Warming Up

Another vegetable soup - we make it often but it's really good. We like to soak the vegetables in a little bit of bleach just to be safe.

This lady lives in our apartment complex and asked us if we would take a survey she needed for a college project. She is working on her masters degree in marketing. She hand painted these silk scarfs.

This is Elena, our newest member with her twin granddaughters that live with her. She had injured her leg and asked for a blessing.

Our church is drilling a well behind our building so we can have our own water supply.

Its going to take at least a month to finish the project.  The workers sleep in this trailer behind the church and work all day long.  It's been interesting watching the progress.

Another birthday celebration. Marius our branch mission leader had a birthday and we celebrated after our correlation meeting.  We all chipped in and bought pizza.

They have their own version of the "happy birthday" song in Romanian. We tried to video it but it didn't turn out too good but it gives you an idea.

Spring is Here

We had another transfer and this is our new district. We lost two and gained two. Sister Barrera is brand new from the MTC and Elder Crane is our new district leader.

We traveled to a small town about an hour away called Sf. Gheorge to visit a new member who had joined the church in England. She was so happy to see members of the church. Her eyes sparkled and she is so excited about the gospel. It will be difficult for her to come to Brasov to attend church because of the distance.  We will try to visit her as often as we can.

We have passed this piece of art several times in our travels thru Onesti and finally stopped to take a picture of it.  It is made out of welded steel forming two trees but the branches create a face.  Elder Powell loves it.

This is a sculpture of a lady kneeling before the Mother Mary which is typical of the predominant religion here.  They seem to focus more on the Mother Mary than they do on the Savior.

March 1st is the Romanian holiday called Martisor. It is a celebration of the coming of spring and new life. One of our members explained the tradition to us. It is for both men and women to pin a red and white string on their clothing over their heart and wear it through the month of March. At the end of March, they tie the string around a branch of a fruit tree. The belief is that you will then enjoy good health through the coming year.

We had 10 missionaries in our city this week. Occasionally the zone leaders and training sisters will come and do "splits" with the missionaries.

We had a birthday breakfast celebration for Elder Speyer Saturday morning.  It's always fun to have the missionaries in our apartment.

We gave him a card and Elder Brown made a birthday cake.

March 8th is International Women's Day which they celebrate here. The branch had an activity Saturday afternoon where the men cooked food and planned a program for the women. They taught us some Romanian traditional dances and all the women received a spring flower.

Our parking garage is always fun. Some days it is impossible to get out because someone has parked in front of you. We really miss our two car garage at home.

Another great day at Feldioara! The Sunday meeting was filled beyond capacity.  There were 51 attending and there are 36 chairs so several had to stand. What a wonderful problem to have! We are looking for a larger building to meet in. More than half were non-members.

Sister Ralls is trying to learn how to lead the music and she is doing a great job. Missionaries get lots of opportunities to learn new skills and develop their talents.

Humanitarian Visitors

This week the Humanitarian Directors for Europe, Elder and Sister Stay, came to Brasov along with our Romanian Humanitarian couple, Elder and Sister Dodge to review some humanitarian projects.  On Friday, we took them to see the Peles Castle, they really enjoyed it.

Elder and Sister Stay work out of Germany and Elder and Sister Dodge are in Bucharest. We had a very nice time with them.

One of the projects they reviewed was a request we made to help this family build pig pens so that they can breed pigs.  There are 5 families (21 people) living in this home and they all work together trying to survive.  They are recent converts to the church and we have grown to love them.

On Tuesday, we had a group activity in Feldioara.  Our new Elders were good sports and took over the music.  They did a great job!

Brother Levi, our group leader, had prepared a lesson and an activity.  They had a lot of fun.

This is our family home evening group.  There were two investigators who came.

In Brasov, our Branch President has been working on a missionary activity for the branch.  He is very excited about it. We had a branch fast and prayer at a special meeting to kick-off the activity.  It is so encouraging to see the members getting excited about missionary work.

We had to move parking spaces at our apartment.  Our new space is much smaller and we have to back the car in to fit.  Sister Powell has to get out of the car and push the mirror in before we can back up.  It's rather tricky but we are grateful that we have a parking place and a small car.

Our utilities have been fine up to now......but last week, the city had to do work on the water main.  We had brown water for 5 days but it has cleared up again.  Thank goodness for Diet Coke.  At least we had something to drink.

At our last district meeting, the missionaries had an activity where they wrote down something they admired about each other.  They read them out loud and it was good to see them being so positive and having fun together.  The missionary work is so hard here and it is easy to get discouraged.  We have wonderful missionaries in Brasov.

5th Wedding Anniversary

Today we had a very pleasant surprise.  When we arrived at district meeting, the missionaries took us to one of the small classrooms where they had prepared a special anniversary dinner for us.  They had to cook everything in their apartments and then bring it to the church on the city busses.

They had decorated the room with Christmas lights, white tablecloth and a candle.  Elder Houk was our waiter.  He had a paper towel across his arm - very professional!  He told us this was a private restaurant and that we could choose either alfredo sauce with spaghetti or spaghetti with alfredo sauce.  They also made garlic bread and had juice to drink.

The food was delicious.  It is not always easy to cook over here.  They also made chocolate cake for dessert. 

This is our 5th wedding anniversary, we spent our first 2 anniversaries in Mongolia and our last 2 here in Romania.  We were totally surprised and it meant so much to us.  It's hard to be away from home on these special occasions and it was so thoughtful of them to think of us.  We've grown to really love each of these missionaries.

Another Baptism

Elder Covey is our Zone Leader.  He came to Brasov to do splits with the Elders and took some time to visit Raul and Sarah. He served in Brasov with us a few months ago and it was so good to see him.

This week was Sister Rall's half-way mark.  The other missionaries gave her a T-shirt with a cat on it.  She loves cats.

Marius is the branch mission leader.  He served a mission in England and has now been home one year.  He is so excited about missionary work and we are so blessed to have him in our branch.  We meet with him once a week for missionary correlation meeting.

These four missionaries had not been to see the Bran castle so we took them out on p-day.  They had a lot of fun even though it was cold and snowy.  Later, we had pizza together.

 

On Monday, we had family home evening with the Feldioara group.  Levi is the group leader and is doing a great job.  He works so hard and cares so much about these people.  We took vegetable soup and bread.

Levi taught the lesson and then we played group games.  We had 6 investigators and 5 members attend.  It was a great success. Some of the investigators came to church on Sunday.

This is Elena from Feldioara.  Sister Bray and Sister Ralls have been teaching her the lessons and she was baptized Saturday.  She is a grandma and her two granddaughters (twins) live with her while her daughter works in Italy.

Levi performed the baptism and Sister Pavel, a member from Rotbav, has been fellowshipping her.  It makes such a difference when the members are part of the conversion process.

We had a nice baptismal service and it was well attended by the members and missionaries. After the baptism, Elena bore her testimony and we had some refreshments in the foyer.

The missionaries stayed and helped clean the building for Sunday meetings. 

With all the snow, there has been so much dirt in the building.  We have great missionaries in Brasov.

On Sunday, we had the largest attendance ever in the Feldioara sacrament meeting!  There were 32 people and 9 were investigators.  There is a lot of excitement about missionary work.  Things are happening!

Big Snow Storm

Most of the vegetables over here are really good. We make a lot of vegetable soup and it tastes great.

We had the largest snow storm of the season. Over a three day period we had about 18 inches on the ground. It made for some interesting driving and we found ourselves somewhat snowbound for a few days.

Snow removal is not a high priority. The main roads get plowed eventually but they don't seem to have a lot of snow removal equipment. We noticed the city workers using a "claw" to try and remove some of the piles of snow. It didn't work so well - very little snow actually made it into the dump truck. The "claw" works great to pick up scrap metal -- not so good for snow removal.

We have noticed this fellow walking in different places all over the Brasov valley. We have never talked to him but he is always dressed completely in black - we call him Elvis.

The sidewalks don't get shoveled. A lot of the parents pull their little toddlers on sleds since it is so hard for them to walk in the snow.

Our district teaches English classes on Tuesdays and Saturdays. We have had 15-25 people attending this session. Elders Speyer and Houk are teaching the beginners class.

Sisters Ralls and Bray are teaching the advanced class.

Elders McBride and Brown are teaching the medium class.

At the end of the classes we all meet together and have 5-10 minute spiritual thought. It has been an effective finding tool. Some investigators want a 30-30 private lesson - which is 30 minutes of English followed by 30 minutes of a gospel lesson.