Romania 28 Feb 2011
Monday, February 28, 2011 by Sora Jay
Hello again everybody,
Things are going pretty well here. We got three lessons this week (I would like to see Tom's and Ed's reactions to that), but not for lack of trying. We haven't gotten more than five for the past few weeks here, so for next week we are setting a goal to get ten lessons. We got a few good investigators from street-boarding the week before last. I went to the Primaria (the city building) and requested permission for us to put up a table and some posters on the street and contact people there and the guy at the front told me that missionaries had tried before but hadn't succeeded, but I was able to do it. We had to go back and forth between a few offices in the Primaria and get the right request forms and fill them out and pay like 6 dollars and show them my ministerial certificate and my visa and get everything stamped by the right people, but in the end it worked out. When we did street-boarding it was freezing cold outside and it was snowing on the first day so we didn't set up a table, we just hung up some posters that we found in the church about the Book of Mormon and the Restoration and some basic doctrines of the church. Not many people stopped on their own, but we stopped lots of people. I noticed that if we had one person stopped and talking to a missionary, all of the other missionaries could get somebody to stop and talk to them, because people just follow the crowd. We gave out a lot of pliants and some BoMs and we got a few people's numbers, and a few people have actually called us. It's a lot better that way. I guess this would be the equivalent of Mom's street-preaching in Brazil, but this is the most that we can do without getting arrested, or maybe stoned.
Anyway, one of the member girls here got her mission call and I recorded her opening it on my camera then downloaded it onto her computer for her. She is going to England. Her call letter was in English which surprised me. I guess she speaks English well though. She said she put it on facebook, so you guys can become friends with her and see if you can see the film. Her brother recorded it so the camera swings past me sitting with a bunch of members at the relief society activity where she opened it. Her name is Andreea Stoica (or maybe Andreea Stoica I've seen it both ways here). So that was cool. We visited them at their house and taught them a little bit out of PMG and while we were there her mom called her Andre-ushca, and I remembered that Jesh had told me that you put the 'ushca' on the end of a name to make it diminutive in Russian, so I asked her if she spoke Russian, and she said that in the town that she was from (Suceava) they actually speak a dialect of Ukrainian because they are really close to Ukraine.
The guy who has been wanting to film us followed me and Sora Puckett out contacting on Tuesday. He told us we were the fastest walking girls he had ever seen. He also seemed to feel bad for us because people said really stupid things to us. There was one guy who said something to us that I didn't understand and I asked him what it was, but he wouldn't tell us. The guy probably swore at us or something. I realized how tough you learn to be as a missionary, and how good your motivation has to be. It was interesting to look at it from an outward perspective like that, and I realized how many things I have had to learn to do, or actually just do without any experience, since I have become a missionary.
I read a letter that I got from our home ward from Annalee Strong and she sent some articles about how they have changed the curriculum in the MTC, and it kind of bashed on missionaries. I thought it was dumb. People seem to forget really quickly how much you actually sacrifice to be a missionary and that you're out here doing hard work (except for maybe in Tom's mission). But all they have to offer is criticism. The people we contact, the members, the other missionaries, etc., and now even the guys up top at the MTC freely bash on us. Tell them to be a little more grateful.
There was one part that I liked in those articles, where Elder Holland spoke to the missionaries and talked about how they expected us overnight to become "master-teachers" and that they were changing the curriculum so that they could help us out more. I liked that better. We already know that we're not the best, but we're the ones that are called.
The branch president, President Pitulan, told us during a correlation meeting last week that we should stop asking people to get baptized because it scared them, and we showed him in PMG where it says to ask them even after the first lesson if appropriate. He told us that was crazy. But, on Sunday he came and apologized to me for having told us that, and told us we should follow the counsel in PMG and follow the spirit when teaching. He said he had received revelation and that he understood why it had to be that way, and told us that it wasn't his place to tell us how to do missionary work. We asked how we could help him and he told us that we helped him best by helping the branch members and by helping the branch to grow. He's cool.
We called up a 20 year old guy from the potentials section in our Area Book and were able to set up and meet with him. We were expecting to visit his family, but when we got to his address he was the only one there, and his family lives in another city. It was a really awkward lesson because we were in his apartment sitting on the bed (which is pretty normal) talking to him. He seems genuinely interested though, so he probably won't mind being passed off to the elders. He is the first person I've met here who is a member of the 'old-style' orthodox church, which I think means Russian Orthodox. They celebrate Christmas on the 7th of January or something like that instead of in December. He said his grandparents are from Russia and I asked him where and he said they live in Saint Petersburg. I wonder if they have ever seen the missionaries there, they could have even come into contact with Pete or Jesh when they were on their missions (if either of them actually served in the city of St. Petersburg). It was cool to think of.
Well, I'll talk to you again next week.
Love,
Sora Jay
Things are going pretty well here. We got three lessons this week (I would like to see Tom's and Ed's reactions to that), but not for lack of trying. We haven't gotten more than five for the past few weeks here, so for next week we are setting a goal to get ten lessons. We got a few good investigators from street-boarding the week before last. I went to the Primaria (the city building) and requested permission for us to put up a table and some posters on the street and contact people there and the guy at the front told me that missionaries had tried before but hadn't succeeded, but I was able to do it. We had to go back and forth between a few offices in the Primaria and get the right request forms and fill them out and pay like 6 dollars and show them my ministerial certificate and my visa and get everything stamped by the right people, but in the end it worked out. When we did street-boarding it was freezing cold outside and it was snowing on the first day so we didn't set up a table, we just hung up some posters that we found in the church about the Book of Mormon and the Restoration and some basic doctrines of the church. Not many people stopped on their own, but we stopped lots of people. I noticed that if we had one person stopped and talking to a missionary, all of the other missionaries could get somebody to stop and talk to them, because people just follow the crowd. We gave out a lot of pliants and some BoMs and we got a few people's numbers, and a few people have actually called us. It's a lot better that way. I guess this would be the equivalent of Mom's street-preaching in Brazil, but this is the most that we can do without getting arrested, or maybe stoned.
Anyway, one of the member girls here got her mission call and I recorded her opening it on my camera then downloaded it onto her computer for her. She is going to England. Her call letter was in English which surprised me. I guess she speaks English well though. She said she put it on facebook, so you guys can become friends with her and see if you can see the film. Her brother recorded it so the camera swings past me sitting with a bunch of members at the relief society activity where she opened it. Her name is Andreea Stoica (or maybe Andreea Stoica I've seen it both ways here). So that was cool. We visited them at their house and taught them a little bit out of PMG and while we were there her mom called her Andre-ushca, and I remembered that Jesh had told me that you put the 'ushca' on the end of a name to make it diminutive in Russian, so I asked her if she spoke Russian, and she said that in the town that she was from (Suceava) they actually speak a dialect of Ukrainian because they are really close to Ukraine.
The guy who has been wanting to film us followed me and Sora Puckett out contacting on Tuesday. He told us we were the fastest walking girls he had ever seen. He also seemed to feel bad for us because people said really stupid things to us. There was one guy who said something to us that I didn't understand and I asked him what it was, but he wouldn't tell us. The guy probably swore at us or something. I realized how tough you learn to be as a missionary, and how good your motivation has to be. It was interesting to look at it from an outward perspective like that, and I realized how many things I have had to learn to do, or actually just do without any experience, since I have become a missionary.
I read a letter that I got from our home ward from Annalee Strong and she sent some articles about how they have changed the curriculum in the MTC, and it kind of bashed on missionaries. I thought it was dumb. People seem to forget really quickly how much you actually sacrifice to be a missionary and that you're out here doing hard work (except for maybe in Tom's mission). But all they have to offer is criticism. The people we contact, the members, the other missionaries, etc., and now even the guys up top at the MTC freely bash on us. Tell them to be a little more grateful.
There was one part that I liked in those articles, where Elder Holland spoke to the missionaries and talked about how they expected us overnight to become "master-teachers" and that they were changing the curriculum so that they could help us out more. I liked that better. We already know that we're not the best, but we're the ones that are called.
The branch president, President Pitulan, told us during a correlation meeting last week that we should stop asking people to get baptized because it scared them, and we showed him in PMG where it says to ask them even after the first lesson if appropriate. He told us that was crazy. But, on Sunday he came and apologized to me for having told us that, and told us we should follow the counsel in PMG and follow the spirit when teaching. He said he had received revelation and that he understood why it had to be that way, and told us that it wasn't his place to tell us how to do missionary work. We asked how we could help him and he told us that we helped him best by helping the branch members and by helping the branch to grow. He's cool.
We called up a 20 year old guy from the potentials section in our Area Book and were able to set up and meet with him. We were expecting to visit his family, but when we got to his address he was the only one there, and his family lives in another city. It was a really awkward lesson because we were in his apartment sitting on the bed (which is pretty normal) talking to him. He seems genuinely interested though, so he probably won't mind being passed off to the elders. He is the first person I've met here who is a member of the 'old-style' orthodox church, which I think means Russian Orthodox. They celebrate Christmas on the 7th of January or something like that instead of in December. He said his grandparents are from Russia and I asked him where and he said they live in Saint Petersburg. I wonder if they have ever seen the missionaries there, they could have even come into contact with Pete or Jesh when they were on their missions (if either of them actually served in the city of St. Petersburg). It was cool to think of.
Well, I'll talk to you again next week.
Love,
Sora Jay
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