Week 25

My first week here's been really good! I'd only heard less than desirable things about Buc before this, just about the people being more in a rush, harder to stop, all the inner city pressure- ya know. but I'm really loving it so far. Like, I went to the park last night and it was amazing. There are several of these parks in Buc, and this is something I could wander in for weeks and not explore it all. They had a huge outdoor theater with hundreds of people just sitting on the grass, a super nice skate park, tons of restaurants, and old rebuilt villages. Maybe we have these in America, but I've seen nothing like it before.

Buc North just had it's first meeting yesterday! The leader there is super legit. He told his conversion story and he is very solid in the Gospel. There were about 20 people there all together, and since there were about an even number of Romanian and English speakers, the whole meeting was translated. The nice part is- the missionaries didn't have to do it! Both President Doru (the district president) and the group leader President Iacobescu speak english really well, so they pretty much tag teamed the whole meeting, translating for each other. Iacobescu would say something in Romanian and Doru would translate it into English, then he would switch to English in the middle of the sentence and Doru would translate it into Romanian.  

Oh, and guess who got to conduct without any knowledge of it? Yeah, they didn't ask me to sit down this time- but I did find out that some people actually dO look at the conductor and sometimes when the conductor's off a beat everyone follows.. So Elder  Baker (the accountant) pulled me aside before I had to conduct the closing hymn and taught me how. Now I know! But it was really funny.. Picture me randomly waving my hand randomly in front of a congregation in a living room, trying to read in a language I'm not perfect with, trying to keep a Romanian choir in tune to a song I didn't know.. woohoo!!

That's my week! my time this transfer is pretty much going to be spent helping out with this, visiting the thousands of less actives and inviting them to the new group, and doing a little contacting. It'll be fun!

Love, Elder Collison

I met Eugen!!