Wearing my favorite skirt I bought in Iasi.  It is so warm.  I didn't bring anything quite like it and won't need it at home.  Hope I can find someone I can give it to when we leave.

Where are we going?  Neptune swimming and gym of course.  We can't let a little bad weather keep us from our exercise.  It did feel weird getting so dressed up only to redress in a bathing suit.

 Something was wrong with the pool clock.  It was 25 minutes behind today

If you can't read it, the wording above the "6" says 1904, the year the pool was built.

 Pres. Craciun had a Monday off a couple weeks ago and offered to take us to visit Cisinida.  See the citadel above on the hill?  Unfortunately that was about as close as we got to visiting it.  We got there at 3 and the trail closed at 3.

 Walking around to see what else there might be to visit.

 This was before the big storm.

 I mentioned in the last blog the walks and drives we try to keep swept.  The flower garden is piled higher and higher with snow.

 Our Proprietor, Ioan Solomon sweeping our patio.

 Our kind proprietor has to park in the snow on the other side of the house.  They have wood to build a garage.  Hope they get it built soon and so thankful we get the carport.

 This was the day it snowed the entire day and into the night.  We were notified by an official that we needed to keep the walkways in front of the church cleared as not to get a fine.  It's hard to clean if people have walked on it.  We scraped and swept for several days to meet the requirement.  We were both stiff and sore from the new muscles used.

 Church buildings new look.  More snow that we got last year.

 The trees are my favorite.  So elegant looking but not where you want to be when it warms up.  It can be an avalanche when it cascades off the branches.

 Flower garden hopefully hiding lots of bulbs and perennials that will appear in a few weeks.

 Rand piled the snow outside our fence in a large pile then backed into it leaving the imprint of the license plate.  Made me laugh.

Check out the parking lot at the grocery store.  We figured that pile of snow would be there till the spring thaw.  Friday decided to be a spring thaw.  It warmed up to 40 and with a stiff wind this pile has shrunk into a muddy mess.  Black ice is now a problem in the mornings.

 This is why we work extra hard to keep our walkways and drive cleaned off. 

 The soras were struggling to find enough to do so enlisted our help in a couple out of town trips to find old names of investigators that hadn't been contacted.  One lady was 9 kilometers away in Cristiana.  It was a very frustrating experience because she nor anyone else we talked to knew how to direct us to her house.  Plus she couldn't give us enough info for "maps" to find it either.  Besides that, 5 minutes walking around out of the car had our feet and fingers frozen.  Sorry to say we finally gave it up.

 Driving around though was magical.  This is the town postings.  Looks like someone took a frosting tip and dobbed every surface with frosting.

 This shot was my favorite

 Electrical poles are cement and we'd never seen them with snow like this before.

 The next day we were successful in finding Mariana who lives 40 kilometers from Sibiu.  She was out front ready to wave us down.  Just warmed our heart.  

Not only that, she had a lovely scorba (soup) ready for us with warm bread and a desert.

 Maraian was a school teacher and owns an apartment in Sibiu too.  The Soras will get with her when she comes back to town.

 She showed us traditional clothes her mother had made her.  She also had some items that she had made.

 Mariana had cleared a path for us from the main road.  It was about a block that she had cleared.

 What a dear lady

 As we left we found a neighbor had widened the path from the main road up to her home.

 The view going home just couldn't be captured in all it's beauty.  We have 9 hours of daylight these days.  Makes for a lot of dark hours.

 We don't often get stopped by a passing train.  This train didn't just pass but stopped right in front of us and let people off for the city of Hasag. (pronounced Ha/shag.  My computer doesn't know how to put a sadela under the s.

 Hasag must be a bedroom community for Sibiu as there were quite a number that exited the train.  

 We also had a good visit with Mariana, the friend from before Christmas.  She has been tied up with family and finally were able to get with her to teach the Plan of Salvation.  She was sad because her daughter had to go back to Italy and now she needs to get out and find a job.

The missionaries to her rescue.  We have been working on advertising for our new Self Reliance class that starts soon.  Hopefully Mariana will be able to come to the class.  The distance to the church has her worried however.

Pres. Craciun has had several meetings with the branch council to make sure we get the program advertised all over town.  Florin checked into prices for advertising in the newspaper.  

The Browns have been working on designing the flyer and printing so the rest of the members can distribute over 100 invitations and post 10 flyers.  We have also been responsible to get the Self Reliance books from the mission office.  We hope we have enough but if not we know where we can get more printed.

Pres. Craciun changed the Sat. games night to Friday.  We had a good turn out and hope to attract more as time goes on. 

Sora Strader is the one to beat in ping-pong.  So far no one has done that.

 Saturday we really wanted to deliver an invitation for self reliance to Anca, an inactive we connected with before Christmas.  For some reason we couldn't find where she lived so just started knocking.  This lovely lady invited us in just like she knew we were coming.  She had a meal she insisted we sit down and enjoy with her.  We did a lot of laughing and listening and she invited us back.  Hopefully we can teach her the gospel.

Poor Elder Brown was out in the car waiting for us.  He forgot his phone so we couldn't call and tell him we were going to be a while.  After the meal she wanted to share with us photos of her grand children.  If I remember right, her name was Mariana too.

The snow on the top of each of these oak tree branches was so beautiful Fri morning.  Photo didn't quite capture the beauty and it is now a thing of the past.

Rand handed me these scriptures for our spiritual thought.  He wishes he could figure out how to convert the whole branch to these truths.

James 2:26 "For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. "        James 1:22 "But be ye doers of the word and not hearers only. . ."                                              Alma 32:27 "But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words."