Week 65 – Brașov, România

Dear wonderfulest family ever,

This week has been so very interesting. Meaning we didn’t get out much. I was sad by that, but I swear, everytime we get our hopes up, or we plan something amazing, our heating goes out! Then we have to stay in our apartment while they fix it…for three hours. Ugh. I am feeling really good though, and my hopes in this city are super high. We are planning a huge activity for the members, that we think could really build the church here. It will be a MMTC, or member missionary training center. Basically a straight throw down of how members should act and what they should do in certain situations in dealing with investigators and such. It is a work in progress but I think it will be really good.

We also had Zone Conference this last weekend, and it was really good. We had a guest speaker, Brother Ruttley come and speak to us. He is the only active member of the church in Englands Parliament. It was so cool to have him there at our conference and he was really inspiring. (funny story) He was actually pushed into a lake by President Ivory when President Ivory was 17. He said some really funny stuff about the Ivory’s. He then, of course, got spiritual and that was amazing as well. We all felt really good coming out of that meeting, or at least I did. Although, we did spend 2 hours on the rule clarifications. That wasn’t fun, but informative. We are about to have a group of 25 new missionaries come into our mission, and so President Ivory wants us all to be on our best behavior.

Okay, funny story time. So we (Myself, E.Evans, and Sister’s Marcheschi, Robertson, Parker, and Ruiz) were on the train back to Brasov, the night after Conference. We are sitting there and all of a sudden I look out the window at our stop, and I see that it is our stop! We were all super unprepared! We knew we didn’t have much time to get off the train, so we grabbed all of our stuff and tried to get off. Sister’s Pareker, Ruiz, and Robertson all jumped off the train while it was moving (Not super fast, but still). Then the doors closed. Not to reopen. I looked at Elder Evans, and Sora Marcheschi, and realized that she didn’t have a companion… We were freaking out, and what didn’t help was when we rode past the sign of the city that the three sisters got off of…Predeal. Wait…that’s not Brasov! We…well…they had jumped off too soon! We were all panicking a little, until we realized that there was nothing else we could do, just try to fix the problem. Thirty minutes later we got to Brașov. It was so funny! I got a good laugh out of it, especially because I told everybody to get off. No one even questioned. I had only been in Brașov for four weeks, and I was calling the shots…It was funny. Everything worked out in the end, and we returned to our ice cave/apartment.

We didn’t have very many lessons because of our travels this week, and because one of our investigators is in Dubai right now for work. (I want to go to Dubai for work…) I am glad that you two (Mom and Dad) had a good time in Chicago. It feels nice to get out and see some new things. I have been blessed to live in a city with lots of options.

OOOOOHHHHH. On Wednesday we will be going to go and see Pelesi Castle, because our zone got 348 lessons, only 2 lessons shy of our goal of 350. It was really cool! That will be great! Then we will be going on a hike with Sorin (he is a huge mountain climber/hiker) to a huge mountain here. It will be really exciting. I will hopefully be able to use someone’s camera when we go, because I still haven’t gotten mine fixed. But I am working on it. It is really strange. I just want a really nice camera with me right now. There have been a few times I have just stopped and stared, and was blown away by the view or by a photo that I could take with a nicer camera. I am happy just to have one though. ;). I will see what I can do about that. Also, do you guys know about the new mission address? Yeah, we got a new office and it is really nice. It fits how cool our mission is.

I hope that the kids didn’t get too crazy. I would like to know what they did though, so have one of them email me about the details. You guys are so great! Where are you now in the Book of Mormon? How are spiritual things going? I hope you all realize how close He is willing to come, if we let Him. The enabling power of the Atonement is very real and will carry us through our hardships. I love you all very much. Keep Swimming!

Love, Varstnicul Nick Oldham