Staying in Timi!

Hello all,

Transfer boards came out on Saturday, and I'm staying here in Timisoara while Elders Montoya and Ormsby are ditching. The Elders replacing them are Speyer, who I haven't met yet, and Middlebrook who is from Australia.  This last transfer was a lot of fun, and I'm gonna miss Montormsby, but I'm going to have fun this next transfer too.

I'm going to pick up my glasses today, actually. The money you left me should be more than enough still. But... I don't know yet :) I still need to pick them up.

This week was a cool down from the crazy schedule I had last week.

We went to the Poli Timisoara vs. Vasliu match, it was a blast! Poli was beaten into the dirt, though. I was sandwiched between Edina and Damaris, and after Poli is already losing pretty bad I shout out, "Mai am speranta!" and Damaris says "N-am." and Edina says "Nici eu." ("I still have hope!" "I don't." "Neither do I.")  But it was still exciting and now I know all the rules of soccer now . . . there are none.

On Tuesday we had English. Normal. We did a review and had our students do this role-play where they're trying to convince us "storekeepers" to return a scarf. Then we had FHE, two of the girls came and we played a lot of ping pong.

Wednesday we had a lesson with the 10 year old Dalia and her cousin Paula. We taught them English, then talked about Alma 32 and how faith is like a seed. They both read and participated and are the sweetest two girls, I love teaching them.

Later we had a family history class for our members. The Romania/Moldova Mission is starting to get family history going. It's hard because the family record archives are closed off in Romania. The church has been trying to make a deal with them to be able to copy the records, and I think just recently they were able to get some headway into it... I'm not sure of all the details. So now we're starting up family history contacting and we had a class on Wednesday to introduce it to our members about familysearch.net and so forth. It seems like a lot of people here don't see the need to store this information or write it down, but we'll see where this goes with time.

Thursday we had our last district meeting of this transfer. We all had shared something that we learned this transfer... and then we met the elders at Pizza Hut for pizza festival. Well, except for Ormsby and Stinson. Montorby was on an exchange with the ZL's, and we tagged along so it was the six of us eating pizza and talking about talking to animals and whatever. Later we get a text from Ormsby about how mad he was that he missed pizza festival...

Have I ever told you about Pizza Hut in Romania? It's not like it is in America.  No joke, it's like, borderline classy. I know. Pizza Hut. It's like, sit down here's-a-menu-let-me-take-your-order restaurant. And we just had pizza festival where you pay 22 lei and eat as many little pizzas as you want. I can barely eat one... but the elders seemed to enjoy it . . . except for Ormsby lol.

I also taught seminary again. I tried getting the three girls to come along, but they never responded...

Friday we went to one of my favorite members house to visit. Sora Negriu had been a little sick earlier, so we go to say hi and she feeds us this really good green bean soup. We talk a little about family history, and she shared these great stories about her family.

Sora Negriu

When we were on our way back from Sora Negriu's, I get a call from Edina, one of the 3 girls.

"Sora Smith? How are you?"

"I'm fine, how are you?"

"I'm fine."

"So what's up?"

"Sora Smith, I don't think I can come to institute today. I'm really sorry."

"Oh, why's that? Did something happen?"

"I was riding my bicycle home from school when a car hit me really hard."

At this point I'm like, what! And then I could hear the beeping of a hospital monitor in the background. I asked her if she was okay and if we could come see her. She said we couldn't, but that Damaris and Elida were with her. So I said call me as soon as we can come see you.

So now I'm all worried and in panicky mode when like a half an hour later I get another call.

"Sora Smith?"

"Yeah, are you okay? How are you feeling?"

"I think I'm going to come to institute today."

"You really don't have to. If you will do better resting at home, that's what you should be doing."

"Well my dad said I don't need to stay at the hospital and I don't really want to go home so I'm going to come to institute."

So, she came to institute. She explained the whole thing with Damaris and Elida, that she had completely rolled over the car and her bike is completely bent out of shape. She was sore and shaky, and I'm just like, "Do you need to go home??"

It was also Elder Hunt's birthday, so we had cake and made homemade rootbeer to do rootbeer floats. Rootbeer doesn't exist in Romania. It was so nice. Every Romanian that had tried rootbeer hates it and says it tastes like cough syrup. But the three girls loved it!

Making the Rootbeer

Happy Birthday to Elder Hunt

Hurray for Rootbeer Floats in Romania!

Saturday we had our last English class. We just played Boggle the whole time, lol. And then we watched Wreck it Ralph in English with Romanian subtitles with our students.

Then we walked around Timisoara for about 2 hours looking for a court to play soccer in. The one we initially wanted was occupied, so we did a lot of walking until we found one... sort of lol.  Everyone else that we invited bunged out, so we ended up with us missionaries, Damaris and Edina. Yes, the girl who was hit by a car the day before.  And then I played soccer for the first time in my life. It was so much fun. I was goalie at one point and when the ball makes it to me I kick it... backwards into our own goal haha.  At the end Elders Montorby teamed up the two against everyone else. And they beat us. Pretty hard. But I'm not entirely sure they didn't cheat..........

Sunday was normal. The six of us missionaries sang "God Be With You Till We Meet Again". Elder and Sora Hunt are trying to put on a branch choir with virtually every member in the branch. We did a practice, and it actually turned out sounding pretty good. Elder Hunt had me explain some of the music symbols... that was difficult to do in Romanian.

Our District

Aaaaaaand.... that's it.

A couple of days ago I was thumbing through the Bible dictionary when I came across a bunch of information about the compilation and creation of the Bible, like about the council that was held in 90 A.D. about the authoritation of books. And about the apocrypha, which is a collection of books that were considered part of the bible, but taken out because of them not being 100% canon. And in D&C it mentions those books in Apocrypha and how they are mostly correct, but there do exist in them some unauthorized changes made by man that make them not completely canon, and in this way, the argument that the bible was changed and incomplete is valid. Not to mention the religious texts that were not preserved through time. What I'm really coming across with all of this is how necessary it is that we need the Book of Mormon. You can't say that there aren't gaps in the Bible. There are a lot of people, especially here in Romania, that say the Bible is IT and there's no more religious text that can be the word of God. But, given the information that there were other books that were not included only shows that it is not complete.

Anyway, I'm going to go now. I have a goodbye party to attend with everyone who is leaving this transfer.

Love you all,

Nicole