A Beautiful Day for the Collison Family! (Week Six!)

Elder Collison is on his way to Romania. He is currently crossing the Atlantic Ocean and will be arriving in Bucharest tomorrow about 2.  He will be there for roughly 23 months.  He got to talk to us this morning from the airport.  The first half of the conversation we had a bad connection.  The rest was wonderful!  Each of us got a turn chatting with him.  His companion Elder Hokannen "met" us all on the phone... he was not able to call his family so we were his family today... bummed we couldn't hear him well enough for a good chat.  We mostly wanted to hear Andrew speak Romanian to us, but he was shy about it... sounds like the airport was very crowded.  He said a couple things and it sounded amazing!  There were 40 missionaries flying out today to the Netherlands and the three of them to Romania.  And he mentioned others on the same flight, but I can't remember.

He is very very excited to get to Romania.  He already has a love for the people and is anxious to meet them, talk to them and serve them.  He is hoping for a good trainer.  He didn't say what attributes he's hoping for in him... assuming one who is fluent in the language and patient would be nice.  :)  He is most excited to serve in the area of Constanta, near the Black Sea.  Said he's also heard the humid summers are rough in the large cities.  All of their teachers in the MTC (except the one native) served missions in Romania.  They've helped him to get really excited.  One of the other things he's most excited about is that he hears they often walk up to 20 miles a day. 

He wanted me to let people know that he is SO grateful for all of the letters that have been sent to him showing love and support.  He feels terrible for all the ones he hasn't replied to yet... he started listing off people to me to apologize to and say that he plans to write when he can.  I told him to just not worry about it, everyone understands he is busy and that he has very little time on his preparation day for letter writing... I told him not to stress, to just focus on his work, that's what we all want and expect.  He seemed relieved.  So please don't be hurt if he doesn't respond quickly.  His p-days will now be on Mondays.  So we won't hear from him again until we receive an email next Monday. 

What else did he say....   oh, he was hungry for everything here... to hear all about what we've done or changed or worked on since he's been gone.  

It was so good to hear his voice and his laugh and have time with him.  :)

-Collisons