Welcome To Arad!

Shane just moved to Arad, near the border of Hungary

Hey everyone!!! I just got done reading some amazingly wonderful emails sent from Heather! I'm glad to hear that she got the package without any problems.


Holy smokes, so the past few days have been crazy! Yes, being whitewashed means getting transferred into a new area with a companion who also has never served in the area. That's what happened to me and Elder Simmons last year when we got emergency transferred into Brasov. You get home and spend pretty much the rest of that day reading a letter that the previous companionship left you with information about the area, investigators, members they were working with, etc; going through the area book, and trying to get to know the city. 


The Arad district is just us -- the zone leaders -- and a companionship of sister missionaries. Right now it's Sora Henry (who was in Brasov my last transfer there) and Sora Schulb who is in her 3rd transfer. That means that I am a zone leader AND a district leader......yay!!! Just when I thought I was done planning district meetings for every week....I'm looking forward to it though. My companion, Elder Nilsson is sooo awesome! We actually both have served with Elder Simmons, which is pretty cool. He's one transfer ahead of me, but this is his sixth transfer as a zone leader, so he's been showing me the ropes.


Our zone is pretty small, it's Arad, Oradea and Timisoara which makes a total of six companionships: two in Arad, two in Oradea and three in Timisoara. Timisoara used to have two companionships but they're adding one this transfer and guess who it is? Elder Cox!!! I haven't seen him since I left Brasov, so i'm really excited to see him again. 


As for Arad, yeah it pretty much is as far west as you can go without crossing the border into Hungary. The whole region of Ardeal and Transylvania (which is pretty much everything west from the Carpathian Mountains to the border) used to belong to Hungary up until WWII or something like that, so there are a lot of people here who are Hungarian. I LOVE being in the western part of the country! It reminds me of being in Cluj. The people are a lot warmer and more open, slower paced and their accent and cadence has a musical quality to it that I absolutely love.


In other parts of the country like Bacau and the cities around Bucuresti the culture is a lot more harsh. Their accent is a lot harsher, and everything's faster paced. Here in the West people say "ciao" alllllll the time, whereas in Pitesti you would say "buna ziua" or "buna" or "salut" for hello, and "pa" or just "la revedere" for goodbye. Here, everyone just says "ciao" for everything. The city itself is gorgeous! All of the architecture is really old, and there are hardly any blocks until you get more towards the outer parts of the city. The Centru area is beautiful. I'll be sure to send you some pictures next week. 

As for the branch, oh my gosh! It's awesome! Yesterday almost the entire sacrament meeting room was completely filled up, and all with members! There were probably around 40 people at church! And it has a good mix of families, young single adults, single adults, and older couples. On Thursday we had correlation with the sisters and the branch mission leader, Edi (Eddy) and he's super cool! He's in his early 30's, just got married, and takes his calling very seriously. The branch itself seems like it's well organized, which is soooooooooooooooo refreshing.


Right now we have a couple investigators, N--- and C---. N--- is a former investigator who's been coming to church on and off a for a few years and C--- is the husband of a member. We still have to meet C---, but we ended up running into Nicolae outside the church after English class on Saturday. He's a really nice guy and we're meeting up with him on Tuesday. Other than that, the elders who were here before did a TON of member work which we will be continuing. 


The sister missionaries came up with a program that involves making member visits and during the visits having the members assess their understanding and teaching effectiveness on all the missionary lessons. Then in later return appointments re-teaching them the doctrine they were weaker on. The whole idea is to strengthen the members' knowledge of the gospel doctrine and their testimonies and then encourage them to more actively participate in missionary work. The program is genius and encompasses everything that Preach My Gospel teaches about working through members. 

So, needless to say, I am extremely excited for this transfer! I feel so incredibly blessed being sent here with Elder Nilsson. I feel like my time in Pitesti gave me the experience necessary for me to carry out my calling here. I'm looking foward to working with the missionaries in my zone, to learn from them and to share the fire that being in Pitesti gave me with everyone. Elder Martin is the branch president in Timisoara, so it will be fun seeing him again too. 

Thanks for looking up college stuff mom, I know how much of a pain that can be. It sounds like college expenses are getting pretty bad. That's crazy that tuitions are so high that the Junior Colleges are getting hard to get in to! It's sounding like BYU might be my best bet after all............we'll see. I hope you all have a wonderful week, and tell Eli I wish him luck in the school play. That sounds so fun!! 


Oh yeah, one more thing I forgot to mention. There's a member here, Fratele Moldovan that we visited Friday who teaches guitar at a University here and he also does repairs on instruments and just about any kind of music equipment, and has a band that he plays with every week. He's so cool! Today we're going to spend some of p-day over there jammin' on his guitars! I'll tell you all how it goes. I love you!

Elder Myers