Monday, February 27, 2012

Destul de Ocupat

 Elder B... and Michael in front of Ruby Tuesday in Bucharest.
 BYU at an Asian food restaurant in Pitesti.
New missionary style: inside out suit coats


Hey Everybody!

This has been a crazy busy week.  Not too busy where we can't get it all done, but busy.  It was a pretty fun week, though.  Our investigators are doing great, and we even found some new ones.  They were a cool find.  At the end of last transfer Elder B... and Elder S..., his previous companion, decided to try to find former investigators.  So they went into our area book and got all of the teaching records for people that have been taught in our area (Cartier Trivale).  We're talking about people that have been taught since 2005 or even earlier.  One of our days, we grabbed two or three former sheets that we were excited about.  Especially one that we were super excited about.  A young couple, F... and M..., who had been taught in 2005 and 2006 and had baptismal dates, but for some reason lost contact with the church.  We went around to the three places, and found out that one of the old investigators had moved, and had no response at the doors for the other two.  So, we went to do the rest of the work we had to do for the day.  That evening, we were in a different part of the city knocking doors when I thought about the formers again.  I asked Elder B... if he wanted to go try them again and he said yes.  So, we went back to our area of town, and tried the two formers we still had.  The first one we tried we found out that they had also moved, leaving only F... and M....  So, we moved on.  Just a note, I don't know if I've told you guys yet but here in Romania most people live in blocs.  They're like apartment complexes, with a door that's controlled (usually) automatically by the people who live in the scara (staircase, or part of the bloc, for example bloc 55 scara c apartment 19, meaning building 55 third staircase, 19th apartment).  To get the door unlocked, you call an apartment using the interphone (a little button pad to dial the apartment number which has a speaker and microphone built in), and they can push a button to unlock the door so that you can get inside to the actual doors.  When we got to F... and M...'s apartment, we called to their apartment.  A lady answered.  We explained who we were and she got super excited and started telling us to come in.  She unlocked the door and we went to her apartment to find... Mn....  We were really confused for a minute, until we found out that Mn... and A... (MN...'s daughter) live in the apartment now.  Mn is M...'s mom, and she and A... had sat in on the discussions the missionaries had with F... and M... and loved going to church, activities, etc.  A... told us also that she wants to change her life, that she's sick of her old sins and lifestyle and has been trying to change lately.  Basically it was a super cool experience and A... is super ready for the gospel.
Besides that, it's been a lot of the usual.  V... our investigator is understanding everything we teach and loves the Book of Mormon, we taught Ac..., another investigator the plan of salvation which she loved, the branch is strong and quite a bit bigger here than in Craiova.  It's a great city and I'm having a super good time with Elder B....  I hope all of you are having a good week, and I'll talk to you next week!
With Love, Elder Michael Abbott
Avem o conferință de zonele Ploiești și București miercuri!  Abiă aștept.
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Monday, February 20, 2012

Field of Dreams

Fraţilor mei preaiubiţi,

So you know how we do missionary work in a field?  Like the mission field?  For some reason it's called a field but Piteşti is seriously the field of dreams!  (Well the second or third one.  Behind South America and Ploieşti, but who's counting?)  Seriously, the work is going super well here.  I've already seen miracles here so I'll just write them out one by one so that I don't get them confused
1. C... -- So I actually wasn't here for this miracle, but this guy was found by the missionaries about a month, maybe a month and a half ago, and was baptized just 2 or 3 weeks ago.  This is a miracle, though, because before the missionaries found him he was a smoker and drinker.  But when he heard the message of the gospel, he decided to quit.  So he did.  From that day.  And now he's a member, necessary to be included because he leads to:
2. V... -- This is C...'s mom.  She's older, but super sweet and nice.  When She found out that C.... was being baptized she decided to come to church, and immediately loved it.  She had a Restoration lesson with the missionaries, then a Resoration review lesson, then I was transferred in.  My first lesson in Piteşti was with her.  We taught her the Plan of Salvation and she told us at the end that she wanted to be baptized.  She'll be baptized by C... on March 8th (the Romanian version of Mother's Day).
3. A... -- This girl is sick!  Not literally sick. I mean the figurative kind of sick that means cool.  But yeah.  She was supposed to be baptized on Valentine's day, but got in a car crash the Sunday before and couldn't make it to church, then her parents found out about her baptism and freaked out at her, then pretty much this whole big thing went down and in the end she wasn't baptized.  But, she met with us and told us that she still wants to be baptized!  So she'll be baptized on March 24th.
4. M... -- This guy just randomly calls us my second country and tells us that he promised Elder M... (some of you know him, he went to Orem High and served in Piteşti last fall)  that he would call him when he got back from Ireland.  He told us he was drunk but wanted to change his life.  When we visited him the next day he said the same thing, minus the drunk part.  We're hoping we can get C... to come to a lesson with him on Tuesday.
5. Random Family I don't know -- calls us my 3rd night in Piteşti and tells us that they recieved a restoration pliant and a Book of Mormon last fall, read it, love it, know it's true, and were wondering if their kids were allowed to come to church with them.  Yes.  They are.  They live in the countryside so we're meeting with them this week, didn't make it last weekend.
6. Elder B...'s family -- Elder B... is Romanian, adopted American, but when he got called here he found his family, and is now teaching them.  They are super cool and nice and want to know if the gospel is true.  They love church, the Book of Mormon, and the spirit.  Seriously cool.
7. P... -- Sorry, she's not in Piteşti, but if you remember I was teaching her in Craiova.  And I just found out that she's getting baptized in April!!!!!! I'm super happy.  She was our only real investigator in Craiova and she had some things holding her back from baptism, but she's finally getting baptized!  She has a super strong testimony, so it's not really a surprise that she is, just cool that she worked everything out.
Anyway, that's basically the biggest miracles we saw last weekend.  I'm loving Piteşti and I know you are too.
Love you all!
With Love, Elder Michael Abbott
Ăstă e un sport care ne place
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Monday, February 13, 2012

Over and Out


 Houses with snow on them before the blizzard.
 snow drifts
 Nine foot pile of snow by the road before the blizzard started.
 Last Sunday in Craiova at church.

 Weather forecast for Feb. 13th...blizzard!
 Michael's planner from this last transfer and his planner for the next transfer.
 Snow on the balcony.
This snow is more than a cubit tall.


Hey everyone!

So, my stay in Craiova is coming to an end.  President Hill called Elder Lee while he was on exchange and told him first that Elder Lee is the new Branch President in Bacău, and then asked for me, but since I wasn't there I called him that night, after my exchange with Elder Pettit ended.  He then told me that I'm going to Piteşti!   They're bringing in Elder Finch, who started his mission here and is going into his last transfer, with Elder Staheli, a younger missionary who is currently in Piteşti with my future companion, Elder Bateman!  I met Elder Bateman at the Christmas party and then stayed the night at his apartment before heading back to Craiova, so I know him a little bit.  He's super cool.  He's actually a native Romanian, who was adopted by an American family when he was a baby.  He got called back to Romania on his mission, though, and a few transfers ago he managed to get into contact with his birth mother.  A few transfers later, he got transferred to Piteşti, where she lives now!  So he's teaching his birth family there right now which will be a super cool experience.
Piteşti used to be part of the same zone as Craiova, but starting this coming transfer will be part of the Ploieşti zone.  So I'm moving to a completely different zone.  President Hill changed the zone boundaries of every single zone and moved the zone leaders from 2 zones into different cities, so the whole mission has changed.  I know it doesn't effect you much but it's crazy here because we get used to our zone boundaries and then suddenly every single one changes and it's interesting.  So yeah, I'm part of the Ploieşti zone now.  Also in my zone are Braşov and Constanţa, and I'll have 4 other missionaries from my MTC group in my zone, 2 of them as companions in Ploieşti.
I'll miss Craiova, but I'm also excited to go somewhere new.  It's hard with only 2 missionaries in a city, so I'm looking forward to more missionary contact.  Most of all I'll miss the members who were baptized while I was here, plus the other members who I know and Paula, our best investigator right now.  I'm pretty sure I told you about her.  She's super cool, was brought to church by a family from Bucharest who visited us back in December, and has since started investigating, gained a testimony, quite coffee and smoking, and is now waiting to be baptized.  She's currently being held back by the fact that her ex-husband lives in her apartment (separate rooms, but still a problem) and neither of them have enough money to buy a new apartment.  She will get baptized, though.  So I'm looking forward to hearing about that when it happens.
One crazy thing happened this week.  Snow.  Remember last week how I said there hadn't been any snow like a blizzard yet?  I spoke too soon, as our daily weather report so kindly told us this morning.  We are being seriously pounded with snow and it's deep and nonstop falling.  You can see the pictures haha.  We have 24.5 inches of snow piled up on our balcony, and now we're just hoping we'll be able to make it to Bucharest for transfers.  The train people are usually pretty good about keeping the tracks clear, but with this much snow you never know.  So, wish me luck. :)
I hope all of you are happy and healthy, and until next week,
With love, Elder Michael Abbott
P.S. Pariuri sunt proaste. 
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Monday, February 6, 2012

(insert funny title)

 Orem license plate
 Michael's snowy balcony
 A boy sledding
 Elder Abbott and Elder Lee
A big icicle!


Hello everyone!

It's still snowing in Craiova!  We haven't gotten any crazy blizzard type things or anything, but the snow has been gradually building up, with a little hour or 2 snow fall every day, sometimes more, sometimes less.  The snow underneath the ice layer underneath the latest snow is perfect now for making snow balls, which is awesome because that means we can make snow balls to throw at cigarettes in people's mouths!  Okay, just cigarettes on the ground.  But maybe I'll consider making a cool shot like that sometime.  Elder Lee have been proselyting mostly this last week, with only a few lessons.  We get to do service every once in a while like pushing cars out of ice patches, shoveling member's walkways, etc. which makes our days seem more satisfying and fulfilling so that's good. :)
A scary thing that happened this week is that our zone leaders tried to come for exchanges, and decided to take a car instead of a train, then ended up getting rear ended about 2/3 of the way from Bucharest to here, spun off the road, and landed in a ditch surrounded by walls of snow.  They couldn't drive out so they just waited an hour and a half for a tow truck to come from Piteşti and take them there, then the Assistants picked them up from there.  They were both fine, and Elder Lee and I thought it was funny because Elder Johnsen (one of our Zone Leaders) was super happy that he had never gotten in a wreck and he finishes with his mission next week, so he crashed within 2 weeks of the end of his mission.  Just kinda funny but also scary but it's okay because no one got hurt.  They're planning on taking a train to visit us for exchanges this Wednesday.
Anyway, I hope all of you are happening a super good time back wherever you are reading this/listening to someone else read it/using some sort of mind power to know what I said.
m-auzi?
Love, Elder Michael Abbott
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