Jay Family Missionaries

Buna familia,

How's it going?  We have had some problems in the branch recently.  There are a couple of members that hate the Relief Society president, but I think she's cool.  We worked with her on doing visiting teaching and the only problem is that she wants to do all of the visiting teaching herself to make sure that it gets done.  We are still working on it.  She got really frustrated on Sunday though when hardly anyone came to Relief Society, and then when she was walking home she saw one of the members that hates her on the street and they had a discussion and the member said that she's going to stay inactive and wouldn't accept Sora Miron's apology.  Sora Miron said she wants to leave the country now.  (I think she is doubly stressed out because her sewing business isn't going well because nobody has money to get things fixed so she has hardly any food to eat and she doesn't have enough money to buy bus tickets so she walked four and a half hours to get to church.)  She wants to go work in a different country for a while so that she can earn money to live, and escape from her calling.  The problems come from everyone seeing themself as the victim of little situations that don't even matter.  If somebody would just be the mature one and let things go, or apologize without being lame and condescending about it, things would be fine.

When we were contacting in the park this week we met an American.  We started talking to him in Romanian and he had just a small accent (a kind of accent that somebody can get just from speaking in English a lot like some of the member girls here) and then he started to get a big grin on his face.  Then he said with a perfect American accent, "You can talk in English if it's easier."  He is here with the peace corp.  There is a girl in the Mihai Bravu ward in Bucharest that is with the peace corp too and he knows her.  He seemed really nice and open, but he lives in a small village outside the city so we can't meet with him.  It's cool to see that there are some people (outside of our church) who do things like go and help out in a foreign country for a couple of years.  They'll get blessings.

Some lady got really mad at us for saying "Buna ziua" to her on the street in front of the church.  She started yelling things at us and it made my companion really sad.  I lived in Iasi before this so it didn't phase me, but she went and sat in the church for a while to recover.  The elders were there, so I stayed outside and talked to more people... I guess she was in sight but not within sound when the doors were closed.  Probably shouldn't do that, but I just didn't know how to help her.  The next day in church the lesson in Relief Society was about missionary work and we read the verses where it talks about being honored to suffer and be persecuted for Christ's sake.  I pointed it out to my companion.  I think she has been having a rough week though.  We have lost pretty much all of our investigators to one cause or another.  I have been having a good week though.  I just feel good, even though everything doesn't go as planned.

The elders gave me a blessing last transfer and in it they told me remember that God is very aware of everything that is going on in my life, and it has helped me, and my entire mission has helped me, to trust that God knows what he's doing.  I was thinking about how easy it would be for him to put the people in our path that are prepared and will progress; I know that they are here, it's just they aren't put in our path.  We haven't been doing anything wrong either.  I think it's just the plan.  Maybe because the branch isn't ready or something, but it's just interesting to think about.  It doesn't make me discouraged though, it'll all turn out the way it's supposed to.

I started getting a little bit depressed last transfer that I would be at home and have a normal boring life, so I decided to put some pictures of you guys on my new planner to remind me how good it will be.  I try not to think a lot about being home because I still want to focus on missionary work, but I think of about one thing every day that will be awesome.  My favorite picture on the planner is a picture of a bunch of blond-haired, blue-eyed nieces and nephews standing in front of a castle in Disneyland.  It's just super different from anything here.  People love to look at it.

Today we went for P-day to a place called "Adventure Park" where we went on all sorts of ropes courses up in the trees in the forest.  It was fun, and I think it's kind of like a playground for adults.  There were a lot of little kids there too for summer camps and we had to wait forever for them sometimes.  Some of them were from different countries, and didn't speak English or Romanian.  If I knew English and German I probably could have been able to communicate with anyone.  I made it fine through all the courses until the end of the hardest course where you had to pull yourself up a zipline.  My arms gave out with about fifteen feet to go and I slid back to the start.  I had to back track a bit and find an exit because I couldn't make it.  The elders were behind me and neither of them even tried.  Afterward I told one of the supervisors below that you have to have strong arms to make it and he said "it depends" and then walked away.  I think there was some trick to it that he didn't tell me even though he could see me struggling to pull myself to the end.  My companion didn't want to do it so she took pictures of us instead, so I should have some pretty good ones.

That's it for now.  I actually didn't have as much time as usual, but I think I wrote more than usual.

Love,
Sora Jay