Adunare in the Hungary/România Mission

Buna Dim in ea ț ă  - Good morning! We received our transfer instructions on Saturday so we began week 13 with helping our Elders and Soras make their connections with their new companionship. The Elders missed their train on Sunday night because they decided to do some last minute visiting branch members.  In order to get anywhere, they have to take a train or ride the transit system.  It is hard to do anything quickly.  We received a call about 15 minutes before their train was to leave saying they needed a ride because they were running late.  I thought it would be a MIRACLE if we made it to the train in time.  A miracle did not happen.  Then we had to figure out what to do about it.   The big problem is that most transfers are scheduled carefully like a set of dominos.  If one part gets messed up, it affects many others.  If a set of Elders misses the first leg of their transfer, it can cause problems down the line.  Elder Paul was supposed to be in Bucharest on Monday, locat

This week has LOTs of pictures. For our Monday preparation day, we got our laundry done and then decided to see if we could find the Siria fortress. See it way up at the top of the picture! It is straight up the mountain on both sides we looked at.  Brent wants to climb it someday.   On our way, we also found a couple of monasteries. One was way up in the forest on top of a mountain.  The ride was pretty but there was really not much to see but a gate, and it was locked.  We stopped to check out the map that explained about it.   The second monastery was in a town called Lipova.  The name of it is Saint Maria Radna and it a currently occupied monastery.  We were the only people there at the time we stopped, but we could see that they must have lots of visitors sometimes.   We looked at the saints at the bottom of the stairs and then climbed up to the entrance.   There were two benches at each of the sanctuaries for kneeling to pra

So, one detail I left out of last week's post. . . . Brent took a bite of a piece of ethnic sausage called "mici" and broke off a crown in the back of his mouth.  The fix for this problem became the focus of our week.   We began by talking to President Ivory about it.  He suggested that we go to Timisoara as it is a University town and would probably have a few more choices for dentists.  Then we called Mike Merrell, our dentist in Rexburg.  He checked Brent's dental records and we learned that the tooth had a 21-year-old root canal in it.  We started thinking that tooth would be brittle and possibly be broken in a way that the crown could not be glued on again.   Brent looked on the internet and chose a Dentist who could do implants, surgery and such and we scheduled an appointment. (Bonus he also speaks broken English, so at least we could communicate. Yeah!) Our fears were confirmed.  Following an Xray, which the Dr. sent us to the mall to get, (everything is h