TRANSFERS

Drum roll please...................................................................! I will be staying in Arad! However, Elder Harrison will be serving as a zone leader in Bucuresti. My new companion's name is Elder Taylor, and I will be training him as a zone leader (meaning this will be his first transfer as a zone leader). He's been in the mission about the same amount of time as Elder Harrison, one transfer less, I think. I've only met him once or twice, so I don't really know much about him but he seemed like an awesome guy and a great missionary the times I did get to talk to him.

Sora Cook will be staying, and Sora Remsberg is getting transfered to Sibiu, which up until now has never had sister missionaries! That will be pretty exciting for her. This transfer there is a big group ahead of me who almost all of them except for one or two are going home this week, so we have 11 new incoming missionaries!! President Hill told me that he is transfering 1/4 of the whole mission to new areas! I'm really excited for this next transfer, and I have a feeling it will just fly by.

Touring an old water tower on p-day
Sora Remsburg,  Sora Cook, and Elder Harrison

Photos from inside a 100 year old water tank in Arad, Romania

Every Friday we have weekly planning where we plan for all of our investigators what we're going to teach them, when we're going to meet, ect. and this last Friday it hit me that I'm actually going into my last transfer. After this, that's it. Kind of a weird thought. I only have six weeks left in the mission! I don't really know how I feel about that. In a way, it's really satisfying though, knowing that I have to give everything I've got for only six more weeks, and then that's it. Earlier on in my mission the amount of time I had left seemed staggering, and sometimes I wondered if it would ever actually end but know that the end is within sight I almost feel like it came too soon. It's like you said mom, there are a lot of things about home that I miss and that I can't wait to go back to, but I have a feeling I will miss Romania more than anything I've had to do without the past two years.






Thanks for sending me Heather's address! I'll send her package as soon as possible. And just so you know, I've already gotten you a set of nesting dolls. They had some at the market place close to our apartment and they were super cheep. Their not the greatest quality, but their hand made and 100% authentic! I was thinking about mailing them to you in a package but I'm afraid of them getting broken or stolen. I know that in the Republic of Moldova they have really nice ones that are hand-made but they are a lot more expensive and I wouldn't have any way of getting one before I go home.

This past week has gone by pretty quickly. We were up in Oradea on Wednesday for a baptismal interview! His name is Christian, he's in his twenties, and he just got baptized last Friday! I conducted the baptismal interview, and his testimony and understanding of the gospel was so powerful! He really gets it. 

Unfortunately things are only continuing to go slowly with our investigators. We've run into R--- a couple times and he keeps telling us that we'll talk later on the phone. M--- keeps having to postpone our apointments for some reason or another; so we've actually been knocking on a fair amount of doors this week. The good part is that we've been meeting some really cool people! This Sunday we were out vila knocking, when a man answered his door and told us he was atheist. Whenever I meet an atheist I'm always curious to find out why they don't believe in God, and this man was open and friendly with us and after a few minutes of conversation let us in his house. 

He said he had a video he wanted to show us that explained why he didn't believe in God, and we agreed to watching it. At first I was a little worried about what I was getting into and the film started with some comedien making some pretty crude and vulgar jokes about God and religion, but that was just a little introduction. The meat of the film was actually really interesting and if anything, strengthened my faith in Christ even more. It took on a historical and scientific standpoint of claiming that Christianity was just copied from other ancient religions. It compared the main gods of the worlds biggest riligions both modern and Ancient, like Helos and Set the Egyptian Sun god and god of darkness, Greek and Hindu gods, and gods from many other cultures.

According to this film all of these major gods had many things in common, like being born on Dec 25 of a virgin with the sign of an eastern star, having 12 deciples, performing miracles, and being resurrected 3 days after their death. He related to the sun being symbolic of all these different "saviors" and the 12 constelations (like virgo, cancer, scorpio, etc) symbolizing the 12 deciples who "follow the sun." The whole take on the film was trying to debunk religion by making it look like it was all based off of astronomical patterns and movements of the sun, earth and constelations but what it did for me was make me realize how "even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator" (Alma 30:44). It was an incredible experience.

That's pretty much all the time I have right now, I wish I could tell you more because so much has happened this week! Enjoy your new art studio mom! That's a pretty big change. What brought it about? Did you get bored again dad? Anywho, I enjoyed the pictures and everything else, especially now that the BYU applicatoin is all done! Woohoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Have an awesome week everyone!

Love,
Elder Myers

P.S. Here's some more photos. Today we toured a water tower that's pretty close to my apartment that's over 100 years old! The last one was taken while we were inside the actual water tank!

Happy September !!!

Catholic Cathedral in downtown Arad, Romania

Ok, hang on, you went to Yellowstone?!?!?!? I'm super jelous. I just told Elder Harrison and Sora Remsberg what happened the last time we tried going to Yellowstone. Those are all awesome pictures! I love the King Tut one. Was that in Idaho or Wyoming? Is that actually King Tut's body? That's pretty cool if it is. And Amanda looks so happy! I still can't get over the fact that she just got married. 

Oh, and woopeee for college stuff being done! Thanks for taking care of all that stuff! Now I just have to wait until October to find out if I get  accepted. Last thing, about the whole trip to Salt Lake City/seeing Heather thing, I think it would be awesome for one thing to go and see everyone in Salt Lake, and that would make it a lot easier and cheeper for Heather. It would also be really cool to try to fly her into Durham, but I understand the whole money thing. Also, since she's graduating in December I really want to be able to go to that too, if at all possible. Just some things to think about.

Back to missionary life, this is the last full week of the transfer, meaning that next Wednesday is transfer day. This weekend we'll find out who's going and who's staying. I really hope that Elder Harrison and I stay together one more here in Arad. I wouldn't really want to pack up and move just six weeks before I go home and have to get used to a new city, district and branch. Plus Elder Harrison have a lot of good things going in our area and a lot of ideas for doing things to help get the church more known in Arad. One of our ideas is trying to put on some kind of an interfaith concert. We just met with a guy named Florin yesterday who is a well known composer, danser and actor here in Arad and does a lot of volunteer work as well to talk about some ideas he had for projects that we could do. We'll see how things turn out.

The River Mures (moo-resh) which runs through Arad

As for investigators, it's pretty much the same old story. Everybodies really busy or out of town. We haven't seen R--- once since our last lesson that was back in the beginning of the transfer. Things are just going pretty slow right now, and we're just trying to make the most out of what we've got. However, for some reason the fact that things are going really slow right now aren't really bothering me that much. I think part of it is that I just have a better understanding now about what missionary work is like here, and what beeing a successful missionary really means. I feel like Elder Harrison and I have been working our hardest and doing our best to carry out the Lord's work here. Not to say that we couldn't improve in some areas, because there's always room for improvement, but we're trying our best.

a street Shane walks down a lot -- Arad, Romania

Zone conference went really well! Our presentation went really well, and we both learned a ton preparing for it. Elder Harrison and I also did a musical number of him playing an arrangment of "Come Thou Font" and us singing together. I would send you a video of it or something, but I don't have anything. At the zone conference there was an alloted time for departing missionaries to bear their testimonies and since this was my last zone conference I was one of those who got up and spoke. There was also Elder Martin and Elder Tefft from my MTC group, and a few other elders from the MTC group above me. It was a very spiritually rich conference. As was church yesterday! All the testimonies born were powerful and the Spirit was very strong.

Thanks again for all the pictures! I'm glad that you all were able to have a good time at Yellowstone and visitng Dad's friends in Idaho. I love you all!

Elder Myers