Monday, August 29, 2011

The end of the beginning

Another pic from the Branch Barbeque
The Fotea Family
The Branch barbeque

Bro. Fotea
The view from our balcony the morning we woke up and the city was full of smoke.
Castle in Hunedoara, Romania








Buna Ziua everyone!

We just had transfers announced to us today, and guess where I'm going!... Deva! I've been called to serve another transfer here in home sweet home. Elder Benson was the other junior companion in Deva and he was from my MTC district, but he's not staying. He is going to Alexandria. He is one of the only 2 missionaries out of my MTC district of 13 who will be changing cities at this transfer. The other is Elder Rosenvall, who is going to Moldova! Elders Hyatt and Nelson are staying here in Deva as branch president and district leader, and we are getting Elder Samoila as our new missionary. He's a native Romanian and is going to be in his 3rd transfer. In other transfer news, Elder Brayden Martin (who some of you know) is going to Pitești for this next transfer, and will be a trainer!

This week has been a great last week of my first transfer. We had a lesson this last Tuesday with a lady who decided that she wants to quit smoking, and who stopped us in a park a few weeks ago to ask us if we could help her. It was super cool to see someone take the initiative to stop for herself without any prompting or asking by the missionaries at all. It's especially amazing because every single one of her neighbors has at least one of their family members who smokes, and all of her closest friends are smokers as well. She even said she wanted to help some of her other friends stop smoking, which is great! We spent a lot of time with members this week, as we had a branch activity barbeque with members and investigators. It was very fun and great to see the members get together.

I went on a transfer with Elder Benson last Saturday. It was very busy as we had English classes to teach as well as the barbeque. By the time those ended we had about 45 minutes left in our day before we needed to meet up again with the other elders, so we just did street contacting on our way to our meeting place, which was about a half hour walk away. We talked with some cool people and it was really fun. It was a little different because we are both beginner Romanian speakers, so we had no older, experienced companion to rely on when we couldn't say something. It was a great experience.

Today we went to Hunedoara, a city about a 30 minute bus ride from Deva. We went to a castle there which was very beautiful and fun to walk around. We took lots of pictures and I'll include some for all of you to see.

I'm loving Deva and I guess now I get to love it for another 6 weeks! I hope all of you are doing great back home (or at school) and that you're all starting to get settled into the new school year! I hope all of you have a great week and I'll talk to you again next week!

V-am pupat!

-Elder Michael Abbott
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Monday, August 22, 2011

I'm Glad I Loved Toy Trains

Cetate in Lipova
Elder Hyatt and Elder Abbott
I am not sure what the story is here, I will let you know if I find out! Maybe these are Mirela's and the Fotea's children.

The train from Arad

Hello Everyone!

Another week passed in beautiful Deva this week, as well as in several other towns/cities across the western part of Romania! I spent plenty of time this week on trains, going to and from Lipova, Deva, and Arad for 2 full days this week. Monday started off awesome with a day in Lipova at the Cetate there. It's a beautiful castle on top of a hill and we met up with the entire zone for a day there. It was a 3 hour train ride to get there, and then another 3 hour train ride back. However, on the way back our locomotive broke down, and we were pulled off onto a side track to wait for a new one. We waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and then, about 30 minutes into our waiting, a semi-truck on the road by the train tracks flipped! Later Elder Hyatt and I went to go look at it, and it turned out that it was trying to pull off of the road but hit a ditch and rolled. It was super loud and pretty intense. As we waited and waited and waited the train got hotter and hotter and hotter. After a while everyone in our wagon had drunk all of their water. Being 4 strong 19 year old boys among a train full of ladies in their 60's to 120's, Elder Hyatt, Elder Nelson, Elder Benson and I volunteered to get everyone water from the well nearby. We got out, started filling up water bottles, and heard a train coming. We turned around, and saw our new locomotive driving down the tracks... So we ran. We got back to the tracks to find our train being pulled back to the rail switch, so we just waited at the train station. Luckily when the train came back it picked us up, so we made it back to Deva safely, but about an hour and 45 minutes later than we had planned. I also spent Saturday on trains and cars and the city of Arad this week, as Elder Hyatt and I went there for a District Training meeting (because he's the Branch President in Deva). It was fun and I loved Arad. We drove to Arad with the Zone Leaders who were just finishing splits that morning and driving back to Arad, and then we came back on a train (which didn't break down). With how much time I spent on trains this week, I'm really glad I loved toy trains. :)

Our investigators here are doing great! We have 2 investigators right now who are making huge leaping steps, which is awesome. One of them, whose name is Cornel, has been an investigator for a long time but has never made much progress. However, in this last week he committed to the Word of Wisdom, told us he wants to join our church instead of the Jehovah's Witnesses (he's been investigating both this whole time), and came to church with us for the first time, then stayed for the entire 3 hours and made friends with all of the members. To make everything even better, it turns out that one of our other recent converts, Anton Stoica, knew him before and that they hadn't seen each other in a while but were really excited to meet up again. Our other awesome investigator is Mirela, the lady who we met on the streets a few weeks ago. She's been reading a lot out of the Book of Mormon and has been asking tons of questions and yesterday she gave us her first real commitment to pray about the Book of Mormon (before she's just said she'll try). She met us and the Fotea Family yesterday at a playground for our lesson and it went great, and she really likes the Fotea family, and it seems like they really like her. It's great because she has a 6 year old daughter, as do the Fotea's, so the kids got to go play and make friends during our lesson.

I'm loving Romania! Next week we find out about what will be happening at transfers, so I'll let you know if I'm staying here in Deva or moving somewhere else next week! None of us have a clue what'll happen except for Elder Hyatt, who due to his Branch President status is guaranteed to stay here for another 2 transfers at least. I hope everyone's doing great back home! Have a great first week of school all of you (I'm sure some of you have already started) and keep being awesome!

Cu toată dragostea mea, Elder Abbott
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Monday, August 15, 2011

O Altă Sâptămână în Viaţa Misionarului - Another week in the life of a missionary

Hello again everybody!

So another awesome week has just passed, and another awesome week is just beginning! Today the zone is going to Lipova, a town about 3 hours from Deva (by train) with an ancient castle ruin that we're going to go see and hike in/around. After that we'll probably find a field near the castle and play a zone game of ultimate frisbee or American football.

This week has been great! We've had more miracle finds this week, such as a family made up of a husband, who works as a mechanical engineer, and his wife, who works in the government and is super high up in the ranks (we're guessing the president of the health department or something like that but we're not totally sure because she was kind of vague). They were in town for just one evening they said and hadn't been in town for a while before that because both of their jobs take them all over the country, and they are hardly ever home, let alone home at the same time. They were super on top of everything and were asking all the right questions for us to answer and relate the importance of the restoration of the church and the restoration of priesthood authority. It was a great thing to be able to answer all their questions and leave them with a Book of Mormon along with several pamphlets. They said we could try to catch them at home whenever we wanted and that they'd call us as soon as they had questions. We also found one man in a block this week who apparently has watched the missionaries and wondered what they do for about 10 years now but who has never been contacted. He was really curious and we answered some of his questions and got his phone number and a return visit for this week.

One of the other elders' investigators told us this week that she no longer wants to be baptized on the 27th because... her mom wants to be baptized too and they'd like to make it a family occasion, meaning that they'll wait probably another 2 or 3 weeks.

We had yet another super long lesson with Mirela, the lady with whom we spoke for forever last week in that park, and this time we talked about the Gospel. She's super smart and knew most of the stuff we were talking about already. We set up to meet with her for family home evening tonight with a member family, the Fotea family, which has a daughter the same age as hers. When we called Mirela last night she said she has a lot of questions about modern prophets and that she's been reading a lot about it. Pretty much she's turning into a golden investigator, reading up about what she wants to know and coming to us with all of her concerns (for example on Thursday she asked us what we believe about angels because she read some stuff about them on the internet and didn't get what our church believed).

The work is amazing here! I'm doing great too, I love Deva and I love the people here. They're really relaxed and a lot of them are willing to talk to us. We drew a giant Plan of Salvation with chalk in the park (sorry, I didn't have my camera so I didn't take a picture), and apparently everyone was talking about us in the park. A lady came out (the Plan of Salvation drawing was right next to the entrance) and said "I don't know what you're doing out here, but everyone in there is talking about you!" We asked her if they were saying good things and she said yes, so hopefully we get some good reputation from that. :)

Anyway, I gotta get going so I hope all of you have a great week this week!

Ciao!
-Elder Abbott
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Monday, August 8, 2011

Miracle Week!

Doesn't a mom have enough to worry about without worrying about Old World snakes with fangs, too? I guess not.

Almost like home. I wonder how many other foreign towns have Hollywood type signs, too?
Back at the MTC...
back in Romania...


Buna Ziua America!

This has been such a super great week! We've had a lot of new people we've been talking to this week and it's so cool to see all the things that are going on in Deva! I honestly don't think I can say that we've found anyone this week, but God found a few people for us!

Our first miracle find came Thursday when we were walking down a small road after we had decided to go look and see if a park on the other side of town would be good for contacting. When we had arrived at the park we found that it was a field of tall weeds with several trees scattered around, and absolutely no people. Across the street we found a small playground with some benches, but again no people. We started walking down a small road to get back to a main road to do street contacting on our way to a different park. We saw a lady (Mirela) with her little daughter (Agnis) walking toward us, and we decided to talk to her. We barely had time to say hello when she said "Hey. I want to ask you something. What does your church believe about God? Because in the Bible it says that he's a spirit." We were a little bit shocked to get such a random question but we said that we believed that he had a body. She asked why the Bible said otherwise and we told her that we believe that over time the Bible was changed by people, but that a prophet had been called and retranslated the Bible and that through him we found out that God has a body. We then asked if we could share a message with her and she said "Yeah I'm just going to the playground right now if you're not busy I'll meet you there" and with that walked away. Elder Hyatt and I stood there for a minute, and when we realized what was happening we followed her to the park, where we gave her an hour and a half lesson about the Restoration. She said that she's been looking for the true church because she joined a Baptist church in January but no longer believes that it's true. She said she'd read and pray and that we could meet again later. We have another lesson with her today.

After the lesson, we made our way to the other park (where we were going before Mirela stopped us). On the way, we received a phone call. Elder Hyatt answered. It was a girl named Roxana who had talked to missionaries and received lessons in March, and who had wanted to be baptized but then got to busy with school. We had called her last Tuesday to see if she was still interested to meet with us and she said she'd think about it. Thursday morning she woke up and felt like she really needed to get baptized. So, she called us, and now we have a baptismal candidate! She lives in a city called Alba about 60 miles away, but she said she'd come to church this week (this upcoming Sunday) and we could talk more about it.

Friday we gave 2 lessons to people in parks and have 2 return appointments, and Saturday we met briefly someone on the street who said she'd been looking into our church and wanted to come. She came to church yesterday and we have an appointment with her this week (maybe you're starting to realize why this email is called "Miracle Week"). We've also had 2 people in the last 4 days ask if we could help them quit smoking, as well as a total of 5 people (a quarter of the total attendance) at church yesterday who were neither members nor investigators and simply want to learn more about our gospel. Two of them received Book of Mormons, 4 of them gave us return visit times, and the other one only lives here but is only here Saturday night and Sunday morning, is therefore unable to visit with us, but actually has never had contact with our church and just came in to see what was happening, but wants to come every week now. We received a referral for a lady who wants a free Book of Mormon, and who also said that 2 of her other friends want some too.

In the MTC we always joked that God has a sense of humor, and we also saw that this week. We decided that we would try to do something to increase our investigators too, and set up church tours last night for anyone, with free watermelon as an incentive to come. Over an hour and a half we had a kid we know from the streets who's not very interested in the church come and eat a bunch of watermelon and leave, and one guy come in, talk to us for 4 or 5 minutes, and then leave, without taking any watermelon. If God did that just to show how much we need his help contacting people, he definitely got his point across. The spirit it a lot more powerful than watermelon.

Haha anyway, this week has been so great! I'm loving it here in Deva and all the cool stuff that's happening here is super awesome as well! I hope all is well back in the States! I love you all!

Sincerely, Elder Michael Abbott
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Monday, August 1, 2011

pictures from Deva

Yahoo mail has changed and now the attachments are at the end, not the beginning so I didn't even see that Michael had sent pictures last week with his email titled "I'm in Deva!!!!". Here is a picture I got from Wikipedia of the citadel in Deva.

A little backtracking... at the MTC...waiting to leave the MTC...

In Romania

I am pretty sure this is the citadel. This is Elder Hyatt, Elder Abbott and ?????
Climbing up the citadel. Michael didn't explain these pictures, don't you love how I just make this up?
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Romania is awesome!

Hey everybody!

It's been another great week here and I feel like I'm getting my feet under me again. The first week really rushed by (as did this week), but this week has been a lot better for me as far as me staying awake, being able to talk to people, etc.

Before getting to important things, I just wanted to say stuff about food and weather because people were asking last week but I forgot to write very much about it. The food is amazing here. Literally everything is made from scratch, and all of the food here is really rich and awesome because of that. We've actually only had two things made by members so far but they were sooooo delicious! The watermelons here are super sweet, and super cheap. We bought a 10 kilo watermelon (I think that's like 20 pounds or something) for 10 lei, which is the equivalent of about 3 US Dollars. The watermelon was amazing and earlier in the week we were with an investigator named Victor who was showing us his (and maybe the Romanian way) way of eating watermelon. basically he cut off the ends then cut slices the long way through the watermelon, and then cut and ate off of that slice with a knife. Pretty awesome and way less sticky than the way I've always eaten them. The weather here has been beautiful. I got here just in time to miss the heat wave (it was luck, I don't expect it to happen again next year) and it's been raining on and off all week with very comfortable temperatures. It's always foggy up in the hills in the morning too and it looks super beautiful and stuff. Pretty awesome.

In church I've been called as the Branch Clerk and I also gave part of a lesson this week. Elder Hyatt is the Branch President and he was giving the combined Priesthood and Relief Society lesson (because it's a 5th Sunday) and he was teaching how to teach. He was teaching how to teach with scriptures and he wanted to just show how we should do it and then tell them so that it made more sense. He got up and gave a bad example of how to teach with scriptures (stand up, read, ask if they understood) and then asked me to give a good example (stand up, give intro, ask people to think about a certain thing while reading, read, discuss, etc.). It was pretty cool and he said I did a pretty good job so I'm pleased. :)

This week has been super full of lessons, mostly with members and RCLAs (Recent Convert/Less Active). We've been spending a lot of time with one of our RCLAs named Anton who was baptized about a month ago and we've been trying to teach him how to pray. He's from an Orthodox background I think and he's always prayed to Jesus so we've been trying to teach him to pray to Heavenly Father in the name of Christ, and we've had 2 or 3 lessons on that but it's not sticking yet. It's really funny, though, because apparently he's gotten up in Church before and just said a prayer like "Jesus bless us, and Jesus bless the church, and Jesus bless Domnul Presedinte (Mr. President, aka Elder Hyatt), and Jesus bless you, and you, and you..." he's a really sincere guy and super faithful and stuff and he tries so hard it's awesome. :)

We also taught this super awesome family, Familia Botici (bow-teach), which consists of a grandma, probably about 80, a mom, probably in her mid-50s, and a daughter around 30. They all live together and they're super awesome. We went to the Vile (villas) last Wednesday up in the hills to go tracting and we went out, doing normal stuff, and at one of the houses (the Botici house) we rang their doorbell, and the grandma answered from the upstairs window. We said we wanted to share a message and give her a book, and she said she couldn't come down because her leg hurt. We continued to the next Vila, but apparently grandma Botici wanted to talk to us but didn't want to come down herself. She sent her daughter (the mom) to go down and see if we were still outside, but we had already moved on. About a half our later, we were passing by their house again after we had finished going to all the Vile on that street. The mom saw us out the window and realized that we were the boys that the grandma was talking about, but she didn't have time to stop us before we were gone again.

The next day (Thursday) she came across Elder Benson and Elder Nelson in the city. She got super excited and waved them down and told them that they'd came to her house the day before but that they hadn't had time to answer before we were gone. They said it must have been us and got her number and gave her ours. We got in contact that day and set up an appointment for Saturday. We showed up at their house Saturday morning and they came out and let us in to give them a lesson. They said that they all love reading and especially like reading the words of God. We read the introduction to the Book of Mormon with them, and it was super spiritual and such a great experience. One of the best parts was that as we were reading the mom would stop us and ask us if she was understanding parts of it right. They were super attentive to not only what the introduction said, but what it meant for them in their lives. They said they have tons of trials, and trials that won't go away (the grandma has something that make her legs hurt really bad so she can't sit down or stand up for too long at one time, and the daughter, the one who's about 30, is mute) but that they always turn to God and let him help them. It was awesome because when they read the part in the introduction that says the Book of Mormon will get them closer to God than any other book they were super excited and said it must be a pretty important book then.

When we finished we taught them how to pray and asked them to read and pray until we could meet again (they're going lațara for a week, which means that they're going to stay out in the countryside and we won't be able to contact them). It was so cool to see people like that who've been hand-guided by God to be ready to meet with the missionaries, and who can recognize the missionaries when they come. We also met a lady on the street Friday who said that we had knocked on her door a week earlier (the first day I was here) but that she was painting her house, and that she was ready for us to come back whenever we could. We're going to try to have a lesson with her tonight.

I'm loving Romania so much! It's such an awesome place and there are so many cool people who are ready to get the gospel! The people here are super nice to us and the members are amazing! There are so many trials that they all go through but they're all super faithful and they trust in God continually. I think the country's favorite scripture has got to be Proverbs 3:5-6 because that scripture has applied to so many people that we've met here already, and I've been here for less than 2 weeks!

I love all of you and I hope you're having an amazing time back home!

Until next week!

Love, Elder Michael Abbott
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