello again,
This week has been a lot more normal than that past few weeks, because we are pretty much finished moving and the holidays are mostly over. They celebrated the baptism of Jesus on the 6th of January, so the holidays actually kept going for a little longer than they usually do in Utah.
We were able to work everything out with Sora Ausen's visa and stuff. We had to go to the police station one more time and we gave them all fliers for our English classes. We also gave fliers to police officers on the street one time and they told us that we needed permission to hand things out, but they took the fliers and kept walking, so we kept handing out fliers. We gave them to a few more police officers too.
I remember Tom saying a couple emails back that he got a referral from God around Christmas time, and I thought about that for a little while, and it just so happens that two people so far have called us that want to meet with us. The first one said that we had called him and was calling us back, but we looked in the phone history and there wasn't anything from his number and he told us his name and he wasn't one of the people that we had recently called. The other one just called us today. We haven't been able to ask him yet how he had our number or anything like that. He just asked about the church and wanted to know if there were any youth activities.
I spoke in church yesterday, it's been a while since I've spoken so I can speak a lot better than I probably could last time I spoke. Of course it was in a different branch anyway. I spoke about missionary work and told the members that the missionaries are too few to be able to help all of Romania and the Republic of Moldova alone, so we needed the members to help us. I told them that we want to teach people but that, unfortunately, we have to spend too much of our time looking for people that will listen to us before we could actually do any teaching. I told them how they could help us to find people, by giving us referrals, and quoted from Elder Holland's talk from last conference (except we didn't have it in Romanian so I just had to translate what I could). I told them that we had decided as a mission to use them more to do missionary work. I read a lot of scriptures that talked about the joy that comes from the living, and sharing, the gospel. A lot of the members really liked it, probably because I was super blunt with them.
One lady told us after church that she has a bunch of neighbors that she wants us to come visit, so I guess that it's already bringing success.
It's kind of awkward to talk about missionary work when you have investigators at church, you just kind of have to neglect them for a minute, but one of our investigators actually really like my talk too and started crying while I was speaking.
It is our mission goal to work more with the members this year. We are going to make sure that everybody had a Preach My Gospel and we are going to teach them a little out of it so that they can learn to be better finders and be better member-presents at our lessons. I asked President if he could keep me in the same area longer so that I could work with the members better and he said he would try.
I think I have lived in Romania long enough to be developing a more natural ability to speak, like how little babies learn to speak, now I'm like 9 months old in Romania. A lot of things that understand and grammar that I use I have no idea where I picked it up from but I just know that it's right. I can also pick out accents in Romania a lot better.
But actually I had a conversation with a guy in Russian this week when we were handing out English cards. I gave him a card and he read it and he said, "I speak Russian" and I said, "I don't speak Russian" and he said, "I know." Then I told him in Romanian to come to the English classes.
Sora Ausen told me yesterday that she feels safe when she is with me no matter where we are because when people bug us we just mess with them back. Like when we hand out English cards the young kids always tell us, in Romanian, that they speak perfect English or that they could teach an English class better than we could, so we always say "Oh yeah?" or "Wanna bet" or think of something more complicated to say to them to see how well they really know it. One time I said to one kid, "Whither didst thou learn thine English?" and they gave us really bewildered looks, it was super funny.
When they make fun of us as missionaries or make fun of our religion we just tell them to shut up and be respectful (it isn't as offensive in Romanian as it is in English). And when they swear at us in English we just teach them to say the fake swearwords like 'heck' instead.
I still have a ton of time left on my computer, but I can't think of more things to write about.
This week has been a lot more normal than that past few weeks, because we are pretty much finished moving and the holidays are mostly over. They celebrated the baptism of Jesus on the 6th of January, so the holidays actually kept going for a little longer than they usually do in Utah.
We were able to work everything out with Sora Ausen's visa and stuff. We had to go to the police station one more time and we gave them all fliers for our English classes. We also gave fliers to police officers on the street one time and they told us that we needed permission to hand things out, but they took the fliers and kept walking, so we kept handing out fliers. We gave them to a few more police officers too.
I remember Tom saying a couple emails back that he got a referral from God around Christmas time, and I thought about that for a little while, and it just so happens that two people so far have called us that want to meet with us. The first one said that we had called him and was calling us back, but we looked in the phone history and there wasn't anything from his number and he told us his name and he wasn't one of the people that we had recently called. The other one just called us today. We haven't been able to ask him yet how he had our number or anything like that. He just asked about the church and wanted to know if there were any youth activities.
I spoke in church yesterday, it's been a while since I've spoken so I can speak a lot better than I probably could last time I spoke. Of course it was in a different branch anyway. I spoke about missionary work and told the members that the missionaries are too few to be able to help all of Romania and the Republic of Moldova alone, so we needed the members to help us. I told them that we want to teach people but that, unfortunately, we have to spend too much of our time looking for people that will listen to us before we could actually do any teaching. I told them how they could help us to find people, by giving us referrals, and quoted from Elder Holland's talk from last conference (except we didn't have it in Romanian so I just had to translate what I could). I told them that we had decided as a mission to use them more to do missionary work. I read a lot of scriptures that talked about the joy that comes from the living, and sharing, the gospel. A lot of the members really liked it, probably because I was super blunt with them.
One lady told us after church that she has a bunch of neighbors that she wants us to come visit, so I guess that it's already bringing success.
It's kind of awkward to talk about missionary work when you have investigators at church, you just kind of have to neglect them for a minute, but one of our investigators actually really like my talk too and started crying while I was speaking.
It is our mission goal to work more with the members this year. We are going to make sure that everybody had a Preach My Gospel and we are going to teach them a little out of it so that they can learn to be better finders and be better member-presents at our lessons. I asked President if he could keep me in the same area longer so that I could work with the members better and he said he would try.
I think I have lived in Romania long enough to be developing a more natural ability to speak, like how little babies learn to speak, now I'm like 9 months old in Romania. A lot of things that understand and grammar that I use I have no idea where I picked it up from but I just know that it's right. I can also pick out accents in Romania a lot better.
But actually I had a conversation with a guy in Russian this week when we were handing out English cards. I gave him a card and he read it and he said, "I speak Russian" and I said, "I don't speak Russian" and he said, "I know." Then I told him in Romanian to come to the English classes.
Sora Ausen told me yesterday that she feels safe when she is with me no matter where we are because when people bug us we just mess with them back. Like when we hand out English cards the young kids always tell us, in Romanian, that they speak perfect English or that they could teach an English class better than we could, so we always say "Oh yeah?" or "Wanna bet" or think of something more complicated to say to them to see how well they really know it. One time I said to one kid, "Whither didst thou learn thine English?" and they gave us really bewildered looks, it was super funny.
When they make fun of us as missionaries or make fun of our religion we just tell them to shut up and be respectful (it isn't as offensive in Romanian as it is in English). And when they swear at us in English we just teach them to say the fake swearwords like 'heck' instead.
I still have a ton of time left on my computer, but I can't think of more things to write about.
NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Ano Novo
Querida familia,
Glad to hear everything is going well. Congratulations on the new baby Rodney and Melissa! And Good luck with the move Sally and Shane.
I´m already out of time today, I don´t know what happened. Everything is going well, we are working hard, and we had a really good week. I´ll write more next time.
Elder Jay
Glad to hear everything is going well. Congratulations on the new baby Rodney and Melissa! And Good luck with the move Sally and Shane.
I´m already out of time today, I don´t know what happened. Everything is going well, we are working hard, and we had a really good week. I´ll write more next time.
Elder Jay
NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.
Romania, 3 Jan 2010
Hey everybody,
Happy Birthday Mom. And feel free to treat yourselves to something
nice to celebrate my birthday.
But the 3rd is only my State Birthday, apparently, because I noticed
on my passport today that my birthday is written as the 5th, so my
Federal Birthday is in a couple of days. It's alright, I just get to
have two of them.
Lots of your guy's emails were really funny today, it was great.
New Years was pretty much as Jesh predicted it would be: the aftermath
of a Zombie invasion. The city was completely empty in the morning
except for a few dodgey looking people staggering around. The air
smelled like sulfur and there were the remnants of explosives all over
the ground. I think it was a bigger holiday than Christmas. We were
actually in Bucharest four times this week. The first time we came up
was for Zone Conference, then the next day we came up for Zone Leader
Council, and we came up twice yesterday, so I'm still here. We talked
to young people on the train going back to Ploiesti on New Years Eve
and told them to not do anything stupid. They seemed to respect us
for sassing them.
So this is what happened: as we were getting on a bus to go to an
investigators house (with the investigator, he was showing us where
his family lived) somebody pick-pocketed Sora Ausen and stole her
wallet. The bus went a stop but we went back to the place as soon as
possible and the investigator, Alin, was helping us out the whole
time. We couldn't find anything there so we walked over to the Police
Station near our apartment and reported the theft. The police office
was super sketch and they were super racist against Alin because he's
gypsy. They were really respectful to us because we were all
Americans. We had the district leader come with us to make sure we
got everything right, and we called the office elders and had them
call her family and cancel her credit cards and stuff. The most
important thing that she lost was her visa so that's why we needed to
go the police station (because they can take her and throw her in jail
if they find her on the streets without a visa). So we finally worked
out everything after going back to the police station a couple of
times and fighting with the guy we talked with on the phone to try to
get all of the documents that we needed to be able to get her another
visa without paying big fines.
So, last night the APs were in our city to pick up and extra portable
baptismal font to take it to another city, so they drove us to
Bucharest which is about 45 minutes away by car. But, shortly after
we arrived at the Buch sister's apartment I asked Sora Ausen about the
documents, and she had forgotten them in our apartment. There was no
way anyone else could get into the apartment to get them because we
had the only keys and our proprietar is on vacation somewhere so we
had to go back to Ploiesti. We called the APs and they drove us all
the way back to Ploiesti and back to Bucharest again with the
documents. We got back to Bucharest at about a quarter to midnight,
so I guess it wasn't that bad. And then this morning we got up at six
and went over to the office to meet up with the office elders so that
we could go to the police station here in Buch where we could order a
new visa.
Sora Ausen has been super stressed out. I have laughed a lot.
Sometimes I felt bad for her, but I can't really relate. I think I
would have just laughed if I lost my wallet.
This week was really slow for missionary work because of the Holidays,
but we spent most of our time moving apartments, so we used our time.
This is the second time that I have moved a missionary apartment, so I
better not ever have to do it again. I have connections now, though,
so I guess it's easier for me to do it than most of the sisters.
I got my Christmas package, all of the missionaries thought it was
hilarious that there were so many Junior Mints in there. They should
be able to last me a couple months, but actually at the rate I have
been eating them they might not last that long...
I really like the photo album, it's really good, it's exactly what I
have wanted my whole mission. I especially like that picture from
last January that has all of us in it, and the one of us holding Dad
in the air is really fun to show people too.
It sounds like everything is going really well at home, especially
with Aubrey and Sally's new house and Tim's engagement. You guys
better thank me and Tom and Ed for earning all those blessings for you
guys.
Sunday this week was really really good. Only the devout members came
to church because everyone was still exhausted from New Years and the
fast and testimony meeting went really well. We had two young teenage
boy investigators there and they both said that they really liked
church today. They usually tell the elders that Sacrament meeting is
boring, but it was really good this week.
I thought about how everyone usually uses the new year to turn a new
leaf, to set goals and do things differently, but at church I realized
that we as mormons do that every week when we take the sacrament. We
can forget all of the things that we have done wrong and just move
forward nice and clean.
Hope you guys have a great week.
Love,
Sora Jay
NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.