Fericita Martisoara!

Hey there everyone!  Thank you mom and dad for those wonderful emails. Somehow every week when I hear from you and then weeks when I get an email from Heather as well, you allways say exactly what I need. So tomorrow is Martisoara (mart-see-shwar-uh) which is kind of like the Romanian's Mother's Day, only for women in general. Apparently March 8 was the day when womened gained voting rights and stuff like that in Romania. There's been tons of street vendors selling flowers and little jewelry trinkets and things like that everwhere, and last week we bought flowers for some of our female investigators.

 Man, once again this week has just flown by, and now a week from today I will be finding out where I'm going for the next transfer! Aah the hiking sounds absolutely wonderful, and that's awesome that Heather's coming up at the end of the month. You should definitely take her to Phantom Falls. Last year when we went to Table Mountain we went to the water fall that we usually go to. I had wanted to go to Phantom Falls, but I couldn't remember how to get there. That's too bad that Eli's been sick....Elder Vogelsberg has been pretty sick this week too. He's on the up and up now though. Man, this was a pretty rough week for him. On Tuesday morning he got a call from President Lunberg that his mom has been diagnosed with skin canncer and would be having an operation that week! Needless to say, he was really worried. I can't imagine how hard it would be for me to find out that one of you got cancer, and have to keep on doing missionary work! Thankfully he was able to call his mom on Wednesday night, and she told him that everything was going to be ok, that the doctor was really good and that the cancer was only in stage 1, so there was a really good chance that it hadn't spread past one of her lymph nodes. That day we fasted for her as a district and on Thursday she had the operation. Friday morning Edler Vogelsberg got another call from President Lunberg saying that everything went well with the operation, and they were biopsying the lymph node to see if the cancer spread, but the doctor had told them he would be shocked if the cancer had spread at all. So.......yeah, quite the eventfull week! Talk about an emotional rollercoaster. It was hard for me just to see my companion going through that. I felt so useless. But things are much much better now, and Tuesday he will know the results from the biopsy.

As far as investigators go, Gyongyi is doing really really well. She came to church last week, and really liked again. In our lessons we've been reading out of the Book of Mormon with her and teaching her all the different commandments, and she is so close to being completely ready for baptism! Our other baptismal date, Eni we ended up having to drop. Her story is kind of a sad one. She has a testimony of the Book of Mormon, she told us she can feel the Holy Ghost when she reads it and that it is a holy book, and she really feels like she needs to get baptized, but she doesn't want to change religions. We've been trying to get her to come to church so she can feel the Spirit there, but she just won't come, so we just had to tell her that if she wouldn't come to church then we couldn't meet anymore. That was kind of sad and frustrating, but oh well, what can you do? On the other hand, a couple days ago we ran into Mihaela on the bus! Coincidence? I think not! We talked to her for a little, she said that life's been pretty hard, she's just been working a ton. She wanted to come to English class on Saturday though! We told her that English had ended and won't be starting for a couple more weeks, but that opened a window of oportunitiy. I called her the next day to set up a lesson for Saturday, and she started to say that she was too busy to meet, and this and that, but I was persistent and I set up a lesson for tonight! I'm excited to see how she's doing and try to help her rekindle her testimony!

And more good news!!! On Friday we had a lesson with Salvatore and Aurelia (my Romanian grandparents) and had a lesson on miracles and sacrifices, then talked about them working towards having one of them move out, since they found an apartment. They told us that they are more than willing to make this sacrifice, and they've already been making plans to move, and have already bought a new bed for the other apartment and everything! Those two are sooo amazing! Their faith is so strong, and I could just feel the power that comes from faith like that as Salvatore told us how he knows that if they make this sacrifice so that Aurelia can get baptized then God will help them with the other things they are in need of. I left that lesson feeling so full with the Spirit and so good! Vasile is also making progress towards baptism. He told us how a couple weeks ago he didn't go to church, and it was just a bad week in general, things going wrong with work, and this and that, and then the next week he did go to church and he said the following week was so much better! He's starting to recognize all of the answers he's gotten and knows that he needs to get baptized, at this point it's just a matter of when. This week we're going to give him a baptismal date towards the end of the month, and help him put his faith to the test and make this step!

So, this next week should be nice and busy, like usual. Its kind of ridiculous how many other investigators we have. I only talked about the ones close to baptism. We still have at least 10-15 others, most of which we haven't even been able to call and set up with because we're so busy with other ones! Of course there's going to be a couple of them that we will be dropping this week, but still, lots of investigators! Both of the companions I've had have said that this is by far the most investigators they've ever had at the same time in their entire misison! Cluj is a miracle city, and ripe and ready for the gospel! Well, I hope you all have an amazing week, and thank you so much for all the love, support and help I get from you. I love you all!

Cu dragoste,

Elder Myers