WOOOAAAAAAAHHHH!

So. This is what's up. Last week, things were going business as usual. Elder Schanck and I put in a ton of work and we actually had an awesome next week planned out. We had a second lesson with Alexu that went really really well! He brought two of his friends, Ionuts and Cosmin and they're both super super cool. And actually right now as I'm writing this I'm feeling like I already told you, so maybe that lesson was the week before. Oricum, if I already told you about it, oh well. The lesson went really well, they're a group of really friendly, smart kids who've got their heads on straight. They had a lot of really good questions and were super open with us too. And Alex said he would come to church on Sunday as well!! Oh yeah that's what it was. That lesson was the week before last, and this week he came to English and said he would come to church. ok. So he's progressing really well! We had a bunch of other potential investigators we found while going through the area book, so we had a good week coming up. 


Then came Saturday. Saturday afternoon I was on an exchange with Elder Harvey and we were at his apartment literally seconds away from saying a prayer before eating lunch when President Lundberg called him. Then Elder Harvey gave the phone to me, and told me that I was being re-assigned to Brasov and had two and a half hours to pack my bags and catch a 4:30 train into Bucharest, where I would meet my new companion and we would be taking a train Sunday afternoon to Brasov.  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

So here I am, in Brasov!! The day before yesterday I woke up, never even thought about Brasov. I was looking forward to the exchange, and looking forward to the next week. And now I'm in Brasov. My new companion is Elder Simmons which is sooooooo awesome!!!!!!!!!! He was in my MTC district, and is such a cool guy, I couldn't ask for a better companion for this situation. And here's the situation. So Sunday we went to church in Bucharest, which was pretty cool and after Sacrament meeting President Lundberg filled us in on what has been happening. He told us that the missionaries have had a bad reputation with the members here in Brasov due to past missionaries not keeping the mission rules. President told us that we were going to be under a lot of pressure to prove ourselves. Apparently there is also a lot of division in the branch .


 So here we are. We know nothing about this city whatsoever. This morning we didn't even know where the church was. There are sisters serving here, Sora Wilson and Sora Bedebone (whom I served with in Cluj!!!). They told us to meet up with them at the church, so we had to take a taxi there. Haha luckily the taxi driver knew where the church was!! He must have recognized us as missionaries, knew what church we were from, and so when I was trying to read the address of the back of one of my pamphlets he told us he knew where the church was! 

All I really have to say is we've got our work cut out for us! The only thing the former companionship left us was a short letter giving small descriptions of some of their investigators, and a ridiculously messy apartment. We will be spending most of today cleaning. Oh yeah and in the middle of all this crazy-ness we are catching another train at 9:00 tonight to Arad for zone conference which will be Wednesday and Thursday! Absolutely insane.


 Right now, one of the things that is keeping me sane is that just about everywhere I look my breath gets taken away because this city is sooooo amazingly beautiful! It is literally in the middle of the mountains, and every direction you look, you see towering, green forested mountainsides. The air is fresh, everything is green, and I'm so happy to be back in the West, where people will actually say "hi" to you! The people's accent is easier to understand, and I feel a little more at home here. It reminds me of Cluj. Which, even though I was there only a transfer and a half ago, it feels like forever. Speaking of which, today I got an email from Elder Vogelsberg!! Well, Tyler that is now. He is back home in Texas, last transfer was his very last one!! He gave me his email so if you could forward this to him I would really appreciate it. It was so awesome hearing from him!! 

Well, that's about that. I'm sorry I didn't send any pictures. I forgot to bring my chord that connects my camera to the computer. I promise I'll send more next week! . Do I need anything in a Birthday package? Actually, could you send me up some cd's with music? I'm really wishing I had gone through my music and picked out stuff that would be missionary appropriate. I'm thinking some Kenneth Cope and Nickel Creek would be nice, pretty much anything that's spirit-inviting and that you think I would like. I think Allyson would have some good music suggestions as well. 

Oh, and in answer to the three questions, EVERYBODY smokes here, from an old man in his 70's who looks like he could croak any day, and a group of 12 year old kids hanging out after school. I'm not even sure if there's a legal smoking age. It's probably 18, but either way it doesn't seem like many people care. They can pretty much smoke wherever they want except on buses, in businesses, and pretty much all restaurants. Some restaurants have non-smoking sections, but not too many as far as I've seen. And the drinking age here is 18. I'm pretty sure it's that way all across Europe. 

It sounds like you all had a really good weekend! The memorial service for Uncle Brian sounded absolutely beautiful. I could just picture it all out in my mind and it seemed very peaceful to me. Thanks for sending me another one of Adam's letters! It's so awesome to read his experiences and compare our two missions. It all seems a lot different! I really feel like Romania is an extremely unique country, culture, and mission!  

I love you all so much and you should all look forward to some beautiful scenes of Brasov! 


Elder Myers