Re: Romania 28 Feb 2011
Sunday, March 6, 2011 by Sora Jay
said got a mission call), she is the only blond of those with that
name.
On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 2:38 AM, Ariel Natalie Jay
<ariel.jay@myldsmail.net> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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