Happy Halloween!!

Halloween party in Pitesti, Romania

How perfect is it that Halloween has fallen exactly on P-day?! Today we're going to by some pumkins from the piata, take them back to our apartment and carve them! I'll send you some pictures of them next week. Sounds like you all are getting ready for an awesome Halloween! On Saturday the branch had a Halloween party, and it had a pretty good turn out. There were only a few members, but the few members that came brought a bunch of friends! We played some games like bobbing for apples and the one where you have to eat a doughnut hanging from a string without using your mouth. It was pretty fun, it was also one of the most chaotic social functions I've ever been to. Lets just say that Romanians have a very different concept of how to plan and organize a party!

That's awesome that the journal turned out so good, I'm sure Raul will be really exited to get it! It's so weird thinking about things back in Brasov, I'm just totally out of the loop. I don't even know if he's been baptized yet! It was supposed to be last Saturday I think. Thanks for sending me that summary, I can't wait to read excerpts from your first chapters! It sounds like you've got a good intrigueing and attention-catching plotline planned out. Just from reading those two sentences I can only imagine all the different things you can do with the story. It almost sounds like it's got a little bit of a Hunger Games flavor to it. Good luck writing!! 

Wow, so it's the last day of October, and we're about halfway through the transfer already! You asked what we've been doing for p-days, and the answer would be not a whole lot. My first week we went bowling at one of the malls, last week we just stayed in my apartment and played Monopoly, and then this week we're carving pumpkins, like I said. There are a couple of cool places that we'll go to eventually, there's a monestary close by that is depictied on the back of the 1 leu note, and theres also a fortress that was owned by Vlad Tepes, so we'll be going those eventually. I kind of want to wait until it snows to go there, because it would be sooooo pretty. Plus two of the Elders here have already been to both places, and they'll probably be transfered out next transfer. 

This week's been pretty eventful, on Monday night the zone leaders Elders Johnson and Pettit (Elder Johnson was one of my zone leaders with Elder Vekony when I was in Brasov and Elder Pettit is in the MTC group ahead of me) came up for exchanges. I spent Tuesday out with Elder Johnson, and he really helped me a lot. I have a ton of respect for him, he's definitely one of the missionaries I've really looked up to in my mission. He helped me understand the Romanian culture a little better, and he helped me start to kind of pull myself out of this rut I feel like I've been in. Mainly he helped me improve my attitude about everything. He helped me realize that a big part of the reason why the work has been so dissappointing and frustrating for me is because I haven't been having very much faith that my day to day efforts are really making a difference. He told me how he was in my exact same position, in his third transfer of being senior companion, and things were going pretty rough for him. He told me that what was bringing him down was that he didn't have any faith in himself, that what he was doing on a day to day basis was really making a difference; and  that once he realized that he started to change is attitude, and things really started picking up.


The next couple days after that exchange, I decided that I was going to change my attitude about the work, and people started coming out of nowhere that we would talk to on the street and who would listen to us and tell us that they actually WOULD like to meet up and to hear our message. This week we've met a couple families that hopefully will eventually become more interested and read the Book of Mormon, and things just felt better over all. Towards the end of the week things started slowing down again, and I found myself starting to slip back into the negative attitude and mindset I had before but now I know how to recognize that, and I know how to combat it.


So then a day after the exchange, President and Sister Hill and the Assistants came to Pitesti for interviews, and those went really well too. President Hill is such an incredible man, and does so much to really try to understand and get to know the missionaries in the mission. Then Saturday was the Halloween party. Oh yeah, and then Saturday night/Sunday morning was the end of daylight savings. No one in my district knew about it, and so we all showed up to church an hour early! It was weird when what we thought was 10:00am rolled around (that's when church starts) and there were maybe three members at the church.

Right now, mom and dad, I just want to give you a big thank you. Gosh, reading my weekly emails must be stressful for you lately, they've pretty much just been me being dramatic and talking about all the problems that are going on. I'm really sorry. Thank you for always emailling me back with encouragement and a positive attitude! Thank you so much for your advice, dad. Just so you know, the analogy you shared in that quote made perfect sense, and really helped me understand the situation I'm in better. 

Thanks once again, and I hope that your don't worry too much over me... things have been hard lately, but deep inside I know that I can always turn to the Lord for help. And let me tell you, I've never put so much value and importance on my prayers as I do now. I have learned to make prayer my emotional outlet, since I don't really have a guitar with me, and I have been developing a stronger testimony of the power and necessecity of prayer than I have ever had. I know that Heavenly Father always listens, and that's the key. He always LISTENS, which means that He always understands me and he knows how to help me the best. 

I love you all so much, and am looking forward to some pitctures of Halloween next week!

Love, Elder Myers

P.S. Here's some pictures from the Branch Halloween party!