Easter in Romania

Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday of May in Romania. It is a major holiday and everyone celebrates. The stores close and the city shuts down for a few days. Families get together and have a meal - like Thanksgiving Dinner. We were invited to come to the Vitel's home and had a nice visit with them. The foods were traditional Romanian dishes and were very good. Beef, lamb, chicken, liver, cabbage, green salad, potato salad and a variety of deserts. It was very interesting and we had a wonderful time.


They live on the 10th floor of an apartment building next to the Black Sea and have access to the roof. This is a picture from their roof. We could see the entire city of Constanta. They have lived here for more than 20 years.

After dinner they sat around visiting and playing board games. They told us about their family. The father is a retired policeman and they have a son on a mission in Switzerland. The wife is a professional chef. They are the only 4 generation family in Constanta that have been sealed in the temple. They told us a little about how hard life was during communism.




The weather has been so nice for the past week. Highs in the 70's and lows in the 50's at night. There is a park next to the mall and the missionaries do contacting in the park. The park is always full of people enjoying the sun.






The city rents bicycles and pedal go-carts to ride around the park. Occasionally a motorcycle or car drives down the side walk, we're not sure what the rules are about driving your car on the sidewalks through the park.






The park has small game tables that mostly the older men stand at and play some type of backgammon. They get quite excited and there is a lot of arguing but they seem to really enjoy it. There's a wide range of people in the park from old to young.

The branch has a Frisbee football game every Friday in the park that everyone really enjoys. There are  usually several investigators and less-active members that come.







Our Branch President loves to act and has actually had parts in several movies. He is so full of energy and is fun to be around. We caught him doing a bit of a dance after the game.

Last Wednesday was Labor Day here. Our branch had a branch Labor Day potluck BBQ and it was a lot of fun. Once again we had several investigators and less-active members come.









Elder Powell was asked to take care of the grill and cook the meat. People brought different kinds of meats.  Mici is very popular, it's ground beef mixed with ground pork and rolled into a fat sausage.  We also had 6 mackerel fish that had not been cleaned yet. We are so glad that Elder Powell always has a pocket knife...rule #9: Never go anywhere without a knife.



We cleaned them and cooked them with their heads and tails still on. Everyone loved them....we didn't have any.

There is a lot of seafood around but we are told not to eat the local fish caught in the Black Sea because of the contamination in the water.

Mici meat is so popular that McDonalds is having a "McMici" festival this week. Check out McDonalds this week and see what you think of McMici !! 

We kept joking that if Mongolia had a McDonalds they would probably serve McMutton sandwiches.

President Alin took us to a large farmers market this week. They have so many good fruits and vegetables over here.

We went home and Sister Powell made a "Fruit Pizza" that was so good.






The roads need a lot of repair after the winter.

We found these cool  "Caution - Pot Hole" markers around our neighborhood.

They seem to work great.

Once again we noticed the use of hair to seal the threads on the steel plumbing pipes. We saw this all over Mongolia and didn't realize that it was so common. Apparently it works well.

Some of the plumbing pipes in our apartment are PVC and are glued together.



We miss our family but are having a great experience in Romania.