Picture of our Grandson, Warrick Conners (just kidding)

A year ago this is what our Grandson in Texas looked like.  Every time we come to this intersection we think of him and know he doesn't look like this any more as he is now two years old but it is our memory of him.

Elder Brown was tired of the ear ache and loss of hearing he had been experiencing the last month.  Finally went to a doctor.

He was pretty surprised to hear he had a lot of wax in one ear.  After removing it he has heard better and hopes his eustachian tubes soon clear out.  They assigned us an english speaking nurse to interpret for the doctor.

Claudia is a lovely 16 year old that took English class last year.  She then took the lessons and knows the church is true.  Her parents would prefer she wait till she is 18 to be baptized.

In today's lesson I bore my testimony to her that being baptized and receiving the Holy Ghost would help her so much stay close to Heavenly Father.  Without the Holy Ghost as a constant companion you are left on your own to withstand Satan.

Elder Hellewell and Avela are the elders teaching Claudia

Monday night after a very busy day we hurried over to Kaughland for the groceries we would need for our dinner with Andrae and Ioana.  We were too dumb founded to even think of taking a picture of the empty produce section.  Very "Alas Babylonian"!  There was almost no meat either.  As we left wondering what we were going to do for our planned meal the next day we found a guard that spoke English.  He assured us the trucks bringing the food we needed would be there in the night.  West side of the Country had received a meter of snow and stopped the deliveries they had expected.  Wow, all our snow has melted.  We're usually the area with the most snow they've told us.

The next day there were tables heaping with produce.  Relief

Disappointment of the week.  Andrea and Ioana didn't come for our meal on Tue.  An afternoon busy with meal preparation causing and an achey back left Rand and I very disappointed.  The Elders were happy to get a free meal but equally disappointed.  There was such a peaceful feeling between all of us that was really sweet as the Elders polished off almost all the food.

With my assignment to be Doina's business coach I had to have Elder Busha call to ask my questions.  We were quite puzzled what kind of business she planned to start.  Elder Busha googled the word.  Something to do with "sad children or sad old people"  Any guesses?

Wed was the Worldwide Missionary Broadcast.  All six of us piled in the branch president's office to watch.  It was a powerful training.  The point I came away with had to do with helping members identify people they could have the missionaries teach.  Instead of asking if they have someone they would like to have the missionaries teach you ask if they know anyone who has just moved, had a baby, lost someone in death or any kind of event that disrupts normal life either good or bad.  It has been found that events such as these leave folks open to truths they maybe hadn't taken time to consider before.

 Fun cakes we found at a bakery.   

Just for fun we went to the other mall that we need to drive to.   There must be thousands of shops in Iasi.  Not sure how anyone makes a living with so much competition.

Friday was another disappointing day and enriching memory.  We had our last waffle breakfast with our four elders (see picture from last week).  It dawned on me that most our association and dependence is on these guys who are our grandson Bradley's age.  Wonder if he has a senior couple in his district in Equator?  We have enjoyed getting to know these young men and happy that we can work and plan together for the benefit of the Iasi Branch.
Cristina (no picture) appeared Tue at English and said she wanted to be baptized.  The Sister's had met her before Christmas and had a very good discussion with her.  Cristina had even said she wanted to be baptized.  Then she lost her phone and the missionaries hadn't been able to contact her.  For her to show up on the day she had committed to be baptized surprised everyone.  The Elders scheduled Fri to have her come back and have the first discussion.  She didn't come.  So sad again!

Flowers that make our Living room smell Heavenly.

Had twelve at English class on Sat.  It is always bigger - twice as big as the Tue. class.

Right after that we had Self Reliance and Doina had to work.  

We hope that we can get her the material and she won't drop out.  

We had 5 attendees.  

They are learning to work together and share their dreams and challenges.  It was great to see how the program works and how they encourage each other.

Immediately following Self Reliance Business class we had the last activity I was in charge of as the Relief Society Activities counselor.  

We planned a cooked food and a non cooked food.  Sora Stoics is showing how to make filled pasta with a flour potato dough.  The dough was rolled thin then cut into squares.  A cheesy/egg filling was put on half the square and covered with the edges pressed down then boiled.  It was served warm with sour cream and sugar.  At home they would have had an alfredo or marinara sauce.

I think the sisters have had fun doing something  out of the ordinary every month.  

Cristina's healthy uncooked dish included sprouts and chia seeds mixed with water, oil, lemon, chopped onions and salt served on bread.

I was busy trying to take notes on the recipes so we cold duplicate it in the future.  Cristina brought everyone a write up on how to stay healthy.  I think if we spoke the same language we would be best friends.

The two elders assigned to be translators at the RS activity thought they got the best deal and volunteered to come any time.

Daniela is the RS president and her daughter in law, Elizabeth is visiting from America.  5 years ago she was one of the BYU girls who came over for a semester, fell in love and married Mehi (Romanian for Michael).  She and her husband are here visiting for a week.  It was great having a sister who spoke my language.

Sat. night after our busy day President Petalun asked us to prepare a farewell testimony to be read by the missionaries in Sacrament meeting tomorrow.  He was worried that the assigned speaker wouldn't come and we were't going to be there to speak.  We wrote out testimony and a short message.  The next day in Bacau we both were asked to talk.  Vala, we were prepared.

In Bacau the baptismal font is set up in the kitchen. 

This won't be for long as the building lease is up in April and the Branch will need to find a new meeting place.  Our Branch council was directed by Pres. Stoica who drove down with us from Iasi.

He told the members if they wanted to keep their branch they needed to be better at paying tithing.

Elder Brown and I both bore our testimony to them of how paying tithing and fast offerings blessed our lives.  I'll never forget my father teaching us the importance of paying tithing in FHE.

He said he always paid his tithing first and that it made him happy to do it.

I've tried to follow that advise and know that paying 10% to the Lord is a better deal.  With him on our side we make more of the 90% than having 100% without his help.

The sisters in Bacau are trying to find  inactives to help bolster the branch.

Our job after the branch meeting is to drive them out to the members living further than 

walking distance.  

Someone who loved plants was taking advantage of the little light coming in this hallway window.

A kindred spirit.                                                                                                                                Sorry no one was home so didn't get to meet the family we came to see.       

 This week we'll be packing and moving.  Next Sunday we'll be in our new home in Sibiu.  We're praying that it doesn't snow again till we get moved.  And if we could get your prayers we're hoping to get our Residence Permit before we leave.  If we don't we'll have to come back some time and it's a long drive.  Don't really want to do that.

Interesting quote from Elder Rudd:

I love reading about the individual people. I hope they are not just names on a page to you–Lehi, Nephi, King Benjamin, Mosiah, Alma the Younger, Alma the Elder, and other great people like Abinadi and the brother of Jared. You know those were real people. They did live. They lived on the American Continent. I hope someday in the hereafter I will be able to go to stake conference and hear some of them preach. No one has ever told me they are going to do that, but I've got an idea they might. I think we will be holding many conferences, and the Brethren that will come around speaking will be men like Alma and King Benjamin and some of those others.

I hope with all my heart that you have fallen in love with the Book of Mormon.  That when you read about these great men in the Book of Mormon, that they will come off of the pages for you, not only as a name but as an individual. They were all different. Some were tall, some were quiet, and some were short. I don’t know what they all were; but I have kind of fallen in love with them. And some day, if the Lord let’s me in the next world, I want to go to conference and hear them preach.

I would love to hear King Benjamin preach, wouldn't you?

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.

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. …

The old year was celebrated with a live concert on the Piazza.  We went a up around 10 PM and was surprised how few people were there.  Turns out New Years celebrations in Romania are celebrated more with friends and family at home, not like Christmas with so many friends and family checking out the lights and celebration on the Piazza.  The young missionaries told us we got to sleep in time because the noise and fireworks were part of the new 2016 new year.  Hope you all had a great New Years Celebration.

We are dressing now in layers.  

Temperatures are 10-14 degrees Fahrenheit in the day

P-day on Monday you would not have thought it was winter.

Our last day of great weather was spent

at our first visit to a Monastery.

We were told that two steeples like this indicate "Christian Orthodox".  

Three steeples indicates Greek Orthodox.  

Don't quote us on this as sometimes our translation has something to be desired.

The sisters were so kind to go with us.  They are both being transferred and another

set of Elders will move to Iasi.

We were left to wander at our leisure.  

No tours or info were offered.

There was a plaque the sisters tried to read

Much of the structure is over 500 years old 

and the walls surrounding the compound were used as a fortress at one time.

 
The inside was beautiful and elaborate.
It wasn't till we were leaving that we
saw the sign indicating taking pictures
inside the monastery was not allowed.

Thick walls and small windows gave access to the the valleys below

 

Steep stairs lead to the windows as shown above.  

Should have taken picture to indicate size of the opening.

They were not much more than 12 inches square.

We traded our two cute sisters for Elder Avela from El Paso on the far right.

Kept Elder Swafford and Elder Hellewell and inherited

a new District leader Elder Busha from Kaysville Ut.

He will be going home in the next 6 months.  They will be

a great asset to the branch here.  Just not as cute.

Gypsies have some interesting customs this time of year.  Some called it a bear dance.

What it really boils down to is dressing up, making a lot of noise

and begging for money.

These pictures were taken from inside our apartment.  

They would have demanded money to be photographed.

These gypsies were parading around our neighborhood.  It sounded like some sort of construction
project with a lot of banging and noise.  I wonder if the neighbors paid them to go away.

Vasilli painted our African photo.  Now he showed up at church today with a painting

for one of the sisters who has moved on.  

She left instructions for us to get it to her.

We think she will be pleased.

We have been trying to figure out how to teach a Self Reliance Class starting next Sat.

First we were going to have help with the devotional.  (introductory class)

Then they told us we would be needing

a translator and to do it ourselves.  

We definitely weren't too thrilled to hear that.  

Now we think we will have help and are so relieved.

This is the program that we dreamed of for Uganda three years ago.  

It is finally available here but only part of it is translated into Romanian.

We will be teaching the "How to build or start a Business".

Brother Vasille (above) will be in our class.

Sister Stoica will teach how to get a job.  

These two classes will begin a week after the devotional.

Attendees will go to either the "business" class or the "get a job" class after that.

Many of you may be familiar with "Me in 30 seconds" and 

other such programs from home.

This is so amazingly inspired 

and we feel so privileged to be part of training these wonderful Saints

how the Lord wants them to be self-reliant and to have the recipe on how to do it.

PEF is not available here but in Africa that would be a third class that members who do not have the qualifications for a job or to build a business could be part of.

We are so privileged to be part of the Restored Church.  It has blessed our life

immeasurably.  And hope we can in some small way bless the lives

of others here in Romania.

Happy New Year 2016