Week 23!

SO. My week.

On monday, Elder Montoya and I caught the 18:15 Auto bus for Bucharest and made our way to the city of joy. (K, I guess that's not really funny to you- but the word bucuresti literally means the city of joy. Haha?) The office Elders then picked us up and took us back to their place with a lot of other kids from Montoya's MTC group. We got to the visa office the next day at 10ish and started the slow process of application. ( I had already done this, so I just had to sit back and wait) Then we found out that the office I needed to receive my visa from opened much later in the day. So after everyone finished their stuff, Montoya and I went on splits with the office Elders so they could accomplish all they needed to that day. It was pretty sweet! Just pretending to work in the Office for a day, riding around Bucharest in Big Blue (Just like our van but a VW and manual transmission) And that day also happened to be when the new russian Elders were coming in (It's a little off from transfers because their still in the MTC for 9 weeks. So I actually got to go to the airport and welcome them into the country! Pretty sweet ;)

Funny story; 

So you kinda know how it is here- sometimes it feels like if someone's not begging you for money, they're probably trying to devise a plan to relieve you of it some other way.. But the other day, we were going to a service project after visiting a family in the branch. As I was getting on the bus a man yells "don't get on that side!' (there are three doors that open on every bus) so I followed him to the middle of the bus and we talked for a minute. I found out later there were a couple smecher gypsy kids back there he wanted the foreigner to avoid. But he turned to me and said "you're chinese, right?" Maybe I had been squinting into the sun? but I just laughed and told him I was a missionary from the US. We talked a little longer but we had to get of the bus soon after that. as we were descending he reaches out and tries to hand us a 10 lei note. Elder Baielli quickly thrusts it back into his hand, and I do the same when he hands it to me. This all happened in a couple seconds while we were stepping off, but he was a dirty, probably very poor old man, so determined to give us money! he was yelling "please, please please!" super funny. I mean. He was probably trying to pay tithing and we just denied him his salvation, but that's not something you see everyday in Romania.. ;)

I'll explain the picture really quick;

So- we have a nice little collection of Book of mormon's in different languages in my apartment. I had been messing around with a german one a couple days ago and I left it on the table.

We were in a rush somewhere, and a lady contacted us, asking what problems we solved or something like that. Of course we jumped all over that. Elder Baielli threw open his book of mormon and with the goofiest expression, turned to me and said "this is in german!" one of those stories where you needed to be there, but I laughed for 10 minutes after we walked away. and then this picture is from when we told the sisters about it, they needed a picture of it ;) 

Oh, and really quick! they do eat meat here! all these tiny shacks in downtown constanta have roosters crowing in them all day long. They eat mostly chicken, but all of their soups are from sheep or beef stomach. I really like it!

 Have I mentioned the cockroaches to you yet?? I guess I've gotten used to them.. our apartment's pretty nice, there are only a couple and you only really see them during middle of the night potty breaks. other apartment- if you walk around the house with the lights off, you're going to step on them. annnnd we have bed bugs. and fleas. but every one here has them so it's super hard to keep the house free of them. I've sprayed several times. No biggie though, I can take it for a couple more years :) 

Love you all so much! Thanks for emailing me!