Last week of first transfer!

Greetings from the stray dog capital of the world! Bucharest continues to be Bucharest haha. But it's great! Another companionship in our branch had a baptism last week, of an investigator who has been taught for several months, who had been in some tough circumstances and finally found a way out. Just like with Iancu's baptism, the spirit was there so strong. I love being able to see people take that first step in their eternal progression.

I just want to say something weird about Romania real quick. The rain. It's so weird. It'll be a nice sunny day, hardly any clouds in the sky, then, BAM, cloudburst, no warning, it's raining. In like 5 minutes it goes from sunny to thunderstorm, windy, hail, torrential downpour, wind blowing so fast the rain flies sideways, and then, it just stops. So we'll be coming home from somewhere, and we're like a block away when it's sunny, then the freak random storm happens, and we're drenched by the  time we get home, and by the time we get up the elevator into the apartment, we look out and see no rain anymore. I'm telling you, God has a sense of humor.

Anyway, so on saturday we celebrated the 20 year anniversary of the Romania mission. We had a big party in the Mihai Bravu chapel, and people came from all over to celebrate it. One of our english class students came and brought a friend, lots of investigators came, quite a few less active members came, I saw some really cool people, like some members from Sibiu, I saw one of my MTC teacher's father, and probably coolest of all, one of the original group to serve in Romania. One of the first 6 people to serve here. He helped open this country, before it was even its own mission. It was really weird because he wasn't even 40 I don't think. Our mission is so young. Also, I found out that only around 1,100 missionaries have ever served in Romania! It's really cool to think on just how young this mission actually is, how far it's come, and how much further it can go.

 

Our mission president was looking at some statistics of our mission, and found that if the church continues to grow here at the same rate it is now, in another 20 years, there will be around 2-3 stakes, which would qualify Romania for a Temple!  0_O I can assure you, when Romania gets a temple, I'm gonna flip out. It's so exciting seeing all of the good things the gospel brings, and when they get to have a temple in their own country, I can't even imagine the joy the members here will feel. I'm adjusting, can talk more and more by the day, and I've already lost like 20 pounds. So I'm happy:) I'll talk to you guys again next week!

- Elder Josh DeGraw

P.S. I've attached a picture of a watermelon-o-lantern because Romanian watermelon is fantastic and on an exchange my awesome DL Elder Lybbert decided to carve this bad boy. It was delicious. He didn't last the night (the watermelon).