15 January 2018 - Week 41

Tender mercies of the Lord are all around us.  The Arad county record archive was finally open this week making possible our trip to find some records for a person who lives Germany.

The tender mercy was in the way we came to have this assignment.  Long story made short, the Lord has a way of doing his work.  We were asked to try to locate a birth record for the grandfather of a man who lives in Germany.  His grandfather was born in Arad, Romania.  We were happy to give it a try.   It has been a fun adventure.  We did not face as much difficulty as we expected at the archives because the archivist spoke English.  He helped us get a pass that allows access to the archives for a year.  Then, he helped us compile a list of the records we wanted to look at, based on the records available and what we were trying to do. We can request 5 books each per day.  We went page by page through the records looking for the surname of the person we were looking for.  Sadly, the records in the archives did not cover the years we sought.  We will go to the City Hall and see if we can find them there.

The list

Sample of the beautiful records we looked at.

We found a few records we wanted to copy in case they were helpful to the family we were looking for.  I asked to take a photo with my phone camera, but it is not allowed.  If we want to take photos of documents we have to go to the financial office in downtown Arad and buy a permit.  It costs 7 lei ($2.00 approx) and we can take as many photos as we want.   We decided that was a good place to start the next day.

Next day.  We go to get the photo permit before going to the archives.  Now we just have to figure out where the office is.  "Close to the City Hall" the archivest told us.  Hmmm... there are lots of buildings around City Hall.  We will have to go from office to office hoping someone will speak English and point us in the right direction. After making several stops we finally arrive at the right office.  There is a looooong line and a security guard who explains which side of the hall we should sit on.  

This photo does not show the line very well.

This chart is hanging in the financial office.  It shows their money and it's denominations.

We talk to the lady at the window.  She doesn't speak English and our Romanian doesn't help.  So the security guard takes us to another office.  A lady there speaks English and says, "Ok, you just need to go to Office 10."  We say, "We were just there!"  "They do not understand what we need."  She was very helpful and accompanied us back and explained everything to the ladies there.  We decide rather that go through that all again, we will buy several photo passes if they will let us.  They agreed and announced it would be 35 lei.  About $10.  We get out our money and move to the next window where we will be able to pay for the pass.  The lady at the pay window is putting on her coat.  We decided it must be her break time.  She returned in 10 minutes.  We paid for and received our passes.  Wow.  

Back to the Archives we find the records we want to copy and get about 10 photos.  We looked through a couple of the books to be sure we did not miss anything and we were done for another day. 

More "tender mercies"  today.  We have been asked to take on some new assignments and had to drive to Oradea for training.  We decided to stop on the way at a little town where we could find more records to add to those we found in Arad.  One of the people we were looking for was born in the little town.  We walked from building to building trying to find someone who could understand us and direct us to the City Hall. We finally found some friendly police who walked us to the building.  Inside we found more friendly people who found an English speaker who accompanied us to the records office and told the recorder what we needed.  He found the record easily, let us look at it, and write down the information we saw.  Miracles.

We saw a couple of cool things on our drive to Oradea.  The first one is a shepherd wearing the traditional shepherd's coat called a cojoc.  The coat is made of sheepskin and has no arm holes.  It wraps around the man and is sometimes used to sleep in as they stay with the sheep. 

Shortly after I took this picture a semi-truck passed by and scared the sheep.  They ran around a bit.  It was so interesting to see how they looked to the shepherd to see what to do.  He put out his arms and they calmed down and faced him.  Every sheep was looking at him.  It was so cool.  

Men standing in the road in front of a church for a funeral procession.

Here are a few pictures from our trip to Oradea.  We walked around the town center or "Centru".

Orthodox church

Beautiful front door of the church

A big container of "Holy Water" outside the church.  People bring their own containers and fill them here.

Inside a Catholic church, also on the square.

This nativity scene was set up inside the chapel.

This cool old tractor with a huge load of wood was driving down the road when we went for our walk.

On Friday we had the Elders and Sisters over to watch the funeral of President Thomas S. Monson.  It happened at 6 o'clock pm our time.  We watched BYU TV over the computer.  It was heartwarming to be able to watch.  He was the Prophet of the current generation of missionaries who they remember the most.  We all loved the strong testimonies that were born. 


On Saturday, the transfer assignments came out.  We learned that our Sora Folsom will be leaving.  She has been with us since July.  We will miss her and have loved knowing her.  

Back row:  Sora Folsom, Sora Pitcher, Sora Kerrison, Elder Wilstead, Elder Gore
Sora Andersen and Elder Andersen.
Standing in the foyer of our church building.