I finally had one of those moments where you mess up a word for another word that sounds similar. We were teaching Iancu about reverence and I was trying to tell him how we need to respect the church building because it's sacred. But instead of saying "cladire," which is the Romanian word for building, I said "Clatita," which is like a crepe/pancake type thing. So I testified of how we need to respect this crepe because it's sacred. He laughed for a good 5 minutes afterwards haha. Iancu's doing great by the way. We're trying to integrate him into the ward so he has a stable influence on him there, but it's kind of hard because there is no one really his age. But we're working on it.
And I'm not gonna lie, I think part of the euro style is growing on me. It may be the fact that I've lost probably a little more weight than I gained in the MTC by now, but all my clothes feel baggy. For example, in the MTC, I got up to needing to use the last hole in my belt. Now I can comfortably go to the 5th. Yeah. It's weird. I'm also getting into the skinny tie look. My Naş gave me one on the first night, and we found some little piaţas with ties for like $5 US.
Everything is so cheap here! Like I can buy a whole loaf of bread for 1 leu, which is about 33 cents, and a lot of items will have around the same number price as they would in the states, but with lei, so they're like a third cheaper. It's beautiful.
But yeah the euro style is catching on with me, meaning me wanting to slim my clothes a bit, and also I carry a geanta. It's not a purse. Probably. It's just so convenient! I can carry all of my proselyting stuff in it without getting my back all sweaty!
It's not a purse.
Okay yeah it's basically a man purse.
Stop laughing. It's actually really useful! And it's really common out here for guys to carry their stuff in them. Most of the other missionaries use them too!
Anyway, enough of that. I had my first zone conference! I got to see Elder Montoya again, my MTC companion, and that was kinda weird. I haven't seen most of those guys in like 4 weeks! And it's almost time for a new group of missionaries to join us out here. Me and the other newbies in Buch will probably get to help Naş, too! So that's pretty cool.
On Saturday, because my comp and some other elders in our district were interested in getting some of their bibles, we went to this Jehovah's Witnesses thing. It's because they were told if we went to this thing we could get some Jdub bibles, which my comp has wanted for a while because he heard they were weird. But yeah it was basically just a Jdub general conference. And there were no bibles there. But it was interesting. A guy gave this big talk about the importance of paying attention in meetings so that was nice. I guess. Oh also
I had my first real bible-basher type guy in a contact. We were bringing our new box of Romanian BoMs, when this guy said something to us, so we stopped and chatted him up. After a while, basically everyone in the house right behind us came out and talked to us. The original guy was pretty cool. This lady and other guy who came out later were not. They were just like straight up yelling at us, not in like an angry way, just a Romanian way, telling us how what we were doing was admirable, but we were wrong, and that the fact that it was called "The Book of Mormon" meant it could have absolutely nothing to do with Christ. I tried pointing out the fact that none of them had read it before, and therefore had no idea what it said, and my comp pointed out the fact that the word "Bible" just meant a collection of books, both to no avail.
Sometimes it's really frustrating that it's called The Book of Mormon just because so many people can't get over that fact, and also the fact that Mormon actually has very few actual words in it.
But yeah. I understood pretty much that whole conversation, and we placed 2 books, so I count it as a success!
On Sunday our DL wanted me to give him a singing lesson, so we had a little lesson. He was already really good though, and I've only worked with beginners, so there wasn't much I knew how to do besides teaching him the basics, so that's what I did. It was fun.
Also, we went out chalking again, and this time was probably our most successful time so far, at least for me. We had a lot of interested people, got several numbers, and, most awesome for me, I instigated a conversation with people that led to an in-depth conversation, and I pretty much taught them the first half of the Plan of Salvation. In full Romanian! It was awesome!
There were also these people there who were of some Arabic descent (one was wearing a hajib type thing), though I don't know where they were from, but they talked with us in English. This one girl was really interested, and we talked for quite a while. The best part though was that every time she had an objection, at least that I saw, it was one that we already agreed with, and she just assumed we believed differently.
For example, I mentioned that the Nephites were the other sheep of Christ, when she said "But how do you know they're the only people He visited?" and I referred her to the fact that Christ said He had other other sheep, and that we definitely believe He visited other people. It was really cool. They were all really interested. I gave them some Mormon.org cards and they said they'd check it out.
Well, that's it for this week! I took notes on stuff so I would be able to write more :) Peace out, see you all next week!
-Elder DeGraw
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| Our beloved Mission President at Zone conference:) This man is so awesome. |
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| This guy just walks up to me and challenges me to an arm-wrestling match. So yeah. |
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| So in this huge park in Bucharest, there's just this random shrine to Michael Jackson. People come and put flowers and candles and stuff on it. They like worship him here. It's really weird. |
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