Things actually happened this week!

This last week went really well! Yes we went out and had a contacting activity with Branch Pres. C and one other member came and we went down to a popular area with a table and some supplies and went street-boarding and it was great!

We as a district got a few potentials out of it, and we talked to a lot of people! I love street-boarding and I love that it's so easy to do it in Constanta; you don't need any permission if it's a public place. For some reason, I always just feel like I could keep on going and going for hours with street-boarding. It's more of an official method to contact, so maybe that's why, but I always just feel more open and capable in situations like that. So hopefully we can keep doing that on a regular basis.

I just love the Branch President here so freaking much. It's so great to have a BP that knows what he's doing can I just say that. He's just one of those lifelong friends and someone that I'll remember forever. He's an RM, who served in England where the church functions very well, and he has been a member since the 90's, so he's experienced in the church. He is literally the hope and future of the church in Romania. He is what it looks like. Haha he's just really awesome. He's a perfect example of all of the good things about Romania put into someone without any of the bad things about Romania haha. But anyway it was a really good and well-done activity, and we should be doing it again sometime soon hopefully. 

We're also really excited for our pioneer day activity. We've built it up pretty well, and many members have told us that they will come, we've planned out the program and it's all getting ready, so we've got some high hopes! 

And today for P-Day we went out with some English students and had a barbecue with them, and they showed us this bee farm, or part of it anyway, and had a really great time with them. And then at the end they asked us some questions about the church which we answered, and then it came up naturally to invite them to the pioneer activity and they said that they'd like to come. And then they also brought someone else who is going to start coming to English class. So it was a really cool and fun experience! 

Earlier this week we also had a lesson with a different English student, a 15 year-old who has been coming to classes for a while now, we had a 30/30 with him. He's a really cool kid and he was pretty open to the church. We gave him a Book of Mormon and talked a little bit about the restoration. We plan on following up tomorrow and setting up with him at English to meet up again. So basically things happened this week! We're still rolling along well! Me and Elder D have had a few scuffles lately but I guess that's to be expected after living together for this long. But all things considered still doing pretty well.

 

So yeah! That's about it!

These are bees.

I'm starting a new thing called male-veils. I think it's going to "bee" a hit.

I thought this was pretty cool

 

Love you all!

 

-Elder DeGraw

 

The new mission president is super cool!

First off, I'm so freaking jealous that you guys were all in Lake Powell! That's twice now that I've not been there and you all have been. Lake Powell is seriously like my favorite place on earth. Many of my fondest family memories come from our times there. I'm so happy that I'll get to go next year though! I hope you all treasure those great family times together because one day you'll be in my position where you can't go and you have to see everybody else make memories without you. I can't wait for next year Lake Powell!

So this past week we had our Zone Conference with President I and he's really cool and I'm super happy about the direction he's wanting to take the mission in. He presented a new key indicator which we just call the "Balance/ 555," which is super cool.

Basically, it just means that the idea is to have balance in our focus. As in, if we get an investigator lesson, we should also try to get an active member lesson and a less-active member lesson. If we have 2 in one category, we should try to bring the others up to 2 as well. The 555 thing came from another mission where the idea was to have 5 of each. Here, that's basically impossible. But the idea of balance is what we're focusing on, and that's totally possible.

President I is really trying to get the mission as a whole to focus on people instead of numbers. Before, we kept track of our hours finding and potential investigators received, which are good things to keep track of ideally, but many people took that as to just walk around for hours without really doing anything, or to take down numbers of crazy people or gypsies or just write down apartment numbers of people that weren't even really interested. Basically it just kind of stressed people out a lot and made many people just try to get as many hours outside as possible, which could lead them to neglect the members or other worthwhile activities in favor of getting hours to look good to president.

I liked the idea when President H introduced it, but lately it's just kind of proven to help only mostly superficially. But this new 555 thing really is going to help. Me and Elder D are already planning to do a lot and I'm really excited. This new direction just frees up our time to not have to worry about just contacting all day; instead we're supposed to spend our time having lessons, which historically has either not really happened, or people would meet with crazy people all the time just to put down that they had lessons. But man I just really like this idea.

I'll let you know what happens there!

Romania's great. A while ago a saw a guy using a buzz saw to cut a piece of tile in half. He was wearing flip-flops. His foot was right next to the saw. I just love Romania's IDGAF vibe. I'm pretty sure that's why they also build and insulate all their buildings with styrofoam:

 

Haha but no really things are going pretty well still. I'm just really excited for how the missions going and I really think things are going to start picking up!

 

Love all of you!

 

-Elder DeGraw

 

P.S. There was a Lunar Eclipse that I just happened to see and got a crappy picture of: