Wednesday's big snow storm.

As much as I love my crocs they are no longer appropriate.  So sad.  I did find some fairly comfortable boots at Snelgros Cash and Carry,  similar to Costco 

 no picture of boots

Several inches of snow that still has not completely melted

We're thankful every day we have a car to get around in.

We were anxious to see how soon the snow was removed from the roads.

Romanians know how to handle snow we found out.

We never did have trouble getting around and getting around is what we needed to do.

Lacy snow on trees hide the ugly Communist apartments

This is the reason we needed to get around.  Fri was our last day to finish our application for our residence permit.  We had been to this office three times and every time they sent us home with one more item to collect.  A month ago it was the medical form.  No doctor in Iasi seemed to have the right form to fill out.  We finally got a doctor to just exam us and say that we were healthy.  That was not good enough.  It had to say "Our health was not a danger to the Romanian people", really?  Then we had to find the two places to pay the taxes.  That took a few days.  Then we had to find the Imigrari office.  That's where we got hung up on our rental contract.  It almost put us past the 90 days.  We were not interested in being deported.  Heaven stepped in and we finally got all the right forms and our picture taken for our permit and told to come back in a month for our cards.  Hurray!

Rand thinks this is the soccer stadium.  We learned that when we got to this land mark we turn right to get to the immigration office.

Beautiful cathedral here in Iasi.

Our Sunday meetings this week were shortened one hour to a two hour block.

The District leaders decided they want quality teaching and the best

way to accomplish this would be to cut back one hour.  With 3-15 members attending on any one Sunday in both Iasi or Bacau Branches it has been hard to get teachers to do more than read the lesson to the members.

Maria and Vesile in front are returning English students.  We had

so much fun Tue. teaching our new block of students.

We're learning to be better teachers and the attendance was much more manageable.

10-12 was much easier than 25 students.

 Immediately following English on Sat. was our first Self Reliance class.

Self Reliance was the class we wanted so badly to teach in Uganda.  The materials are finally available but not in every language.  We have some of the material in Romanian

and today was easy because most was in Romanian.

 

We had fourteen commit to attend the 12 classes and complete the entire class.

Seven of those will be in our class, Starting or Growing a Business.  

The other class is "Getting a Job".  In Uganda they would have also had

a class on how to chose a career and get more education.

 Rand loves talking to the youth.  This young man came with his Dad to English then they both stayed for the  Self Reliance class.  We had another English student from Intermediate class stay for Self Reliance.  The seminar is open to the public, not just members so we were pleased with their
commitment to the class.

Two investigators checking out the Self Reliance materials.  Clodia on the left is 16.  Her parents don't want her to get baptized till she is 18.  In the mean time she is working on her Personal Progress.
Maria Stoic on the right will teach "how to get a good job" portion of our  Self Reliance workshops.  She speaks only Romanian so she is at as big a disadvantage as we are since the the rest of the material is only in English.  At least we can understand it and hopefully the missionaries can translate.

                        My light at the end of the tunnel is growing in our living room window.     

Love all the seeds for sale at Kaufland Super Market

This showed up in the Christmas isle the week after Christmas.

It appears the Romanians like their gardens too.

My favorite quote from the Howard W. Hunter lesson this week.
And what of the meek? In a world too preoccupied with winning through intimidation and seeking to be number one, no large crowd of folk is standing in line to buy books that call for mere meekness. But the meek shall inherit the earth, a pretty impressive corporate takeover--and done without intimidation! Sooner or later, and we pray sooner than later, everyone will acknowledge that Christ’s way is not only the right way, but ultimately the only way to hope and joy. Every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that gentleness is better than brutality, that kindness is greater than coercion, that the soft voice turneth away wrath. In the end, and sooner than that whenever possible, we must be more like him. …