Brown Eyed Girl Takes on the World: I HAVE A COOL MISSION STORY!!!!!!!!!! 6 MONTH MARK MIRACLE!

Well this week I had the WONDERFUL opportunity of celebrating my 6 month mark on my mission! Time really does fly!!!!!!!!!!! And being Sister Training Leader really makes it go so much faster!

MONDAY NIGHT: I high-fived the CUTEST gypsy boy. I'm a gyspy boy magnet and I'm kind of loving it. I can't give them food or money but I can give them high-fives!

TUESDAY: It was our first day of English class here in Iași and Sora B and I teach the advanced class. Basically, we get to talk in English for an hour so that is kind of nice! We played fun getting to know you games involving a bag of Skittles. Who doesn't like eating Skittles and talking about themselves?

After English, I went out on the church's balcony to take a photo and I found that someone had thrown us back one of our CLMs...at least they had the decency to put it in a bag. Hahaha...oh Romania....the work rolls forth...

We celebrated my 6 month mark that night with a prajitura (cake/dessert thing) and by drinking "kiddy alcohol" aka sparkling peach juice hahaha. We also wrote "6 months" across our shins so that we could take a cool photo hahaha. Sora B is teaching me how to do a handstand. Right now, I'm still against the wall but..... Eu am credința! I have faith!

WEDNESDAY: We contacted it up all morning and also went with the other sisters to look at apartments for them. We found a great apartment but when we called president for permission to make a contract he said no.......It's a lot of drama and kind of a hard subject to talk about. The other sisters really want to move out of our apartment because we have zero room in our apartment for them. It was supposed to be a temporary stay but now they will be staying the whole transfer...I feel so sorry for them!

That evening we hopped on a train to Bacău for our exchanges and it was a sauna in there. No one believes in opening windows for a breeze because they say that it will make you sick. They call this "current". I hate current haha. So I fall asleep in my sweat and when I wake up there is this little boy and his mom sitting next to me. He is going off about how he loves Angry Birds. Sora B and I are eavesdropping on their convo, which no one knows we can actually UNDERSTAND what they are saying but alas, we can. So Sora Bynum and I start talking in Romanian about our favorite iPhone app games and this little boy looks straight at me with a shocked face. "Wait, you speak Romanian?!" was written all over his face. So I start talking to him in Romanian and he just starts laughing and laughing and we start laughing hahaha. We would ask him questions in Romanian like, "How old are you?", "What is your name?"...etc. So after every question we ask, he would respond to us then lean over to his mom and whisper in her ear how to say that question in Romanian. So we would say, "Ce faci?" (How are you) and he would say "Bine" (fine) and then he would ask his mom how to say "How are you?" in English. He would turn back to us, smile and say with the cutest, thickest Romanian accent "Haaahhwww airrrrr yooooo?" Hahahaha! It was so cute! We did this for about 10 minutes back and forth.

Then, his mother started talking to us and she asked us who we were and all of those golden questions missionaries are just waiting to answer. I actually misunderstood one of her questions but it turned out to be super cool! She asked "What do you study?" And I thought she meant, what do we study as missionaries so I just went off and bore my testimony about the Bible and the Book of Mormon and how we study for 3 hours every day hahaha. Then she cuts in and says, "No, at university" And I just started busting up.

But hey, I got to bear my testimony!

THURSDAY: We had our exchange with the sisters in Bacău.

BRACE YOURSELVES FOR MY COOL STORY.

So while we wen out contacting we decided to stop at the Piața (open air market) and buy a watermelon to eat for dinner. I had a Book of Mormon and a Bible in my arms as we were walking through the Piața. A woman shouts out to me in Romanian "You read from the Bible?!" and I look up at her and tell her yes we do, every day. And then she asks, "What is that other book behind it?" And I tell her it's the Book of Mormon, another testament of Jesus Christ. She asked questions and I answered them, all of these Romanian words coming to my brain that I had no idea I knew. All of these vendors also joined in the conversation. We were talking to about 6 ladies. They couldn't believe that we were so young, so far away from home and that we wee here just to serve people. They keep asking if we were getting paid to be missionaries and every time we said, "No, we are volunteers" they just freaked out. They thought we were the cutest people ever.

Then, this man comes up behind me and taps me on the shoulder and starts talking to me about if we believe in the trinity. Haha so I say no, we don't, we believe that God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost are three separate people. And then he takes me Bible and inspects it. He tells me it is the one he reads too. He opens up to this scripture in John , the one that says "I am my father and my father is me.." And I tell him that we believe that we believe that they are united as one, that they are more like one team, than one person. He understood but didn't like my answer. No biggy. He was really nice about everything though. We gve him a CLM and he said he wanted to read it. The Bacau elder's phone number was inside it and we said if he had questions he could call them and meet up. His daughter though was actually super interested in the Book of Mormon though and we got to talk to her for a few minutes about it. She asked if she could have one and we were like YES WAIT YOU JUST ASKED US FOR A CLM! Best part was...SHE LIVES IN IAȘI! We were so excited about this happening that we forgot to get her number. Ooops. ......But it is in the book......

That night we ate sarmale with the Bacău elders (Morby and Ormsby who I served with in Timi) and it made Sora B and I super sick. We have food poisoning. Fun stuff. Instant diet.

We also slept on the couch/love seat in the Bacău sister's apartment that night. SUPER UNCOMFY. The reason why was because the previous night we had gotten eaten alive by bed bugs in the guest bed. We had Sora Case spry bug killer on the mattress but it never dried in time for us to go to bed. We layed on the wet bug spray and we got really itchy (not a good idea) and we exiled ourselves to the makeshift bed in the living room ahahah.

It was an experience.

SUNDAY: I translate for the BYU students during Relief Society. It really surprises me that I know more Romanian than I think I do.

I AM BY NO MEANS GOOD AT ROMANIAN. I definitely eat the humble pie every day here. Trust me.

---- I LOVE the work here! I have never been more happy in my WHOLE life!

Loving the people, loving the work, loving the Lord!

:) Sora Lee

FRIDAY: Home sick with food poisoning.

Photo 1: Black Man!

Photo 2: What the candy bar looks like . . .

Photo 3: (Fun) Transfer Goal: Handstands!

Photo 4: Celebrating my 6 month mark!

Photo 5: LOVING my companion