Romania 16 May 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011 by Sora Jay
Hello everybody,
I am writing this email later in the day than I usually do because this morning we were able to teach during a religion class at one of the universities here. We have an investigator who is studying for her masters in theology and she asked the professor if we could come to their class and tell a little bit about what we believe. A couple kids gave presentations on some other religions, there was one cool one about Jews in Romania, and then we got up and taught a restoration lesson. Our presentation was a lot better than theirs because we have a lot of practice and we're Americans so we didn't sit at the desk at the front and read off our presentation; we even asked the class questions. It went pretty well. We gave them our information and the teacher encouraged the class to write some questions for us so that we could come back and answer them. Hopefully that goes well.
This week the students from BYU arrived. Everyone was really happy to see them, and they doubled the size of our branch. We got to church and I looked at the monthly schedule and it said that I had to speak that day about hope, I wish that the branch president had told me rather than just posting it out on the wall that nobody looks at. Anyway, I got there to church and wrote up a talk really quickly and gave it. It was kind of a depressing talk for having been about hope, because I told them the story of William Geddess getting kicked out of his house for joining the church. It was cool because there is a missionary that left from our branch to Scotland, Radu Stoica, and when I mentioned the two missionaries in Scotland she got a big grin on her face. Her daughter left last week for her mission in England so both her kids are gone now. Her husband isn't a member, but maybe he will get baptized while his kids are on missions.
I only had to translate during relief society for the BYU girls. It's hard to translate discussions because you have to translate for everybody trying to talk over each other, plus we didn't have any materials in English, besides the scriptures, so I had to translate what everyone was reading as well. Translating scriptural stuff is kind of hard. They have a laptop though, so maybe next time they can come with all the stuff they need ready to go. One of the girls is a returned missionary, she went to Hungary right next door, and the one boy is a returned missionary who went to New York. We challenged all of them to give away a pass-along card and they were way up for it, except for one girl who said they aren't allowed to proselyte.
On Tuesday after English class President Lundberg called us and said, "I think there's something that you've forgotten to report to me..." Sora Mullen had answered the phone and we were both staring at each other wondering what he might have thought that we did wrong, but then it turned out that he had gotten an email from Sora Mullen's dad because Sora Mullen had been punched in the back by a gypsy. She actually did report it to him, he just hadn't read the email yet. It's really dumb that he cared more about what her dad thought than what she thought, he hadn't even read her email yet. Sora Mullen keeps saying, "my heart is still fluttering from that conversation with President Lundberg." But, we didn't have anything to worry about anyway; we haven't done anything wrong.
When we were street-boarding this week there was one guy who walked past and one of the elders tried to talk to him but he was really orthodox. Later he went walking past again with an orthodox priest and the elders were talking to some kids, they didn't stop to say anything but as they passed the guy said, "leave the children alone!" I think 'the children' didn't appreciate it very much. It was just funny for us. We have been finding a lot more college-age kids to talk to because we have been doing street-boarding near the university, and we got permission from the city to do it a few days every week for this month. It was kind of lame because I had worked everything out last transfer at the city building and then the new district leader came in and without even asking me what I had already done went and asked permission for us to do it in some locations that aren't that great and on random days. He also made the newspaper ads for English classes without regarding the advice I gave him, so he got ripped off and also put an ad in one of the papers that nobody even reads. It would have been a lot better if he had just asked me, and listened to me.
But, things are going pretty good. We have some nice people that could progress soon.
Love,
Sora Jay
I am writing this email later in the day than I usually do because this morning we were able to teach during a religion class at one of the universities here. We have an investigator who is studying for her masters in theology and she asked the professor if we could come to their class and tell a little bit about what we believe. A couple kids gave presentations on some other religions, there was one cool one about Jews in Romania, and then we got up and taught a restoration lesson. Our presentation was a lot better than theirs because we have a lot of practice and we're Americans so we didn't sit at the desk at the front and read off our presentation; we even asked the class questions. It went pretty well. We gave them our information and the teacher encouraged the class to write some questions for us so that we could come back and answer them. Hopefully that goes well.
This week the students from BYU arrived. Everyone was really happy to see them, and they doubled the size of our branch. We got to church and I looked at the monthly schedule and it said that I had to speak that day about hope, I wish that the branch president had told me rather than just posting it out on the wall that nobody looks at. Anyway, I got there to church and wrote up a talk really quickly and gave it. It was kind of a depressing talk for having been about hope, because I told them the story of William Geddess getting kicked out of his house for joining the church. It was cool because there is a missionary that left from our branch to Scotland, Radu Stoica, and when I mentioned the two missionaries in Scotland she got a big grin on her face. Her daughter left last week for her mission in England so both her kids are gone now. Her husband isn't a member, but maybe he will get baptized while his kids are on missions.
I only had to translate during relief society for the BYU girls. It's hard to translate discussions because you have to translate for everybody trying to talk over each other, plus we didn't have any materials in English, besides the scriptures, so I had to translate what everyone was reading as well. Translating scriptural stuff is kind of hard. They have a laptop though, so maybe next time they can come with all the stuff they need ready to go. One of the girls is a returned missionary, she went to Hungary right next door, and the one boy is a returned missionary who went to New York. We challenged all of them to give away a pass-along card and they were way up for it, except for one girl who said they aren't allowed to proselyte.
On Tuesday after English class President Lundberg called us and said, "I think there's something that you've forgotten to report to me..." Sora Mullen had answered the phone and we were both staring at each other wondering what he might have thought that we did wrong, but then it turned out that he had gotten an email from Sora Mullen's dad because Sora Mullen had been punched in the back by a gypsy. She actually did report it to him, he just hadn't read the email yet. It's really dumb that he cared more about what her dad thought than what she thought, he hadn't even read her email yet. Sora Mullen keeps saying, "my heart is still fluttering from that conversation with President Lundberg." But, we didn't have anything to worry about anyway; we haven't done anything wrong.
When we were street-boarding this week there was one guy who walked past and one of the elders tried to talk to him but he was really orthodox. Later he went walking past again with an orthodox priest and the elders were talking to some kids, they didn't stop to say anything but as they passed the guy said, "leave the children alone!" I think 'the children' didn't appreciate it very much. It was just funny for us. We have been finding a lot more college-age kids to talk to because we have been doing street-boarding near the university, and we got permission from the city to do it a few days every week for this month. It was kind of lame because I had worked everything out last transfer at the city building and then the new district leader came in and without even asking me what I had already done went and asked permission for us to do it in some locations that aren't that great and on random days. He also made the newspaper ads for English classes without regarding the advice I gave him, so he got ripped off and also put an ad in one of the papers that nobody even reads. It would have been a lot better if he had just asked me, and listened to me.
But, things are going pretty good. We have some nice people that could progress soon.
Love,
Sora Jay
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