Jay Family Missionaries

Hello again faithful readers,

 

This week has been pretty eventful, but not a lot of missionary stuff.  Sora Fraser and I had to work everything out with our apartment and investigators because the sisters have been taken out of that part of Mihai Bravu since two left and only one came in this transfer and we didn't have enough.  Usually we would find some member girl to be a mini-missionary, but I don't think they would do that over Christmas.

So, we had to prepare everything with our investigators and leave instructions about the apartment and everything so that the elders wouldn't be lost.  I was the one who opened that apartment and when I told the proprietar that boys would be moving in she told me to make sure that they didn't destroy anything.  I told her I would pass on the message.

 

We had some sweet lessons with our investigators.  A lot of them are people that were previous investigators that we decided to try again.  Their previous missionaries hadn't been able to get them to progress but when we talked to them we just gave them smaller commitments and they did them.  One of the investigators Mihaela, seemed almost scared about what we would say to her because I think that the previous sisters were kind of jerks to her at their last lesson where they dropped her.  Sora Fraser and I were just really nice to her and tried to figure out what her real issues were.  We definitely figured them out (family) and we got her to keep her commitments by just starting somewhere more simple.  We totally had to adjust our usual techniques to fit her.

And then we left.

We had a couple other really cool investigators too, and we just have to leave them behind.  We made them promise that they would meet with the elders though.

 

So, we settled everything in our previous area and then got transferred.  Ploiesti is about half and hour (or one hour depending on on which train you get) away from  Bucharest so it wasn't a big trip.  We came back for Wednesday night for a Kindergarten presentation at the church, by nonmembers so we got a lot of their numbers and stuff, then went back Thursday morning for the mission Christmas party.  All of the sisters wanted to go caroling, but I felt kind of sick so I asked President if I could stay there with the rest of the elders, and he said I could.  So we played apples to apples.  The party didn't end until about nine, so we had to go to the train station to get a train back to Ploiesti when it was pretty late, and then the train wasn't supposed to leave until 10:30pm.  We bought our tickets and went to the line where the train was supposed to be and there was a train there even though our train wasn't supposed to leave for about half an hour.  We figured it was our train and got inside.  We were only in there for a minute or so when the train started moving.

We talked about it for a minute and decided that it definitely wasn't our train and decided that we had to get off before it took us too far away from the station to catch our actual train.  So we jumped off the train.  The train was probably going around 17mph, so the district leader went to the door and opened it and jumped, his companion (a greenie) jumped pretty quickly after him but my companion, Sora Ausen, was a little worried she kept saying "I don't know if I can do it!"  She suddenly did, and she told me afterward that it was because she could see that there was a conjunction of the tracks up ahead so that I would have landed on the train tracks if I was dumb enough to jump out right there.  She didn't jump quite early enough for me to have been able to jump before the tracks came up so I didn't jump.  Right after Sora Ausen jumped out this guy leaned out the window and started yelling at us saying stuff like, "What's the matter with you guys!  Are you crazy!"  There was no way that I could jump because there were tracks there so I just waited, but the train stopped relatively soon and I walked down the steps.  Then I ran back to the rest of my district and we found our way back to the train station (we were still in the city so we took the metrou back) so that we could get our real train to Ploiesti.  We made it back safely at about half past midnight.

 

So I didn't actually get to jump out of the train.  The three that did have bruises and stuff though, so I guess it's better that way.  But, getting a few bruises isn't as bad as being stranded in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of gypsies in the middle of the night, so I don't think we were that crazy for jumping.  It wasn't my idea though.  The district leader said we could blame it on him and praise ourselves for following leadership.

 

This is my phone number in this city: 0753.058.802.  It's a cell phone.  I'll let you guys call me at the time that Jerm suggested which will be 7:00am for me and Friday night for you guys.  My phone can't make out-of-coutry calls and we don't have any landlines (unless I can figure something out at the church, I guess) so you guys will have to call me so that we can talk.

If you really want to change the time to call you you'll have to actually call to tell me about it, I guess, because I won't be at internet again until next week.  But whenever you guys can is good.  My companion is getting her phonecall between 3 and 4 so that's the only time that wouldn't work.

 

Well, I look forward to talking to you guys.

 

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.