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| Curtea de Arges, Pitesti, Romania |
Thanks a ton for all the adorable pictures of Ember and Tristan! And those first few paragraphs of your novel were captivating mom. I'm not just saying that! I don't think that not reading any fiction for a year has dulled my sense of literature, if anything I'd say it has sharpened it. I loved the analogy you carried through with the spider, and just from those few paragraphs you learn a lot about your writing capabilities, as well about the character's personality. I never thought that a discription of a college student going to class could be filled with so much detail. Keep it up, it's going to be a really good novel! To be truthful, it was really refreshing reading the product of someone else's creativity. I miss so much not having hours in each day filled with creating something. Sometimes during the day I'll have a song idea or just random tunes running through my mind that kind of make up the soundtrack to my day but I never have any time or the capability of taking it any further. Oh well, I guess I'll have the rest of my life to do that right?
These past few weeks have been fairly cold. In the mornings it will get as low as 2 or 3 degrees Celcius, and throughout the day it's usually between 8-10 degrees. Sooo I guess respectively that would be mid-low thirties in the morning, and then mid-high 40's during the day? I love seeing all the fall colors around. There are a lot of trees in Pitesti for a Romanian city. Last week we never ended up carving pumpkins -- we couldn't find any! So we ended up playing pool for a while and just staying in the apartment. Today, however we went to this place called Curtea de Arges where there is a famous monestary, actually it is depicted on the back of the 1 leu note. That was pretty cool, we met two Americal girls, Rachel and Justeen, who were teaching English in Istanbol that were spending a few vacation days in Romania! That was super random, but it was cool to talk to them and hear about what Turkey is like. One of them lived in Ukraine for a while too. They told us that they were in Brasov the other day and ran into missionaries there too!
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| Curtea de Arges, Pitesti, Romania |
This week week has been pretty challenging, and in the end we still don't have any investigators. We had a miracle lesson on Tuesday in the blocks. The four of us were doing group block knocking, where we will both knock blocks next to each other and see who will get a lesson first. We would switch companions every other block and while Elder Staheli (Elder Martin's companion) and I were together, the second door we rang on the intercom opened up the door to the block, and when we knocked on the apartment door they immediately let us in. We taught the Restoration to a family of four, the parents in their early 40's, a 14 year old son, and a 10 or 11 year old daughter. This was the first time someone had let me in their apartment in I don't know how long. The lesson went really well, the Spirit was really strong and they were such nice and open people. We brought up things like why we don't drink or smoke, and talked a lot about how the gospel has blessed our families. The father did most of the talking, and at one point he asked us "ok, so really, why are you here? You want me to change my religion right?" He then talked about how his family has been Orthodox for over a hundred years and that we had some nerve asking them to change their religion. I asked him if God told him that the Book of Mormon was true, and that this church was His true church if he would change religions, and he said yes. So we left the Book of Mormon with them asking them to read from it and pray about it. They said they would. We then set up a return appointment for Friday at 7:30 pm.
Then at the end of the lesson, we find out that the little daughter plays the guitar! So she brings it out and I played my Romanian song for them, which they loved. I went home that night feeling more happy, excited and satisfied than ever before! And all throughout the week I kept just thinking about that family, and actually getting pretty nervous about what would happen. I was convinced that I had finally found someone that was truly prepared to recieve the gospel at that time and I felt like it was such a huge answer to my prayers.
Then, on Friday about an hour before the scheduled appointment the dad called us and told us that he had talked with his family and they decided that they would not change religions and we didn't need to come over that night. The higher the climb, the greater the fall, and after that phone call I was crushed. I didn't know what to think, what to feel, anything. I just layed on our couch for a good 20 minutes processing everything. Then I went into another room and offered up one of the most sincere, heartfelt and pleading prayers I have ever given. Saturday I did my best to pull myself together, to make myself have the desire to do any kind of missionary work at all.
I really liked what you shared from Steve Young's talk dad, and from reading that I kind of feel like a lot of my inner struggle and failures have been because I've been putting too much focus on my own performance and haven't been reaching out to my companion or the other Elders or the members as much. So far my whole time here in Pitesti I've felt distanced from the branch and the district, and I think a good portion of that is my own fault.
Thanks for the perspective-broadener, as always. It also really helps me to know that you went through similar experiences on your mission, dad. And what you said about being a parent and having to watch your kids go through struggles helped me understand why I feel like my prayers haven't been answered, and I why I've been feeling like I haven't been receiving much guidance from on high. I'm starting to understand what it means when Heavenly Father steps back for a while and lets you do more of the work. It also gives me just the slightest glimpse of what it must have felt like for the Savior, when he was suffering on the cross and for those last seconds of the Savior's mortal life the Father drew His Spirit away. Christ spent the last moments of His life completely and utterly alone. I can't even imagine what that would have been like. Even Christ Himself cried out in anguish, "Father, why hast thou forsaken me?" I guess the fact that God is in a sense "leaving me alone" is a good sign that I am doing my best, and that I am doing enough because he trusts me enough to make it through my trials with as little help as possible. Right now I can't really say that realizing all this makes it any easier, but at least I'm understanding a little more why I'm going through these challenges.
I hope you all have a wonderful week, and here's some pictures of the monestary we visited!
Love, Elder Myers
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