WEEK 15

"Call Thomas Monson..."

MARTI 25 OCTOMBRIE

Weird day. One of our members called us at 9:55am and was like, "Come downstairs. I have something for you." and we were like "kay????" because the members aren't really supposed to know where we live but they ALL DO. So we went downstairs and Vlad gave us a squash carved like a pirate and two milka bars. And then left. It was bizarre but we got this cute squash thing! 

​Anyway so then we made personalized Books of Mormon (we write notes in them and mark a bunch of scriptures) and then we had lunch with Andreea at this nastyyy Chinese place. Seriously, Romania will never be known for its chow mein. Anyway so the next notable thing on Tuesday happened during English class. Our landlord called us and started yelling at me in Romanian because apparently our electric bill payment wasn't processed right and our electricity was getting shut off :)))))))) So that was fun. And during medium English we were talking about favorite books and Dragos said his favorite was Cartea lui Mormon :)))))) yayyyyy I love him so much.

MIERCURI 26 OCTOMBRIE

First thing we did on Wednesday was go to the electric company and get everything sorted out. Don't worry; we have power still! That took basically all morning. Then after lunch I was feeling reallyyyyy not great. We had planned to go less active finding with the senior couple but..... I vomited up my lunch so we stayed home. It wasn't a very productive afternoon. However that evening we had a lesson with Dragos and Vlad. It went so well! And Dragos has mastered nose goes.... or "nasul merge" as he says :)

JOI 27 OCTOMBRIE

Literally we did basically nothing on Thursday because EVERYONE was busy and it was raining and no one wanted to stop and talk to us. We went less active finding and every single less-active on the list has either moved or we have an address that doesn't exist or they don't want contact or they throw boiling water on missionaries or threaten us with knives. (Read that in the area book--didn't happen to us.) So that's the end of less active finding for now. The senior couple took us out to dinner. It was good, but kind of an overpriced restaurant so I felt bad but they insisted. I made Sora Kitchen a planner for her first transfer back at home! She leaves in three weeks. that's crazy. 

​VINERI 28 OCTOMBRIE

Friday morning we went Halloween shopping for the branch Halloween activity! Then district meeting that isn't even a real district meeting because the senior couple thinks district meeting is synonymous with weekly planning. Ours is the only district in the mission without any elders.  

Then we met with Bianca. She's still reading the CLM every day and is more than half done now! Then we set up for the Halloween party. We had the donut on a string thing and apple bobbing and pin the heart on the skeleton and grapefruit carving in loc de pumpkins.

It was a lot of fun :) I made cat ears out of black construction paper and bobby pins and was Cat Woman 2.0. Do any of y'all remember my Cat Woman from last year? I had to keep the tradition alive :) 

​SAMBATA 29 OCTOMBRIE

First thing we went to go clean up the church building because the Halloween party was kinda messy... we carved grapefruit on the sacrament table because it's the only table we have. Hope that's not sacrilegious! But yeah we had a LOT of cleaning to do before English class. And then English class. We met with Dragos that evening and he was talking about serving a mission someday.... ahh! He's getting baptized on Saturday and we're SO EXCITED. I love him so much and honestly I'm stoked. 

DUMINICA 30 OCTOMBRIE

Sunday! We got an extra hour of sleep because of Daylight Savings Time. Thanks Ben Franklin or whoever it was that invented that. Pretty sure it was Ben Franklin. Someone google that and lemme know. Anyway so on our way to church Dragos ran up behind us and scared the crap out of us. It was funny but also I literally thought we were about to get mugged. We had three investigators at church! And one of our new investigators, Dan, told us to "call the big reverend in America and tell him there's gonna be a waterfall in the bathtub in the temple". HE WANTED US TO CALL THOMAS S MONSON AND TELL HIM THAT A RANDOM ROMANIAN GUY WAS BUILDING A WATERFALL FOR THE TEMPLE BAPTISTRY. We almost died laughing. Uh, we don't have his number.

But anyway, I spoke in sacrament meeting! I knew all week I had to speak but just didn't feel like writing a talk. I was just supposed to talk on one of the missionary lessons. So I threw the Plan of Salvation and Gospel of Jesus Christ together and made the whole thing up on the spot IN ROMANIAN. Everyone said it was wonderful. So booyah, procrastination and lack of motivation actually do work. Sometimes. We had another lesson with Dragos. Right now we're watching videos from biblevideos.org with him and reading the stories from the Bible because he's not super familiar with it. It's cool. We visited Vlad at work and it was a great day.

LUNI 31 OCTOMBRIE

Happy Halloween! Today i mailed a letter (to Austin--sorry I don't have a lot of time to write and he's my favorite) and got covrig and went to the mall and bought socks and long sleeved shirts and a winter coat. We had lunch with Andreea and I love her so much. Then came to the church to email y'all.

Have a great week! 

love ya,

Sora Lucy Gleason

România/Moldova Mission

July 2016-January 2018

WEEK 14

American Bucket

This week. Wow, this week. So i stunk at journaling this week so idk how this email is gonna be formatted. I'm making this up as a go.

Tuesday

We weekly planned, bought bread 'cause we forgot to on Monday, went contacting but no one was interested, took a bunch of weird pictures of Bacau, packed for zone conference, and then went to go prep for English class. Then we taught English class and left for BRASOV for ZONE CONFERENCE! The drive was a little terrifying because Romanian roads are just terrifying. We went with our senior couple and they stayed in a hotel and we stayed with the Brasov sisters. A happy drunk guy kept asking us for cigarettes. Fun day.  So many photos!

Wednesday

Zone conference! It was good but probably boring for anyone who wasn't there. I got to see Elder Jacobson from my MTC group and it was good because I miss my MTC homies. We went to the black church in Brasov before we drove home.

 It was gorgeous.

  I love Brasov.

Joiiiiii

I woke up feeling really sick and our appointments all bunged us. We didn't do much on Thursday because 1) I felt like puking all day 2) Everyone cancelled. But we had FHE and it was good.

Friday Friday gotta get down on Friday

I actually remember nothing and I didn't write in my journal so this is all from my planner. Planners are awesome. Okay, so we had district meeting. We met with Bianca. She's halfway done with the Book of Mormon! We love her so much. My planner says we went adventure contacting after that but I don't think that's what we did because I'm pretty sure it was raining but I don't remember what we actually did. Then we met with Vlad and Dragos and the baptism is back on. Crazy huh? But we're really happy.

Our Garbage Chute--Boy does it stink when people leave it open

Sambata

We went contacting on the way to the church; prepped for English class; then taught English. No one showed up for medium English but one of our beginner students stayed for an hour talking about the church with us, and she wants a Book of Mormon but wouldn't accept one that hadn't been written in by both of us, so we're giving it to her tomorrow. Then we met with Vlad and talked about stuff. I don't remember what. Then dinner. That's it.

Sunday

We had church. We made lasagna for lunch, then went less active finding. Everyone has moved to France or Spain apparently.  We met with Vlad and Dragos again. It went well. I don't remember what else.

Luniiiiiii

Today our alarm didn't wake us up so we slept late. We met with a guy named Dan who has read the whole BOM I guess but we'd never met him before. He used to live in Italy and took the lessons there. He's really cool, but he talked forevveerrrrr. We were with him and our senior couple for like two hours because he just kept talking. Then grocery shopping. Then we went to KFC and got an American bucket because we like chicken and America. Now we're emailing. and eating chicken. 

Sora Lucy Gleason

România/Moldova Mission

July 2016-January 2018

WEEK 13

An Emotional Hayride

This has been the happiest, yet most devastating week of my mission so far. If you don't want to be really really sad, stop reading after Sambata part 1.

MARTI 11 OCTOMBRIE
Good day! We went street contacting (no success though) and had lunch with Andreea at the mall. I love Andreea so much. She's so great. We were still in a trio on Tuesday and Sora Rich was so fun! But anyway...after lunch we came home and weekly/transfer planned. It was INTENSE. After weekly planning, we visited Vlad at the little store he works at. We gave him a quote from a Dieter F. Uchtdorf talk and he really liked it. We also bought cookies and juice because, ya know, I love food. After we met with Vlad, we met with Dragos. We talked about baptism with him. Dragos said he knew the church was true and that he'd pick a baptismal date on Sunday (yesterday). It was really great. Dragos walked with us to centru (it's what downtown is called here) and we said goodbye. He's such a dorky kid but it's awesome. He reminds me a lot of my little brother Mikey, which is awesome. For dinner we had mamaliga which is basically just polenta. It was good. 

MIERCURI 12 OCTOMBRIE
We started our day with BLOCK KNOCKING! It's always an adventure. We met a girl named Camilia about our age and she accepted a Book of Mormon but gave us a wrong number... Oh well. We also met Nicolai! He's 80 years old and when he first answered the door he didn't have pants on.... whoops. But he was really nice and went and put pants on while we knocked on the other doors. All his neighbors hated us but then he invited us in and we had a really good conversation about faith. He LOVED the Book of Mormon and said he'd read it, and I believe him because he had about a thousand religious books and no TV so he has plenty of time. He said no one had been to visit him in three years except his mean daughter! Speaking of her, she came in as we were leaving and started yelling at him that we were polygamists. Uh, nope. But anyway, Nicolai was just like, "Lasa ma, va rog" and dismissed everything she said ha. And when we called him later he said we're welcome any time. So we're going back soon :) Then we heart attacked Sora Dragomir's door. She's our relief society president and the first member in Bacau. She's awesome and she says she's our mom here. We LOVE her! We had a lesson with Elena that evening. We did Plan of Salvation and it was AWESOME. At the end, she explained the whole thing back to us and said it made perfect logical sense. So that was cool. Then we took Sora Rich to the train station and said goodbye to our trio :(

JOI 13 OCTOMBRIE
We got a text from Dragos.... "Vreau sa fiu botezat!:)" which means "I want to be baptized" and we flipped out. We were meeting with him that night though so after we finished studies we went block knocking. Zero success, and my knee killed. I had a covrig though so that was cool. We had a lesson with Dragos at 4:30 before family home evening with the branch. Dragos was so stoked to be baptized. We talked about parental consent and all the logistics of it, and then had FHE. He was so excited and told everyone in the branch all about it. President Popescu (branch pres.) went to the temple this week and at FHE I had a really good conversation with him about it. He LOVED it. He was literally speechless trying to explain his feelings there. SO COOL. When we got home we made tacos. It was awesome.

VINERI 14 OCTOMBRIE
We fasted on Friday that Dragos would be able to get permission from his mom to be baptized. It's a confusing situation because he lives at an orphanage and his mom is in Italy... so we weren't sure how that would work. We had three appointments and they all fell through. We got a call from our mission president and Dragos didn't need parental permission since he's technically a ward of the state or something! So that was exciting. We had a lesson with Vlad and Dragos and Dragos picked a date... November 3. We were so happy. Everything was great. We got a call from Dragos that night. His mom gave him permission anyway! He kept saying that we made a miracle because of the fasting. It was really cool. Then nighttime. We slept.

SAMBATA 15 OCTOMBRIE 
PART 1
We went with our senior couple to buy lightbulbs and visited Dan at his job. It was really great. We bought foot pillows :))))) Then we had lunch with Andreea again. She's the primary president and is trying to put together a primary program. After Andreea, we went to visit Sora Dragomir. She fed us.... we had ciorba and salata beuf and gogos. It was SO GOOD. We saw Dan again because he's her son. His wife was there too. She's not a member, and we were able to have a really good conversation with her about temples. It was cool. After that, we went to meet with Dragos. We talked about tithing and priesthood/relief society and a bunch of other stuff. He asked us to talk at his baptism. It was GREAT.
PART 2
So we get home and get a call from Dragos that his mom took back her permission because she heard some AWFUL things about the church. He was kind of upset about tithing, even though when we'd talked about it literally an hour earlier and it was fine. He said he didn't want to be baptized anymore, and then he said he was going to go online and find a lot of really bad stuff about the church to "find the truth." It was horrible, and I don't think I've ever cried as much as I did that night. It was devastating. 

DUMINICA 16 OCTOMBRIE
It was raining ALL DAY. Actually, it's been raining all week. Pouring rain. And a dam broke somewhere so there have been flood warnings too. Anyway, only seven people were at church, including four missionaries. I translated Sunday School and part of sacrament meeting into Romanian since our senior couple was teaching/speaking. It was cool, and Sora Dragomir said I did really well. But we were really sad because Dragos didn't come to church. But he called us after, and said he regretted not coming, and asked to meet. We went to the senior couple's house with him for dinner. Things were fine, until they decided to share their testimony on tithing (something that we wanted to just let go for a while) and said that the reason we pay tithing is so that God won't burn us at the resurrection. WHAT THE HECK? So Dragos freaked and wanted absolutely nothing to do with us. He texted us later and literally said "have a nice future, bye." It sucked. So yeah. Worst day of my entire life. We came home and just cried. 

LUNI 17 OCTOMBRIE
Today was a good day. I bought boots.

I had a cheeseburger.

Dragos just texted us and said he's reading the Book of Mormon again. I literally don't even know what to do or think. This week has been absolutely insane and I just want to crawl into bed for 39489238 hours and sleep. But I can't, and that's okay. Thankfully it's done raining and skies are blue. I love all of you that are reading this! Have a great week!

Sora Lucy Gleason
România/Moldova Mission
July 2016-January 2018

WEEK 12

IT'S HALLOWEEN MONTH WHICH MEANS IT'S TIME FOR CHRISTMAS MUSIC EVEN THOUGH I LOVE THANKSGIVING

Morning Sky

MARTI 4 OCTOMBRIE

We had lunch with Andreea at Viking. Met with Dragos. Talked about the temple. Taught English. I still hate teaching English. But two of our students brought us pizza so yayyyy. Then we had a lesson with Cris (investigator) and Alin (member). It was okay. On our way home a drunk guy stopped us and asked for a Book of Mormon.

MIERCURI 5 OCTOMBRIE

We went with our senior couple to take care of some of their visa stuff. Another lesson with Dragos. He said he wants to go to the temple someday. I made squash and broke a mug. One of our members said something really funny about DST but I don't remember what. We got ice cream.

JOI 6 OCTOMBRIE

We went and visited a woman named Mihaela. She's a psychotherapist who does 30/30s with us. (thirty minutes of English lessons and thirty of gospel.) She's eccentric to say the least. She looks like a mix of ScarJo and Edna Mode. But I'm 90% sure she's only using us for English because she really doesn't like hearing about the church so we're probably going to slow down on the visits. We were going to meet a member in the park afterward but she bunged us so we called former investigators instead. Then we met with Dragos. He's a cool kid. FHE was next. We did some games and had some food and it was great fun. 

VINERI 7 OCTOMBRIE

District meeting with the Alemans. Lunch with Andreea at KFC. Lesson with Bianca! We helped her with her English homework and then talked about obedience. She's still reading the Book of Mormon every day! And she said that obedience isn't a quality, it's a way of life, and of course she'll be obedient, because she loves God. It was great. We met with Dragos afterward. There was a flea market thing (i think it's called a targ????) in centru so we walked through it with him and neither Sora Kitchen nor I felt like teaching a lesson was the right thing to do with him right then. So we just talked, and then he left. We went to visit Vlad (member) at work after that. Vlad is the coolest.

SAMBATA 8 OCTOMBRIE

It was the last day of English classes for this round so we watched a movie. Mulan. Apparently it's a thing in this mission to watch movies all the time? Seems weird to me but whatever. Anyway so then I was feeling sick, so when we went home for lunch I just flopped down on my bed and next thing I knew it was three hours later. I hate napping here because I feel so unproductive.

A bee's wax candle I bought for less than a dollar.

DUMINICA 9 OCTOMBRIE

Fast Sunday! All the testimonies were great. Sora Kitchen and I helped in the primary. I helped our branch president with some family history stuff because he's going to the temple this week! Yay! After church we met with Dragos in the park (he came to church by the way which is cool) and we talked about what he thinks about what we've taught. A gypsy lady came up and wanted to do a card trick and we just ignored her because really she wanted our money but she wouldn't go away so Dragos gave her a leu (it's worth about a quarter). And she was like, give me ten lei and I'll guess her name (about S Kitchen) and Dragos was like, lady I'm not dumb she has a nametag; go away. After ten minutes she finally left. So twenty minutes go by and another gypsy lady approaches us, but this time she targets me. I just said all cutesy with my best American accent "Nu vorbesc limba romana, scuze" but she didn't leave she kept shoving these cards in my face and then Sora Kitchen is like "La sa ne!" (leave us or something like that idk the literal translation) and the lady hit her on the nose! Dragos kinda shoved her and then she left. Weird. So then we went to visit Alin (member). It was..... well, it's Alin and you kind of have to know him to understand. We made tacos for dinner. Legit tacos with homemade tortillas and shredded chicken and beans and rice and cheese. it was so good.

LUNI 10 OCTOMBRIE

Well.... it's transfers today and I'm in a trio! Until Wednesday lol. Sora Rich came down from Iasi because her new companion isn't getting there till Wednesday but her old one left today and there aren't other sisters there now. So she's here! She's great. This is her last transfer. We finally finished applying for the Alemans' visas! Hallelujah. We went grocery shopping and bought a really cute pumpkin. It's freezing here. That was my week!

Sora Lucy Gleason

România/Moldova Mission

July 2016-January 2018

WEEK 11

Conference Weekend

MARTI 27 SEPTEMBRIE
On Tuesday we went to another government building and did some more stuff I have to do to get my visa. It's so complicated and weird here. Then we went to lunch with Andreea again (pretty much every Tuesday we have lunch with Andreea). We went to Viking's, a little fast food place across the street from our block (a block is what they call apartment buildings here). Their Romanian food is good but their American food is nastyyyy. I had a chicken taco thing but instead of a tortilla, it's pita bread, and it has chicken strips on it. SUPER GOOD. After that, we went to visit a member, Dan, at work. He's a security guard at one of the grocery stores. He's a little less active right now because his new at this job and they won't give him Sundays off. He was the second member to be baptized in Bacau and he's really nice. Tuesday nights, we teach English. I really hate teaching English because I want to explain all the fun grammar but they only want to know how to have a conversation--not why "of" is a preposition. So I have to restrain myself a little. After we got home, Sister Kitchen and I decided to make macaroni and cheese. It failed miserably. Things were going great until the cheese in our sauce decided to ABSOLUTELY FREAK OUT and glob together. It was so sad. We skipped dinner that night because the mac was just inedible.

MIERCURI 28 SEPTEMBRIE
So first, we went to the visa office to finish applying for my visa. We walked around for TWO HOURS and couldn't find the place. We finally called a taxi and he took us straight there. And I finally applied for my visa and it will be ready for me to pick up in thirty days! Yay! For lunch, we had top ramen and then we sat down to do language study. There must have been roofies in the ramen though, because we both fell asleep.... for THREE HOURS. It was awful. We completely wasted the afternoon. BUT! We had a lesson that night with a guy we'd never met. He called us randomly and was like, "I want to meet with you" and we were like, "Okay!". But then he was awkward and asked if we were married, so we were a bit skeptical. But we met with him. His name is Lucian and it was a SUPER good lesson. We're meeting with him again soon. He was so nice and not weird at all. It was great. 

JOI 29 SEPTEMBRIE
In the morning, we got to watch the women's session of General Conference and it was SO GOOD. President Uchtdorf's talk was basically a repeat of what he said when he was with us in Romania. (I'm just gonna rub it in a little more here: I MET DIETER F UCHTDORF AND HE SAID I HAD A BEAUTIFUL SMILE. Anyway, so he talked about how the missionaries found his wife at the last door in an apartment building they were in. So right after conference, Sora Kitchen and I went block knocking! The first door we knocked at, an old baba answered and started yelling at us that it was a sin for us to be so beautiful but carry so many lies. I was like, awwwww she thinks I'm pretty! But then she watched us until we left her block and locked the door after us. Soooooooo, we went to another block! And knocked on every door. One lady talked to us for a while but then told us we were at a priest's home. Another lady let us in but kicked us out when she realized we weren't Orthodox. We knocked on around eighty doors in two hours. No one wanted to hear our message. I had been leaving Book of Mormon pass along cards on some of the doors though, and later that evening we got a call from a man named Pitro who wanted a Book of Mormon! We haven't had the chance to meet up with him yet, but we're really excited about it. 

VINERI 30 SEPTEMBRIE
We cleaned our apartment this morning because it was not looking great. Then we had lunch with Andreea again, and she came with us to our lesson with Bianca. Bianca is so great. We started talking about birthdays, and SHE HAS THE SAME BIRTHDAY AS ME! And y'all should know how obsessed I am with my birthday. She was telling us about her Book of Mormon reading and said she wasn't very far into the book, but then we find out she's actually halfway through Alma. SO GREAT! She's really busy with school but we're going to help her with her English homework and then talk about the gospel when it's done. After our meeting with Bianca, we met up with Irina and her two daughters.

Irina and Daughters

Irina has been a member for about three years. It was a lot of fun to see her. Our mission president's wife asked us to talk to our members and write down their conversion stories, so we did that with Irina. Her little girls are 4 and 7 and they just wanted to play on the swings and take selfies. It was so much fun to be around children again! I love kids.
We also had a lesson with Dragos. He's making progress but I'm starting to feel like he sees us as two cool American friends instead of missionaries. 

Dragos

On Friday we also made dinner. Real dinner. With meat and potatoes and vegetables. It was glorious. I love food.

SAMBATA 1 OCTOMBRIE
I made omelettes because I don't know how to make conference breakfast and that's as close as I could get to it. They had tomatoes and cheese and spinach and onions and were superrrrr good.  

We basically taught English and then watched conference all day. Dragos came and watched with us. He enjoyed it. 

DUMINICA 2 OCTOMBRIE
Church! No one came because it's conference and they can just watch at home. So we watched in English. Dragos came again. It was also good. I didn't write in my journal Saturday or Sunday so really I have no idea what happened, sorry :)

LUNI 3 OCTOMBRIE 
Today we went shopping and had lunch with Andreea. 

Then we visited Dan at work again and went grocery shopping, we eat a lot of bread and cheese. Today we bought a squash. Pretty normal.

I was excited to find seafood

and then came to email. I inherited a sweater from Sora Kitchen that I love. It's been a good day. 


Sora Lucy Gleason
România/Moldova Mission
July 2016-January 2018