Jay Family Missionaries

This week was pretty interesting.  We have lost pretty much all of our investigators recently so we have had a lot of time to contact, but we also went on a little trip to Oradea for a YSA conference.  Oradea is way out in the west but they had to bring in a lot of sisters (only 6) to handle all of the young single adults.  It was really wierd being at a YSA activity as a missionary.  I remember that missionaries used to come to our singles branch activities sometimes though.

We had to catch our first train at 10:20 on Wednesday night to get to Oradea in the morning for the conference.  We had to wait at the train station for a while because we got there early (because we had nothing else to do after 9).  We talked to some people at the train station and the group that formed around us was a bunch of young guys that were smoking and drinking.  We talked to them a little bit about the gospel and they actually seemed pretty open.  I don't think any of them live in any cities where missionaries are, but we gave them some pliants.  We should have carried Word of Wisdom pliants around with us.  One of them asked us why we were there and I told him that we came to help people have more faith.  He said, "but everyone here is already 'faithful' so why did you come here?"  I said, "Everyone here believes in God and Christ, but they don't do a very good job of putting into practice all the principles of the gospel.  You're religious and look at how you're smoking and drinking with your friends."  He agreed that they probably needed our help.  We didn't have any Word of Wisdom pliants with us but we probably should carry those things around regularly.  Anyway, we were sitting there waiting for the train and the whole time I thought that the boys' train was supposed to get there before ours but then I realized there were only a few more minutes until our train left and I showed the boys our tickets and asked them if the train was ours.  They looked at the tickets and said "Hurry!" and grabbed our stuff for us and ran us to the train.  They were nice in the end.  I felt bad for them because they weren't happy and didn't seem to want to be addicted to smoking and pressured into drinking with their friends.  Hopefully they will read the pliants and find the missionaries again someday.

The YSA activity was contacting in the park and on the streets.  We got there just a few minutes before it started (luckily we did have a sleeper train) so we didn't have time to eat any breakfast or anything like that.  We took the kids contacting, but the only problem was that they were all from different countries and the only language we all had in common was English.  They couln't help talk to very many of the people, but they drew the Plan of Salvation on the cement with chalk.  It turned out that there were only four girls there though, so there was an extra pair of missionaries. Since we were in a big group anyway I let my companion stay with one of the girls and I mostly contacted people on my own and brought them over to the Plan of Salvation drawing to tell them about it.  There was one girl there from Hungary and she came up and said, "I speak Hungarian but not Romanian" and I told her that we were super close to the border so there should be tons of people that she could talk to.  She said "How do I know if they speak Hungarian" and I said "Say hi to them and see if they respond."  It was cute that she had no idea what to do.  I walked around with her for a while contacting, but I couldn't help with any of the people that spoke Hungarian and she couldn't help with any of the people that spoke Romanian.  The youth at the activity seemed to have really good missionary skills.  One kid from Romania talked to a girl with me and he was super good at asking her questions that made her be interested.  I wish I could speak Romanian as good as he could, it was way easier for him to get her to listen and explain things to her.

There were some boys from Poland that were really flirty, which I guess is appropriate for a YSA activity, just not with the sister missionaries.  I asked them if Poland was like Romania and they gave me a disgusted look.  So, I guess not.  One of them kissed my hand before he left (which isn't completely abnormal here) and he definitely had a different and more polite style than the Romanian style of hand-kissing.  I wonder what it's like in the other countries around here.

After that we caught a train back to Brasov at about 4 o'clock.  We got on the train and it was mostly empty so we were able to sprawl out on the chairs and sleep some more.  But, the more and more cities we went through, the more people got on.  Just then, a cute little family with three kids came and their tickets were for the chairs right next to ours.  The rest of the people in the train were starting to get drunk and go crazy.  There were a bunch of guys singing songs really loud and walking up and down the train with their shirts off, and there were a couple of girls that were completely wasted wandering around behind them.  I'm glad that the little family was sitting next to us so that they didn't have to be next to a bunch of crazy drunk people.  Their kids started going to sleep pretty fast so we didn't talk to them a lot until they were mostly asleep.  We got off our train at about 2:30 am and pretty much all that I was able to say to the little family was that we had a really special book that we wanted to give to them, and I handed them a Book of Mormon.  They were pretty religious people and the mom seemed really flattered and she said "but, do you still have some if you just give this away to me?"  I told her we had a few more.  They don't live in a city where the church is either, but maybe they will someday too.

We have been pretty exhausted this week because of the two nights on the train, but we just did a lot more contacting.  Last night we were knocking some blocks and people there were super nice to us.  It was the first time in a while that I have knocked on somebody's door and offered to explain to them some things and we got let in.  There was a nice guy that we told about the Book of Mormon.  All he accepted was a Restoration pliant though.  After knocking those blocks we went to some more next door, but the people there weren't very nice.  The block had been knocked by JWs before and nobody wanted to even look at us.  One guy opened the door and said "No," before we had said anything and I laughed and said "At least take a pliant."  So he did and said "You're Witnesses right?" and we said "No."  And he said "Oh" and suddenly looked at the pliant with much greater interest.  He just hated JWs but not us.  I wonder what they do to make people hate them so much.  Usually when we leave a bloc people have good feelings toward us.  One of the people in the first bloc was an orthodox priest and he said that we shouldn't be doing what we were doing and said that people need to love each other and not try to convert each other.  I told him that we were there trying to help people out of love for them, and pointed out that they actually did need help.  He seemed impressed, and told us to come back and talk to him sometime when he didn't have guests over.  In the last bloc we went to a little old lady tried to kick us out, but she was a little old lady.  We did start to leave but we were putting pass-along cards in everyone's mail boxes before going and she ran and got somebody to kick us out.  The lady that came out backed us up though; she said, "Look, they're just putting some coupons in the mailboxes."

"But, they were knocking on people's doors before," said the baba.

"They were just giving away coupons and pliants," said the younger lady, and she didn't kick us out.  I apologized to the baba for bothering her and she said that we scared little old ladies like her by coming into the blocs and knocking them.  The younger lady said she had talked to missionaries from our church before and knew that they are good people.  It was interesting.

Well, this letter is already super long, so you guys can read it.

Love,

Sora Jay

P.S. I think I used the word pliant a lot, but I don't want to go back and correct it, it means pamphlet.

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.