Moldova

We took a trip to Moldova this weekend. It took a lot of planning on Google earth and our GPS. While planning, we noticed the border between the 2 countries. It looks like it was drawn by one of our grandchildren - it is actually a small river.









Driving across Romania was beautiful..









The soil is so fertile and there are crops growing everywhere.









There were lots of pretty wild flowers and butterflies.










A lot of their hay is cut by hand and stacked in piles with a pitch fork.









They stack the hay on hay wagons that they drive down the roads.  One of the cars in front of us hit a hay wagon. The horse was okay but the car got smashed. Driving is not easy in Romania. We have to constantly watch for people, animals, cars stopped on the road, wagons and chuck holes.






The storks are nesting in Romania. The people in the cities build platforms on top of telephone poles for the storks to build their nests on. They consider it "good luck" if a stork builds it's nest in their town.

These are the young storks that can't fly yet. They keep flapping their wings practicing. It won't be too long and they'll all be gone. A little crowded right now though.








Of course, we can't pass up a "rest stop".











On our way to Moldova, we stopped in Iasi where we have a small branch. This is the building that the church has rented for them to hold meetings.









Elder Powell had an interview with the branch president, Dorin Pitulan then we took him and all the missionaries serving there to dinner.








The border crossing between Romania and Moldova can take a long time. Some couples have been delayed as much as 4 hours. We made it through in one hour.







After all our planning, we found out that none of the Moldovan roads show up on the GPS so we got lost trying to find our hotel. Most of the roads were in poor repair and the maps we had were inaccurate. We had arranged to have our phones work in Moldova but as soon as we crossed the border, our phones quit working. We were stuck!  Most of the people speak Russian and we found very few who spoke any English. We found a McDonalds that let us use their phone to call the Pinders who came to rescue us.


We ate dinner at the Pinders apartment with the Pinders and the Schwartz, who are senior couples living in Chisinau Moldova. They are such great friends. The Pinders are finishing their mission in a few weeks and we will really miss them. They have been serving as Humanitarian Missionaries.





Elder Powell met with the District President, Valentin Vizitiv
who only speaks Russian. Elder Schwartz translated for the interview. This is the building the church has rented for use as their chapel.







We got up at 5:30am and drove back to Romania to Bacau where we spoke in their sacrament meeting and Elder Powell sustained one of the missionaries, Elder Sneed to be the
new branch president.






This is the Bacau Branch.










We had a discussion about the keyboards in our branch and just couldn't understand what the other person was thinking.









Until we realized that we were talking about different kinds of  keyboards.