Busy Week

Hey everyone!

We sure had a busy week! Exchanges, English, branch choir, service, lessons, and a zone conference 6 hours away! It has been exhausting.

The zone conference was really fun. I got to see Elder C, and Elder M (the honourary member of our MTC group who flew over with us). We learned about our new mission president for next year, had a competitve tie/scarf exchange (I got a pretty good tie out of it), watched the mission slideshow for the year, and had a lot of fun. And there were a couple cool gifts for each of us. There is a new mission cookbook that we all have now, and we all got a can of real A&W root beer! I didn't expect to taste that for a couple years! The trip to Arad took a lot of our time, but it was a good day. The train ride there on Thursday was kind of rough since I was feeling sick, but the train back was a little nicer. And, we were with the Oradea district for half of that ride, so we got to get to know them and I yoyoed for the first time on a moving train.

And for mail, I just got a dearelder from G&G K, and a letter from G&G L. If any more mail makes it to the office, maybe the zone leaders will bring it to us when they come for exchanges. Or if not, then on transfers in the new year.

Going back to last week, here is an experience that I didn't have time to mention. On Sunday evening, we had a couple hours of time set aside for Christmas message bloc-knocking, but we didn't want to go too far from home. We tried a bloc down the street first, but we could tell by how people reacted that missionaries had been there before, probably several times. Of course all the convenient places would have been tried already. So we kept walking, trying to decide on where would be best to go. It was dark and cold, and nothing was looking promising, and we just felt lost. Eventually, we stopped and my companion offered a prayer for guidance, and we continued walking. I didn't feel any promptings to go anywhere specific, but I felt comforted and reassured. We ended up walking for a while, but finally settled on some buildings to try. We didn't have any success in those, and our time was up, so we hopped on a bus and headed home. Luckily, we didn't turn off missionary mode quite yet, since we did end up finding a potential investigator, after we got off the bus and were almost home! We didn't find someone in the way we expected, but the Lord really did put a prepared person in our path. God doesn't work in the way we expect, a lot of the time, but he knows more than we do.

Our English class is going really well too. In fact, Saturday we had my favourite English class I have taught yet! We used a game to practice adjectives, where everyone had an adjective and two students competed to find out which person had a specific word. We also had discussion groups to get the students participating, talking about what they would say if a genie gave them three wishes. It was lots of fun! I like teaching the medium class.

We also have a progressing investigator now! We had a second lesson with him, and he has been doing his reading homework. We had a great lesson with the branch president there as well, and I hope our third lesson on Friday goes well.

Our branch choir performed at the church on Saturday, and that was a lot of fun. We sang mostly Christmas songs from the hymnbook, but also a couple traditional Romanian carols, and a translated song from a church musical. (Vino, Domn, Vino, meaning come Lord, come. I don't know if that's what the English name is though.) And, we will be doing a public performance today, downtown!

About the Christmas, Skype, our plan right now is to do it on the 26th, evening for us, morning for you. However, we still have to find an internet cafe to do it in, since the library will be closed over the holidays. So, I'm sorry I don't have any specifics yet. I'll have it all figured out by the 23rd though.

For Christmas food, a must would be Sarmale, but that might be what you are talking about with cabbage rolls. It's a staple holiday food here. I haven't had a chance to try any of those other foods, but Romanians do drink sparkling water. It's interesting.

Another Romanian food I recommend is Mamaliga, though I don't eat it how Romanians do. I just make it for breakfast with some bananas and sugar and milk thrown in. It's like cream of wheat but with cornmeal. Pretty simple. I've also had some really good salata de vinete (eggplant). To make that, you are supposed to cook the eggplant in an open flame until the outside is black and burnt. I know the end result is very good though.

I don't know too much about other Romanian Christmas traditions, but if someone invites us over, we might get to learn. That would be a lot of fun.

Thanks for all the love. I love you back! Craciun Fericit!

Elder Lybbert