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