Adunare in the Hungary/România Mission

Our week began with the appearance of huge digging equipment outside our apartment.  Brent asked some questions and found out that the owner is planning to put in the walking and bike riding paths for the park that will be part of the complex. We learned that a factory used to be on the property and that a big investor has big plans to put in a bunch of apartments. There is only one building now, that's the one we live in, but there will be more as you can see in the 3D model below.  Our building is shown in the lower left corner.  BIG dreams, but they seem pretty confident it will happen.  The most exciting thing we did this week was to take a road trip to Cluj on Friday.  We got up at 4:30, picked up the Sisters at 5:30 and arrived in Cluj for the Zone conference at 9:45.  Just in time for the 10:00 meeting. President and Sister Ivory will be leaving the mission in a month and are working hard right up to the finish line. President Ivor...

Well, it's Tuesday and this is normally a Monday job.  Not yesterday, but Monday last week when Brent was on his walk, he found a butcher shop.  He hoped they would have some real bacon, not the see through stuff that we find in the markets.  It was tough to communicate with the two women in the store but he made it to our apartment with his prize.  One fun thing we noticed one morning was that we could hear a cuckoo bird sound.  At first, I thought one of my neighbors must have a cuckoo clock, but then I realized that we had the door open to our porch and that the cuckoo did not end like it should have if it was a clock.  So we kept listening and realized that we had a cuckoo outside our building.  Here is a photo of one I found on the internet. Brent did a little study on them and found that they lay their eggs in another birds nest and let them raise their young.  Wierd. They are called parasites because of this.  ...

The other day we went to a store that we felt would be Romania's answer to Home Depot.  The store even had the same color scheme, and font design for their logo.  It is called Bricko Depot.  That's quite funny. We went there looking for a small valve for our water filter system.  They did not have what we needed and recommended that we go next door to  a store called Dedeman.  It turned out to be an even bigger better home depot type store, although they did not have the valve either. While we were there I found this model of normal construction for homes and other buildings we see around here, so I took some pictures. The construction is of concrete and clay blocks very similar to clay chimney liners like seen above. They start on concrete and build up the tile blocks leaving places on the corners and multiple places in between corners to have reinforced concrete supports both vertical and horizontal.  They pour the concrete after the...

One big adventure this week was navigating the system to obtain a Visa.  The Elders took us or went with us because we cannot speak the Language.  We started by paying a couple of different taxes at two different places.  It cost about $500  for each of us.  Brent and Elder Paul in the tax payment office.  We are waiting for our turn. Pretty small office.  You go to one window to get the paperwork and another to pay.   The interesting thing about Romania is that many businesses have a little tiny door on the street, or possibly a gate.  It is difficult to see from the street what is inside.  We walked down a narrow sidewalk from the street and waaalla  . . . . there was this nice doctors office.  Pretty modern with lots of glass walls and such.  When we talked to the receptionist we were told to go to room 5 for our medical paperwork.  There were about 8 people ahead of us so we waited probably an h...

Besides the great adventure Brent already posted, where he took the Elders and Soras to the fortress, here are a few notes from week 5. We had a hard time getting appointments this week.  Many fell through, but we were able to meet with Sister Krnacs who lives in a small town outside Arad.  This dear sister has to ride her bike to the train station, then take the train for about an hour to arrive in Arad.  Then she walks another 45 minutes to get to church. She lives alone in a small house and rides her bike to work.  At work her co-workers give her troubl e because she belongs to the church. However, she has a positive outlook on life.  Smiles easily and loves the gospel. Left to right: Sora Alger, Sora Anderson, Sister Krnacs, Elder Andersen. There are big fields of yellow all over Romania.  We first saw them on our drive from Bucharest to Arad.  Sister Leavitt also noticed them and posted on Facebook that she thought they were musta...

 It was P-Day and the young missionaries wanted to go to the Soimos Fortress.  The Soimos Fortress is an old Castle type building built in the middle 1200s.  The fortress is on the top of a very steep hill.  We walked for about 20 minutes to get to the top.  I told the young missionaries that they could go ahead of me and I'd catch up.  It's like climbing the Menan butte.  We stopped for photos often and I did just fine.  I got there the same time as everyone else.  The castle is very old and left in ruins but very fun to see. The walls are all at least 4 Ft. thick and made of some type of cement and lots of rock.  It looked like it did not take a lot of skill to build, just lots of labor. I loved all the arches and towers.  Some of the towers and walls are many stories tall.  According to google this fortress had been under siege many times. There is Elder Meek looking out an arched door or windo...