Romania 24 January 2010
Monday, January 24, 2011 by Sora Jay
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
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