The Energy is Building

Hi everyone!

I'm doing really well. All of our investigators seem to have dropped off, but we redoubled our efforts with the members this week and had some great experiences. There is an awesome newlywed couple who have been kind of less active lately that came to church yesterday, and I am excited to keep visiting them and building the friendship. Also, we met with a musician who always works on the weekends, but we had a profound lesson and he opened up to us about how he feels his faith has been fading but that he wants it back. 

We have been using a lot of energy to start getting the word out for the premiere of Meet the Mormons in Romania, on May 30. In Europe, the film was only translated into German, French and Romanian, which is rather unusual for Romanian to get so lucky. It's because we did all the work and just asked for permission to do it.

We are making this a big deal. We have rented a theatre for the premiere, and we have legit tickets that we are giving to those who can commit to come. This is a unique missionary opportunity for the members to bring their friends, and they are getting excited. We will be spending the next couple weeks meeting with members and all of our other friends to give them invitations and to follow-up about how many other people they know who would like tickets.

I also went on an exchange with Elder C this week, over in Mihai Bravu. It was so cool to see him so excited about the work, and though he is just a three-month mini missionary right now, he is almost done his papers for the real thing. He has so much energy. It is incredible, since he was just coming out of inactivity when I was in Sibiu.

We also had a great branch activity on Saturday, but it felt to me like a ward activity. We had a barbecue in the parking lot, and not only were there lots of people, but so many kids! It was awesome. I also got to play some chess, though I got beaten pretty badly. The member who brought the chessboard played me while sitting backwards, not looking at the board. He just told me his moves and I told him the moves I made.  After he checkmated me, he turned around, replayed the game for me, and pointed out how I could have done better. Then I played with the 10 year old son of an investigator who is taking a chess class in school, and he beat me two out of three. It was a great day.

Thanks for reading!

Elder Lybbert

Here is a picture I forgot to send earlier, our giant English poster!