Either We're Getting Old or Craiova is Getting Really Young

So we just found out transfer boards! I'm super excited for next transfer!

I'm staying here with Elder M! We were both in the same group in the MTC and he's a really cool guy! We're also getting sisters here, and the senior companion of them is Sora R, who was also in our MTC group!!! We were a really big, really close MTC group and so I am really excited to serve with all of these people. Haha but this also means that we're the oldest in the district... Four people our mission age, including my new companion, are now going to be DLs, and one is training! There's only one person our age who is with someone older! Haha it's so weird! We're going to work hard and have a lot of fun this next transfer.

So, other than that, things are going about the same here. One of our great investigators just moved to Bucuresti, and our other ones are kind of moving along slowly, but we've had a good week!

Elder Hi has already left for Buc with Elder Ha, they have to go up early when they're going home, so I'm already with Elder M and we're having a great old time!

We've been cleaning out my old apartment, which feels like it hasn't been cleaned since they opened it like 6 years ago, for the sisters to live in.

Right now we're sitting in an internet cafe that smells like smoke, and we're going to go out grocery shopping, after which we will finish cleaning the apartment for a while. And that will probably be our Pday haha. But I'm loving this transfer already, and I'm so looking forward to it!

Also HAPPY BIRTHDAY NANA!!!!! And HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Haha for thanksgiving out here we basically get to have a longer meal, and watch a disney movie. YAY! Haha I'll be spending all of the holiday season with Elder M and the new sisters, and It's going to be great. But it will be so weird not being at home! I've lived away before but I've always celebrated the holidays at home. I'm sure I'm going to miss the family even more this season. We have such a great family!

You all are so blessed that you get to spend this time with family. Family is one of the few things we get to keep after this life, so it's so important to love each other. I wish so much that I could be there for Thanksgiving, and all the other holidays, but I know that this is where I'm meant to be.

But I will get to skype home in a few weeks! I don't really know all the details on how that'll work, but I'll let you know!

Well that's about all for now! Love you all and have a great week!

-Elder DeGraw

We had more Romanians than Americans at church this week!

Hey people that read this!! This week has been pretty good!

We've been doing a lot of contacting as usual, and we've had some really good lessons! And it was amazing at church last week! We actually had more Romanians than Americans! We had the district president (basically the stake president for the branches here) from Bucuresti, as well as our two active members, and three investigators eventually were at church!

The district president is so cool. He has so much faith, and isn't afraid of telling people how it is. Haha the other elders had an investigator there, who knows the bible really well, and has been being pretty stubborn and disagreeable, and the district president was just talking to him and answering many of his problems and just resolving a lot of his concerns. It was... beautiful.

Haha sidenote about the culture here. So you know how in America, if someone's talking, and someone else starts talking louder, eventually someone will give up and let the other one talk. Yeah they don't do that here. Meaning they don't give up. So it seems really rude to us, but they just cut each other off and it's not considered rude! And so they do that in lessons too, so a lot of our lessons are just the investigator talking our ears off.

But so they were talking like that and just the district president was being nice but still saying his point and getting it across, and so the guy actually understood a lot of the stuff that he was just being really standoffish about! So that was really cool.

Then after church, we went with the branch president to meet with a less active to see if she was there, if she still believed in the church, and stuff like that. So we get out there, and after a little bit of confusion, we found her. And it was so bittersweet.

We asked her if she still believed that the church was true, and she responded immediately with an "Of course, I know it's true!" She just has so much faith. Her husband is the problem; he's a drunkard, is mean, won't let her leave for church or pretty much anything, so that's why she hasn't been to church in so long.

But she's planning on leaving him and going to Bucuresti in the spring. We left her with a prayer and she said that she felt the prayer go straight into her heart. She's such a wonderful lady. There are many more situations like this out here, but I just had that experience yesterday.

 

Our lessons have been pretty great, we've been getting more bold with our commitments, with one of our investigators who's been kind of weefy about praying about baptism, but who knows and has told us that he knows that the church is true. 

 

We also had what was going to be a drop lesson with a guy and it turned into a lesson about each of our respective intentions, and I found myself having to be bold and stop him from cutting us off all the time, and just him talking all the time.  So we might meet with him again at some point but for now we'll just invite him to the activities and stuff.

 

But yeah everything is going great! This is Elder H's last week in the mission, and I'm going to do my best to make it one of his hardest working! We're going to get so much done! 

 

I love all of you so much! Remember to love each other like Jesus asked you, and to remember that we all have stuff we need to work on, so to open up, forgive each other so that you can be forgiven, and let God mold you into who you need to be!

Have a great week!

Love, Elder DeGraw

 

Big Teddy Bears

 

Pretty normal week

This last week has been pretty normal. A lot of walking around, we had a few lessons, and we got a new investigator! His name is Marius and he's really awesome. He was at english class, in the advanced class that we teach, although he is a beginner with a problem in his ear from a fever as a child. But he came up afterwords and talked to me thanking me for being nice to him in the lesson and stuff, and he said some other stuff about the church he liked, and so I set up a lesson and it was awesome! 

It was supposed to be a half and half of English and the gospel, but we ended up just talking about the gospel and the church! He had some questions, but most of what he said was in complete agreement with the church! Even down to the belief that you shouldn't drink coffee! 

Haha obviously there's still a lot to cover, but he seems very promising! Then yesterday we had a lesson with a guy named Alexandru who is also VERY in agreement with what we believe, his only problem is that he's living with his girlfriend, and that he works a lot so it's hard to come to church. 

And we also had an investigator at church this week! We were so happy! And this last week was great for the mission, there were 3 baptisms in Bacau last week! The mission is so happy!

So that's about it! Love you everybody!

Stay sweet!

-Elder DeGraw

This one will probably be short!

So hey! We came up to play paintball in Pitesti today and it's like a 2 hour train ride so this email will be a lot shorter than most because of that.

But this week has been pretty bland, with the exception that we got 54 people at our first English class!!!! For comparison, that's probably more than all of the students I had in my first three transfers combined! So it was super cool. We only had one of them come to church though. And oh my gosh, he must have felt so uncomfortable. Because it was us two missionaries at the sacrament table, Elder Ha playing the piano and Elder Hi conducting, with President S (the American BP who just found out that he gets to stay another year!) and Fratele (the only actual active member) all up on the stand. And then this potential investigator in the audience. He was the only one for like 20 minutes and then this eternally drunk eternal investigator came. But that was it. It was so weird.

So yeah I'm doing great I just went paintballing again and this time it was in this little village just outside of Pitesti in "Union Jack's Bed & Breakfast and Paintball." It's run by this super cool british couple who just decided to move to Romania on a whim basically because they were sick of britain. They were so cool. It was such a fun P-Day. Other than that, just chilling, still need to buy a coat, but it's been pretty warm lately so it's alright.

The week's just been a lot of contacting and walking around. We actually did get some lessons too but neither of the guys who said that they'd come to church came... Oh and we ran into a guy (for the second time, the same guy) who wanted a Book of Mormon just to burn it. He took it the first time and told us right after he took it that we were going to hell and that he was going to burn it as he had before, because he had taken books from us before. But we ran into him again and he tried to play it off like he didn't remember who we were and that he just wanted the book. Then we called him out on it and he just gave us the most devilish smile and rode off on his bike. So that happened.

Sorry I don't have any pictures right now, well I do but I can't figure out how to upload them on this computer so I'll just do that later. Well times running short so I gotta go!

Love you all!

-Elder DeGraw