Week 82 – Ploiești, România
The family email to Elder Oldham was written by is brother Oliver this week. That’s why he starts of his letter with “Bro!”
BRO! Bother Bennion was one of the teachers there when I went to efy! *mouth drops open*. That is crazy. From what I can remember he was the most attended teacher that year.
This week has been really good. We just kept our chins down as it was pouring rain most of the week and kept on working. We have spent a lot of time trying to find less active members that people haven’t seen for a while. the “Unknowns”. We have had a little success and the rain has really kept us at bay from going hard to the paint. Ugh… It doesn’t help that Romanians HATE rain. I mean literally they think that if they go outside in it for even the smallest fraction of time, they will get deathly ill. That has caused a few problems but nothing more than wet backs for us. 😉
We did meet with this nice fellow named Fratele Nita. He is a less active member because he has hurt his right leg pretty bad (it is some medical thing) and because he is basically blind. We didn’t know that but he really appreciated the visit. We hope to get out there a few times a week to read to him from the Book of Mormon. We feel like that would be really good for him. His wife also just had cataract eye surgery. Eeeeeww. Thus, they need a little attention and love I think.
What this week really has brought me is an eye opener. A lot of the people we tried to find live just outside the city or right on the edge. There exists poverty out there like I haven’t ever seen. I mean houses are sometimes made out of anything people can find. It was humbling. I can’t believe that I complain so often about my blessings. These people have problems that I may never have to face, and yet they continue on. I am not saying that they are happy with it, but I am grateful for the things that I have, and my heart goes out to those a little bit more who are less fortunate than me. It was a really neat experience.
We also had our exchange with Pitești. That was really cool. We some work and were able to hand out a Book of Mormon! I haven’t done that in over a month! It felt really good. We talked to a handful of people on that day and it was cool to see the little successes that came from it.
Ooh. I have a funny story. So we got on a bus and my companion and I talk in English on buses. (Reasoning: people contact us, because they want to speak English to us). We get on this bus and there is this old lady sitting on the inside of the two man bench thingy. She is clearly a little challenged. She sees me and tells me to come and sit next to her, but I was very adamant on the fact that “I don’t speak Romanian” (a little self defense). I reply, I am sorry I don’t know what you are saying. She kind of freaks out and starts saying all this dirty language and then she laughs at her own jokes, and you wouldn’t believe her laugh. She literally sounded like a witch. It was the best witch laugh I have ever heard. The whole bus was either really angry or laughing. There was this girl sitting in front of this lady who turned around, and without this old lady seeing she moved her hand by her head to indicate to us that she was crazy. We laughed at that. I wish you guys could have been there. We see crazy people a lot, so it doesn’t bother us to see them, but when they interact with you it can go from ha ha to scary in a matter of moments, so we are careful. It is mainly funny though.
I am glad that all is well at home, and that efy was good. I loved going to efy and I remember going to efy my last year and just loving every second of it! I hope that you enjoyed it and didn’t feel so alone as a member of the church in Minnesota. Funny story, when I went to Moorhead for a soccer game I actually saw and chatted with a few girls from my efy group the last year I went and that was cool to see. Some of these people will be your friends for a long time if not forever. It was at efy where I met Cameron Decker and Aaron, and all sorts of other stake activities. Oh man…We got in trouble at the YM outing thingy. I have a good group of friends in the stake. 😉 I also hope that you, Abby, had a good time and that the boys weren’t dripping off of you either. 😉 You probably pulled out a few scriptures on them. “And then Abby said unto (them), get thee hence (boys)!.” I can see that. 😉 I would like to hear all about your side of it as well, so maybe you can email me. I hope that both of you wrote down your feelings in a journal of some sort. Those journal entries of mine from efy are very precious to me, because what I felt there was very real, and we should never forget that. I hope that you guys will not. EFY EFY EFY! I love that place.
Well..I don’t have too much for you guys, but this week is going to bring Zone Training metting, which is run by us, and I have a 30 minute presentation…ugh. And on Saturday we have a huge Meet The Mormons movie event that we have been working so hard towards, and we have very very very very high hopes for it. I will have a fun email next week for sure. I am also not exactly sure if I will email on Monday or not, we are going to see if we can move P-day to Wednesday so we can go to Castelul Paleș. (It isn’t open on Mondays). We will see. I hope you have an excellent week, and keep up the scripture study. Also remember that the words of the living prophet and apostles are also scripture!
Love, Varstnicul Nick Oldham