Phone Troubles and Visit to Medieval Fortress

Bună Ziua!

It's a new transfer! And Elder S and the new district are great! But this has been a pretty crazy weekend.

Elder S is just as happy and polite and generous as always, and he always seems to spot little opportunities to serve people, everywhere. It amazes me, honestly. I hope I can pick that up from him this transfer. Being co-senior is just fine so far, since we can both manage in Romanian without a problem. It is giving me more of a chance to speak out and to make decisions, which is really a good thing for me.

Our new district leader is a lot of fun. He is a little quiet, but he's got some tricks up his sleeve, and he is a really fun-loving guy. He had us all do the cinnamon challenge our first district meeting. That's a full spoon of cinnamon in your mouth all at once. It was a terrible experience. Then, when we were chilling with our post-meeting refreshments (sign of a very cool district), he informed us that there was blue dye in the pop, and that we would all pee blue that night. We did.

And now to what has made this first week really stressful for me. Our phone stopped working on Friday! And it has nothing to do with us! Since the other elders lost their phone last transfer, they have been using the phone that the former senior couple in Cluj left. In order to get them their old number back, the office needed to shut down their old SIM card and send them a new one. However, they shut down ours by mistake. And now we won't get a new one until Wednesday at the earliest! So, things have been a lot more difficult. It really stresses me out, since I had really high expectations to start off this transfer with Elder S. I wanted to introduce him to all of the cool investigators we have now, and do a bunch of member visits we have been meaning to do, but now it is a lot more difficult to communicate with anyone! We have had to get creative with the nightly check-up calls from the district leader. They just walk us home now, and will do that until we get a new card.

We did get one lesson, however. One of our English students wanted to do our 30/30 program with us. In that, we spend 30 minutes studying English, and 30 minutes having a gospel lesson. It went really well, and he gladly accepted to read the Book of Mormon and pray! Elder S and I both really get along with him. He is a really great guy, and is really trying hard to learn English for a job interview he has coming up.

The 9 new sisters showed up at the train station only a few minutes before we had to go catch our train, so I got to see most of them though not for long. I can't wait until I get to know them better. Just when I think I know the names and faces of everyone in the mission, a bunch of new ones come in! It's hard to keep up!

Food-wise, I think Elder S and I will settle into a routine of a bunch of different missionary classics; pasta dishes, stir-frys, sandwiches, and the like. We can't cook quite as much on transfer week, so I've had a bunch of covrigi (pretzels) and Shaworma this week. I'll have a healthier diet this coming week. Oranges are still in season, which is great!

And this Sunday, we went to Oradea for district conference! That was a lot of fun. We took a 5:30 AM maxi-taxi with the branch to get there. Oradea is a really nice city, and we got some time to see the city while the leadership meeting was going on. It feels a little more spaced out than Cluj, and there is a really cool old fortess from medieval times. It's really nice. I would be happy to serve there one day. Though at the moment Cluj is still the place to be for me.

 

Another cool thing. At the moment in this mission, the standard title for our name-tags has been Elder, though we could order tags with the Romanian title of Vârstnicul from the office if we wanted to. Now, the decision has been made that Vârstnicul is the proper title, so the MTC will start printing tags like that, and all of us Elders will get a free Vârstnicul tag!

Thanks so much for all the love and support!

Elder Lybbert