Ce a facut, mă?? 1 transfer deja? (What the heck?? First transfer already??!)

Greetings from the cheap bread capital of the world! (seriously we get like super good quality European style bread for the equivalent of about $0.30 US. Anyway.

We just found out transfer results! I'm staying here in sector 1! But Elder R is off to the city of Orhei, Moldova! So I'm going to get a new companion here. His name is Elder E, and he'll be coming straight from America because he had to go get some surgery done. Had he not gone home though, he's still one of the "older" missionaries.

Cool week! Iancu got the priesthood on Sunday, so he'll probably be passing the sacrament next Sunday. He's really excited. The awesome thing about him is that he just loves the gospel so much. His testimony is getting stronger every day. We gave him one of those picture-Book of Mormons, you know where it has the Book of Mormon laid out like a comic strip kind of with pictures and simple captions. He loved it, and he's shared it with his siblings and his parents, who can't read.

Iancu sat in on a little mini "lesson" we had with a member who has some small mental issues. Basically the equivalent of a savant. He's really smart, but has some autistic-type tendencies. Anyway, he's very active, and missionaries will have lessons with him occasionally and he's always interested and loves to learn. In our lesson with him, out of nowhere Iancu just turned into one of us. He was asking him gospel questions, being his same old normal self but also acting really missionary-like. Me and Elder R got him a shirt and tie, and when he was trying it on he grabbed my tag and put it on and he looked just like a missionary. Don't worry I got a picture:).

Oh mom, you'll be so proud of me. I played the piano for the church service last week. Kind of. I used the thing where you just push any key and it plays the song. But still! Oh and yesterday we sang in church, and I had a solo! So that was cool. And later in the day, we went to Sora Gorzo's:) She's a member in the other Bucharest branch who always has missionaries over at her house and feeds them/us. She makes really good food, and we sang some hymns, talked about cool things, it was a blast.

Haha so I got a bit of an ego boost the other day, we were in a contact and a lady told me I spoke better Romanian than my companion! He was just talking really fast, whereas I talk more normal, so that's probably all she meant. But it made me feel cool.  I've made it a transfer, seen the fruits of missionary success, and am excited to see more. I've improved my language ability to the point where, weirdly enough as it is to say, I am basically functionally fluent. Meaning I understand about 90% of what is said, and I can respond pretty well about 75-80% of the time. That should not be possible. The gift of tongues is real, guys. Super excited for next transfer, and more to come, I'm going to do my best to be the best missionary I can be. I love all a y'all, my prayers are with you.


Elder DeGraw

"Elder" Iancu

Orthodox church - either being built or remodeled

Iancu's family

Transfers - Elder S., Me, and Elder R.

Zone Conference

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).

Nearly a month down in Bucharest!

Greetings from the horn-honking capital of the world! The mission continues to be a crazy experience haha but I'm adapting and learning every day.

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

Our beloved Mission President at Zone conference:) This man is so awesome.

This guy just walks up to me and challenges
me to an arm-wrestling match. So yeah.

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.

Botez!!!

So some fantastic news for you all, one of our investigators got baptized!!! His name is Iancu and he's a twelve year old kid. He's got the light of Christ so bright in his eyes.

 

The sister missionaries in our area traded him over to us after he had a baptism date because his family was no longer interested, but he was. So the hardest parts were already done when he came to us. He had already read much of the BoM before meeting with the missionaries, and he already had a desire to be baptized and loves being at the church and with us. He hasn't missed a day of church since he started meeting with the missionaries. One of the senior missionaries baptized him, and he was confirmed on Sunday and was smiling practically the whole time in both meetings.

 

His whole family came to his baptism, including his dad, who has a lot of health problems and had been reluctant to come to church the entire time he was being taught by the missionaries. So that was a big deal. They are gypsy, and pretty poor, but they brought flowers to give to the church, and I think Iancu said they bought him a special shirt or something for the occasion. And while his family seems for now to not be interested in the church themselves, they are very supportive of Iancu and his decision, which is fantastic, and certainly makes it easier for him.

 

Elder Benson (the senior missionary who baptized him) gave him a triple combo, a case, and a small Romanian-English dictionary as kind of a confirmation present. In the investigator/new member class after sacrament meeting, him and his little friend were there and were very attentive (for a 12 and 9 year old in that kind of setting haha). He was writing down the scriptures that the teacher named, and taking notes and stuff. He's such a cool kid.

So yeah that's my most fantastic news of the mission so far:)

At our English classes we met with a guy who told us that he came just for the English lessons, but that he expected us to share stuff about our religion, which we do, and he was okay with it. He said we looked different than everyone out here. He said we're always smiling, that we don't always look angry or depressed like everyone else does. 

 

This past week was great. We were a little stressed prepping for the botez, but it was the best kind of stress, because of what it meant.

Things are going great out here. It's weird to think though that I've been out here already for half as long as I was in the MTC, when this has felt like it's been like two days. Although at the same time it almost feels like I've lived my whole life here. I can already tell that simultaneously forever away and in no time at all I'm going to be getting off the plane home. I'm getting more familiar with things and the routine out here every day! I'm doing great, talk to you next week!

Iancu gets baptized!



Elder Reid, Iancu, Elder Benson, and Elder DeGraw

Week 2 in Romania!

Salut from the land of Romania! I'm still working hard and making progress on both the language and the gospel.

The sisters in our district handed over to me and Elder Reid one of their investigators because they will be tied up with their responsibilities as coordinating sisters for a while. But he's got a baptism date! He's a really cool kid named Iancu. He's such a cool kid. He's 12 years old and exactly like my cousin Chase. We'll have lessons with him and afterwords we'll play around with ping pong or Foosball and just have fun! He's got such a strong desire to follow the lord. He had read the Book of Mormon even before he was originally contacted, read it to his parents, and is super excited to be baptized this week. As I said before, he reminds me so much of my cousin. He loves to play sports, and he loves rough-housing, but he's got such a sweet spirit inside him, and he's one of the kindest people I've met since being here. One time after a lesson, after we had been playing around for a few minutes, he walked in to the church kitchen to get a drink of water, and just started doing dishes! He just loves to help and be a good person, and I'm so excited to see him take the next step in following Jesus.

Yesterday our whole district went to a big park in our area and "chalk-contacted." We drew out the plan of salvation in chalk on the ground, and gave a presentation to people as they walked by. We got a lot of attention! We got the idea to do it in a presentation format from the fact that going on all around us in the park was the International Festival of Living Statues. Or something like that. We stood still on our spots, and someone would bring the people in to look at what was happening, and had them push a button that we drew on the ground. When they pushed the button we all shifted positions really fast and went in to our presentation of the plan of salvation. We got a lot of weird looks, but we also got several really interested people to come talk with us. It was really fun!

I'm adapting slowly but surely to mission life. The barrier of talking to random people on the street is coming down slowly but surely as well. I'm healthy and safe, and working hard! It certainly is the hardest thing I've done in my life up to this point, but it's worth it even now. See you next week!

-Elder DeGraw

 

Festival of the Living Statues
(aka Creative way to share the Plan of Salvation)

 

I'm in Romania!

A new missionary was born this week in Romania! Born in the Bucureşt, Panduri area, Elder DeGraw's "Naşi" (Godfathers) were Elder Hallist and Elder Whitehead. His ""father's" name is Elder Reid. His "mother" is Sora Ewell, and his "sister" is Sora Gerhartz. Although but a newborn, he is adapting to life in Romania rather well.

 

Okay anyway yeah I'm here! Haha, this first week has been a lifetime of experience already! The first night we stayed with a missionary companionship, Elders Hallist and Whitehead, who are awesome. We went out contacting in a park for a few hours, we walked around Bucharest, basically they prepared us for the mission and gave us a great night. Me and Elder Harper stayed with them, and all the other new missionaries spent the night with other Naşi. That first night in Romania was so surreal. I still can't believe I'm all the way across the world. All the signs and stuff are in Romanian (for the most part), people all around us are speaking Romanian, it's insane! What trips me out the most is seeing little kids speaking Romanian. Romanian babies are adorable, and the little toddlers or slightly older kids will be running around yelling Romanian things, haha it freaks me out!
 

 The other day we went out and "chalk-contacted" where we went to a park, drew the plan of salvation on the sidewalk in chalk, and tried to talk to strangers. It was cool! We talked with a really nice lady and her dad and daughter, who would hop on the spots we were talking about to be more interactive. Haha she stopped on the Terrestrial spot and said "I go here right?" then grabbed her like two year old daughter and put her on the Celestial and said "And she goes here!" And she joked around with us for a while and left. It was really cool.
 

Not all the people here are that cool though. We've been mocked several times, usually it's funny but not always. Also there are a lot of homeless people and people begging for money and it makes me so sad. Being here less than a week has helped me realize how good I had it back home. It makes me so much more grateful for what I have and what I had.
 

We've had a couple lessons with investigators, although we usually get bunged (set up for an appointment and they cancel). I'm in the big city of Bucureşti, in the Panduri branch. We are one of the few branches that actually has a dedicated building just for church use. The chapel is beautiful! The building is easily the nicest quality building I've been in up to this point. 

 

Something interesting about Romania, they don't really believe in AC. A lot of the older people believe that it makes you sick. They also don't put ice in their drinks. The real reason for this is because of lack of dental hygiene exposing nerves in the mouth which cause pain. But anyway. It's really hot here. We walk everywhere we go, but if it's further away we'll also take the Metrou or the Tramvai, which are like the subway and trax basically. And yep it's hot and sticky in there too. But all things considered, it's a cool place. It's definitely a downtown area, and is kinda ghetto, but the people for the most part are great! The members are amazing! I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure we have the largest branch in Romania, and there are some amazing members with incredibly strong testimonies here.

 

It's definitely one of the hardest things I could have chosen to do. We walk all day, set up appointments that fall through, and lots of other things. But you know what? I love it. Seeing members in these small branches here with so much faith in the gospel and in the church strengthens my testimony so much. I will adapt to this blessing not very well disguised as a trial. 

 

Although I haven't been here for very long, my testimony has grown so much. I'm going to do my best to bring these people the gospel. It won't always be easy, but it will always be worth it. If I can go out every day and put my smile on and all I do in this mission is set a good example to the people here by showing kindness and friendliness, doing good works and helping people, and don't see a single result of my work in my time here, I can still consider this a successful mission. I'm excited for what this work will bring, for me and for my future investigators. I love and miss all of you. You're all in my prayers. Talk to ya next week!

Dragoste,

Elder DeGraw

My first view of Bucharest

Trainers in Bucharest

My new office

LDS Chapel Plaque

LDS Chapel in Bucharest

Saying farewell to MTC companion

View from my apartment

Elder DeGraw arrives safely in Bucharest, Romania

We received this note from the Mission Office in Romania

********************************

"Dear Brother and Sister DeGraw,

President H and I were thrilled to meet Elder DeGraw as he arrived in the Bucuresti airport with his MTC group.  He seemed very happy to finally be in the mission field after his weeks in the MTC.  He was surprisingly awake after his long flights...

(They spent the first night in the MIssion Home)

The next day, we went in the pouring rain to Cismigiu Park where, in 1990, Elder Russel M. Nelson dedicated the land of Romania for teaching the gospel.  We took refuge in a little gazebo, where we sang hymns and snapped a picture of the group.  I'm attaching the picture for you to see.

Then, all the incoming missionaries came to lunch at the mission home, after which they worked hard to stay awake through our orientation meeting and then met their first companions.  ElderDeGraw is now with his initial companion, Elder R, in Bucharest, the capital city."

Elder DeGraw and his MTC district visit Cismigiu Park with Pres and Sister H