Salut!

Elder Schanck and Elder Myers on Shane's last day in Bacau

Hey all!!! Thanks for the awesome pictures, Ember is just the cutest thing in the world, as always! So I had forgotten  that the book Wildwood Dancing takes place in Brasov! Heather told me the same thing in an email today! So yeah, this city is just ridiculously gorgeous, I don't think I'll ever totally get over that!

Shane is now here: Brasov  (Brah-shove), Romania

 This week we did a lot of contacting since the lessons that had been set up by the previous Elders all fell through! Elder Simmons probably won't ever admit it, but he's soo good with people! He loves talking to people and he's super enthusiastic at the Gospel and will talk to absolutely anyone! So we've had a lot of really cool contacting experiences I'll tell you about.


 But first to answer some questions. About the music, I don't really have anything to play it from....I'm thinking about buying a CD player or a cheap MP3 player here, so it doesn't really matter how you send it to me, cd's, flashdrive, whatever is easiest. And yes they do have strawberries here, but we're not supposed to eat them--which kind of stinks. We're not supposed to eat any kind of fruit that doesn't have a skin. So, that's kind of a bummer, but oh well. It's been getting pretty warm here and I've already got a tan line on my neck from my shirt collar! 

So a little more about the branch situation and the missionaries. There are 4 missionaries here in total, me, Elder Simmons, Sora Bedebone, and Sora Wilson, who is from Australia. When Elder Simmons got transfered in no one ever told us who was going to be district leader or senior companion until Zone Conference-- which was on Tuesday in Arad. While there, the AP's told Elder Simmons that he would be the District Leader. As for a senior companion, we both barely know what we're doing so we're just treating it like a co-senior I guess haha!


 Church yesterday was pretty good, I met a lot of the members. The branch here has a chapel, I don't know if I told you that, but there are a ton of inactives. Only 20-30 people come to church regularly. We met with the branch president and he's pretty cool, he's a quieter guy but seems really nice. We also met his first counselor,. He's a nice guy. When he found out that we are from America he said  the branch would be looking to us for help in knowing how the church is supposed to be run. Yay! The cohesiveness of the branch in Brasov, Romania is now basically being help up by two 19 year old boys who have been in the country for 5 months!!! Can life get any more insane? I submit that it cannot! But in all seriousness, this is definitely teaching me how to rely on the Lord for EVERYTHING.


 Just this past week has been absolutely insane. One moment I feel totally fine, in control, happy to be doing missionary work, and then a few hours later I will feel completely helpless and have no clue what the heck I am doing. Of course we all know what FINE stands for right? Freaked out, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional. Yep, I'd say that about sums it up haha! 

So one thing serving with Elder Simmons has helped me with a lot is putting myself out there and talking to people. You know me, I'm not too much of a people person, I hate small talk, I'm no good at starting up conversations, I never know what to say, and I'd much rather just give someone a pass along card that try to talk to them. But Elder Simmons will be like, allright Elder Myers, you get that guy, and then I'm gonna go talk to this person on that bench, and then he'll just go and I stumble around for words to say to the person walking towards me. Although it's really hard for me to get going, I've had some really cool experiences from talking to people this past week. Both times started out as an English contact (handing out flyers for our English classes) and telling them about the classes. Then they start asking more questions, and before I know it I'm having just a normal conversation which some how ends up with me sitting there bearing my testimony to them about the Book of Mormon.

Interesting that the sign is written in English--must geared to tourists.

 Oh yeah, and the best contact of the week was a couple days ago when we were in the main park here in Brasov. There were a ton of kids from the Romanian Scouting program, which I didn't even know existed, setting up for some  festival- type thing. Well, sitting around a group of benches were  kids playing guitar and singing! So I turned to Elder Simmons and told him, we're going over there. So we did. I got to play the guitar for a little bit, and while I did that Elder Simmons talked to some of the kids about English class and about why we're here. It was super refreshing for me, and exactly what I needed, being able to do something I knew I was good at, and that I was completely comfortable doing. So we got a phone number from one of the kids there so we can keep in contact. Hopefully some investigators will come out of that at some point down the road. 

A couple other really cool experiences we had, one was with this small family we contacted on the street. They told us we could come over to their apartment and talk about the Book of Mormon! So the next day we had a lesson with them that went really well. They're a pretty young family, the parents in late 20's, maybe early 30's with a 3 year old girl and a 4 month old baby. They were really nice, humble, teachable people. Most of the Romanians we teach tend to be more short attention spanned and hard to stay focused with. But these people listened intently, asked questions about things they didn't understand, shared their feelings about God, and said they'd read the Book of Mormon, pray about it, and come to church! They didn't end up coming to church the next day though, because the mom had to work and the dad wanted them all to go together, so that was a bummer, but I'm really looking forward to our next lesson with them. 


Then Sunday morning on our way to church there was this guy on the bus speaking Romanian to his wife and little kids, but then answered his phone in perfect American English! Elder Simmons was like, hey you gotta talk to him! So I asked where he was from, and he said that he is from Atlanta Georgia and married a Romanian woman and they live part of the year in Romania, and part in America. He said they were baptist and they were also on their way to church. Well, as cool as that was, it doesn't stop there.


 So Sunday evening after church all our lessons we had planned fell through, and we didn't know what to do. So I picked a part of the city and we went there. Well, it turned out that the area I picked out was just a bunch of businesses so we couldn't get much done there. We decided to get on a bus and then get off when we felt like it.m We ended up going back into the park, did some contacting, nothing too spectacular. I was getting a headache and pretty much feeling like a failure and that I had no clue what I was doing, because I didn't. Then around 7:40 pm Elder Simmons went up to this lady sitting on a park bench to give her an English card. She looked like she had been crying and told us in perfect English that she didn't need classes. Then we both kind of recognized each other, and we realized that she was the American's wife whom we met on the bus!!!!!!!! So then Elder Simmons sits down next to her and starts sharing the gospel. We ended up teaching her basically every single lesson all in one, it was so awesome!!! She's super nice and open to talking to us about our beliefs and her beliefs. There were so many times during the lesson when I could tell that the Spirit was whispering to her. She eventually took the Book of Mormon and on our way home we saw her again on the bus stop and she had it open and was reading some verses. I don't know what's going to happen with her or that Book of Mormon, it's possible that she'll get home and her husband will throw it out but either way, we basically answered every soul searching life question she presented to us through the Book of Mormon. At the very least we gave her a lot to think about.

So that was our amazing week! I have no idea what this next one will have for us, but I'm looking forward to finding out! I love you all so much! Haha, and thanks for the advice dad. That made me think of just a few people that we've contacted. I hope you all have a great week! 

Love, Elder Myers