Vine Primavara!

Shane with Aurelia and Salvatore. He considers them his "Romanian grandparents." Salvatore is a member of the church, and Aurelia is planning to be baptized soon. This photo was just taken March 11th. 

   

Here comes Spring!!!! This week has been wonderfully pleasant and warm -- in the 60's and almost all of the snow is melted now. Soooooooooooooo the answer to the money question: first of all, yes this week is transfers mom, and yes you will find out where I'm going today, second of all, my days in wonderful Cluj Napoca are over, I'm being transfered to Bacau where I will be companions with Elder Schank who will be the branch president there! Bacau is in the east, so I'm going to the opposite side of the country! Elder Vogelsberg knows everyone who's going to be in my new district, and he said that I'm going to have an awesome distrtict! This transfer's been really awesome, and its going to be sad leaving this district (I'm the only one leaving Cluj and Elder Vogelsberg will be training a boboc straight out of the MTC) and this amazing branch, but I'm excited for what's to come! 

So about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, I had actually heard about it earlier this week, and I've been thinking about Adam. I'm soooo glad to hear that he and all the other missionaries in Japan are safe. In his last letter he told me he was serving in a city that was up in the mountains, so I was hoping that he would still be far enough inland and elevated to not be directly affected by the tsunami. And it went all the way over to Crescent City and Santa Cruz!! Holy smokes, that's insane!

So random funny story right now. You all know how I've been known to do stuff in my sleep (sleep walk, talk, make weird noises, etc) Well I haven't sleep walked at all on my mission, which kind of surprises me, but Elder Vogeslberg told me that last night I started just cracking up in my sleep! He just heard me laughing, and mumble something and then laugh some more! Hahah that's a first, I've never had anyone tell me that I laughed in my sleep before!

 On Thursday and Friday I went on exchanges with Elder Brunner in Sibiu which was fun, it was cool to be able to spend a day with him again, since he was in Cluj last transfer. So that Thursday night Elder Vogelsberg was with Elder Bennet - the other zone leader - in Cluj and they had lessons with Gyongyi and Vasile.

So a little about investigators, I've attached a picture of me with Salvatore and Aurelia, and then one of me and Vasile (my Romanian Uncle). Aurelia and Salvatore are doing really well, the're not quite moved out yet, but they're really close. They have a second layer of paint to lay down, and they just have to finish putting in appliances, etc. But for sure Aurelia should be baptized within a month! Gyongyi has been sick the past couple of days so she wasn't able to come to church this week, but she's continuing to progress and straight on course for baptism on the 26th! We've been praying a lot for her to be able to forgive herself for some of her past sins that she still feels a lot of guilt and remorse for. She's done everything she needs to to recieve forgiveness, she's just having a hard time letting go. We're trying to help her see that as soon as she lets go of her past she will feel God's forgiveness and love.

 Then Vasile, from what Elder Vogeslberg told me, has set for himself a baptismal date that he wont tell us because he wants it just to be between him and God - which is understandable, just a little frustrating haha. He also told us that he said he's been praying a lot to know if this is the true church, and a few days ago he had a dream that for him was an answer to his prayers, and now he knows that this is Christ's church. When he's baptized he's going to have a really strong testimony and he's going to be a really really strong member. He did say, however, that for now he wants to start living like a member, so we're going to talk about exactly what that means, and commit him to staying to church for all three hours, talk about church callings, stuff like that. Now as for our miracle family that we block nocked into, sadly they've kind of dropped of the map to us. We've tried setting up another lesson with them, but they've just been pretty wishy-washy about it. So for now they're dropped. Hopefully sometime down the road they'll keep reading the Book of Mormon and start meeting with missionaries again.

But a cool random experience Elder Vogeslberg and I had on Saturday, we were just walking down one of the main streets in Centru (downtown basically) making our way to a lesson, when this guy calls out to us in English from his apartment window. He asked us what church we were from, we told him, then he asked us if he could come down and talk to us for a couple minutes. He a black middle-eastern college-aged guy going to med shcool in Cluj named Mohammed. He was born Muslim, but he's really open to learning more about other religions, and said how if you're so sure about your own faith then you should learn more about other religions to see the differences, and also to see if there's truth in other faiths and maybe you find that your religion isn't the right one. So he asked if he could set up a meeting with us and wants a Book of Mormon and learn about our doctrine. He said that he had talked to sister missionaries in Sweden (where he was raised) and wants to know more! How cool is that, all we were doing was just walking down the street and a missionary opportunity literally just called out to us! To me it was another reminder of how much people do notice us just walking down the street!

So Thats about it for this week, next week I'll be telling you all about Bacau and my new district! Tomorrow night I take a train down to Bucharest to meet Elder Harvey, who will be in my district. Then we will take a train to Bacau and I'll meet Elder Schank. Thanks so much for those adorable pictures of Tristan and Ember! Thats so funny to hear about Allyson being torn about not letting her daughter draw on herself haha! Well you all have a wonderfull week, I love you!

Elder Myers