It's been an absolutely exhausting week,
but I'm doing great now. We went down to Bucuresti this week for MLC!
It was great to hear from President Ivory again. MLC wasn't nearly as
long this time, but we still got some good discussion, ideas, and
motivation. President Ivory thinks we can double our progressing
investigators by the end of the month, and we are going to give it
everything we've got.
It still took out a lot of time to go to MLC though.
Trains to Sibiu only leave a couple times a day, and they are 6 hours,
so we had to leave Wednesday after lunch and got back in on Friday
afternoon. And I had a bad headache by the time we got back.
Our new district is great though. This transfer is
going to be hilarious. Elder C is just really nice, never complains
about anything, and had some great ideas for district contacting. We
should be pretty productive this transfer. And Sora O is just
funny all the time. Also, E really likes the missionaries in this
district, so he is in a very excited mood. He has been calling us a lot
lately. He is basically one of the missionaries, since he spends so much
time around us and knows more mission culture than any missionary here.
Sunday was a good day, and we kept really busy.
Church went great, we were back up to a grand total of 17. Hopefully we
can maintain then grow that number from now on. But since Elder D is
gone, I am the new branch pianist. I have a few hymns I can play just
fine, but for the rest, I will be using the hymns made easy book we
have. I may have to practice hymns more often in spare moments.
Then, on Sunday afternoon, we went with President
C to the mental hospital to visit a couple members. That was an
interesting experience. We went to the actual psychiatric unit where one member is
being held until he can get cleared. There were a couple small windows
in the doors, and it was weird because when we rang at the door a bunch
of patients came and crowded around the door, asking us who we were
looking for. One of the staff then showed up and we got let in. We found the member we were there to visit in the lunch room. We had a nice talk with him, but one of his
friends from the hospital was there too and started talking to me after a
while. The conversation was all normal at first, he was talking about
how he used to work in Germany, and about how he has a garden here and
modeled some things after stuff he saw in Germany. Then he started
talking about ants that aren't actually ants that started swarming up
his legs when he was in his garden, but that he couldn't feel them. He
insisted rather vehemently that he hadn't been hallucinating.
We also had a lesson with an investigator that night. It went
well. He has read up to the book of Omni now, but he still approaches
it all very intellectually and points out all the translation
errors in the Romanian Book of Mormon. We need a new edition. But we are
taking a new direction with him, and told him that even if he doesn't
feel like a spiritual kind of guy, just to try acting like one for a
while and to see what happens. We started by committing him to pray
every day for a week. For an atheist, this isn't easy, but he is willing
to give it a try. He already had an experience with prayer, so I know
that good things will happen if he keeps this commitment.
Thanks for reading all this! I've been having some really memorable experiences, and this mission is amazing!
Elder Lybbert
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