An Entire Week in Constanta

We have finally been able to spend an entire week in Constanta.

On Wednesday, we had the Branch President, his wife Mariana and their little girl Eva to dinner on Wednesday. Eva is 2 years old and made us miss our grandchildren. Eva loves to give kisses.

We are so excited to be in the Constanta branch. They are having about 50 people attend the meetings each Sunday and are working hard to try to increase the branch so they can qualify to have a chapel built in Constanta.

The Branch President asked us to work with the Single Adults in the branch. There are only five or six right now. We hope to have a home evening each week with them and help them prepare to attend the temple in August. Our mission is in the Kiev temple district so it takes a lot of effort and sacrifice for the members to make the trip.

We have 20 branches and 3 districts in our mission. Most of the cities where the church is organized only have one branch, Bucharest has 2 branches. These are real pioneers trying to establish the church and we are excited to be a part of it.

We are really enjoying our apartment on the edge of the Black Sea.


When we do our studies we can look out the window at the Sea and if we open the windows we can hear the waves as they come in.






Our apartment has three small balconies that overlook the Sea.


They say that the summers are really hot here so we are hoping we can open the windows and have a breeze in the evenings.







It's Spring here and the trees are starting to blossom.











There are flower gardens every where we go and many of them use plastic bottles to try and protect the plants from the frost. It still gets quite cold at night here, although we have had some warm days.








We do a lot of walking - we walk everywhere. Our legs and feet really hurt, hope we get used to it. The sidewalks seem to be used more for parking than walking.








One of the problems with walking are the packs of stray dogs all over the city. They are usually in groups of 4 or 5 and are normally not aggressive. However, yesterday a large dog came up behind us growling and tried to bite us. One of us did some screaming and the other one did some yelling and kicking. It took a while to get our heart beats back to normal. No one was bitten.

Today we found a walking stick that we are going to carry with us. It probably won't make any difference but at least we can go down swinging.

There have been several of the young missionaries that have been bitten. Rabies are a big concern here in Romania. It is a mission rule that if you are bitten by a stay dog you automatically get to have the series of rabies shots. Sounds fun!!


On P-Day we went to lunch with our missionaries.  

Elder Ward is the district leader and is from Boston, Elder Cobabe is from California, Elder Stinson is from Arizona, Elder Eli is from Utah County but returning to the U.S. this week because he dislocated his shoulder twice and needs surgery. Sister Modzelewska is from Poland and is a new convert herself. Sister Caruso is from South Carolina and has a bachelors degrees in Elementary Ed.

They are a great bunch of missionaries and we have already learned to love them. They have done so much and have been so willing to help us in many ways. The Sisters were so excited today, they found a new investigator.

Sister Powell made banana cake and it was sooo good. Although we had to use lard instead of shortening and when we opened the walnuts we found that the cracked shells were mixed in with the nuts. 

It took us 3 days of looking, but we finally found an oven thermometer we can hang in the oven. We have a gas oven.  It really makes a difference when you know how hot the oven is. Our first attempt at cooking a roast in a dutch oven we found was not so successful. We thought we had the oven turned down low and expected it to take 2-3 hours. It was done, dried out and starting to burn in 30 minutes. So glad to have the thermometer.

We found an old friend - Paprika flavored potato chips. They were popular in Mongolia and we also found them in Korea and Hong Kong.

They are really good - maybe they will catch-on back home some day.

President Hill is an avid birder and told us about some of the interesting birds over here. This is called a Pied Crow and they are everywhere.

They also have storks that nest in the tops of buildings and trees - we haven't seen any yet but you can see their nests. The town loves them and it is considered lucky to have them nesting in your town.



We found out today that we are scheduled to apply for our visa (residency permit) next Wednesday in Bucharest. We will need to catch the 5:15am train here in Constanta and off to Bucharest again.  We are starting to feel settled in and things don't seem so stressful. We are grateful to be missionaries in Romania.