Our days in Iasi are numbered!                              

We have been informed by our Mission President that we'll be transferred to Sibiu the end of the month.  There are no senior couples coming to replace us here in Iasi or Bacau.  We sure have mixed feelings about leaving  our dear friends here but excited for a new adventure.  Anyone out there want to come to Romania and take our place here?

This week's new adventure was finding a post office to send Grand Children

a birthday wish.  Thank heavens for google.

An Artist on the piazza flagged us down.  He said that he did the Joseph Smith

portrait that hangs in the church.

He kind of reminds us of Vaseli, our branch artist.

Confirmed Eastern Orthodox member, Natalia loves having us come by to visit.  

Her daughter Anastasia is named after the famous Russian princess.

Natalia took our picture.  Bottom right is her sister that we didn't get her name.  

They are transplants in Iasi from Moldova.

Reminded us of home

The Mission President's goal was to use our apartment to teach lessons.

Here the elders who can't teach sisters alone are

teaching a 30/30 in our living room.

30 minutes of  private language training and 30 minutes of gospel lessons

Alexandra is drawing pictures of prepositions - 

on, under, above, below etc.

Andrea is the newest member of the branch.  He was baptized a few weeks before we came here.

Then he married Joana who is not a member.

Wednesday they invited all us missionaries to dinner. 

Andrea was pretty animated and fun as he described what he lectures on as a professor

at the University.  His wife is working on her masters and understands English pretty well.

She did most of the interrupting.

We invited them to come to dinner at our house this coming week

and for Joana to have the missionary lessons.

She was very happy we offered to teach her the lessons. 

 They are what will make this branch successful.

Following in the Ballstaaedt's footsteps we have a waffle breakfast every Friday

before District meeting.  The Elders love it.

Our first "How to grow or start a business" class that Rand facilitated.  

To his right is Radu who helped with the translation.  We had six of the seven

who signed up attend.

The missionaries translated the first chapter for us into Romanian so

the students would have their own material to study.

Radu will most likely take our place after we teach next week and move to Sibu. 

Radu is a busy man.  Not only is he a student engaged to be married

but also the District second counselor.

Doina is the only woman taking the class.  I will be her 

action partner.  Students encourage and 

check up on each other to inspire

them to work on achieving their goals.

Fifteen minutes before Sacrament meeting started these cute girls 

from USA showed up.  We call them the BYU girls 

but not sure that description is true.

They have come for 4 months to volunteer at an orphanage and most are from Utah.  

They sure add zest to our little branch.

This week our favorite quote comes from Kim B Clark's address at the October General Conference: We do not have to be perfect, but we need to be good and getting better.  May you each have a great week finding ways to be good and trying to be better than you were last week.