Brown Eyed Girl Takes on the World: Small and Simple Things

So here are the 5 biggest things that happened this week.

1.) WE LOVE FOTBAL!

On Monday last week, after I sent out my mass email, I got to go to a Romanian Soccer game! Woooooo! Fotbal! Hahaha we love it!

It rained hrough the whole game. Timişoara lost. And there were probably only 60 fans in the stadium. BUT, it was still a super intense game though!

On Saturday, we also played soccer with all of our investigators. It was so fun!

2.) FAMILY HISTORY CLASS!

We had our first family history class with the members of our church branch. We are using the website "Family Search" (link below) where you can look for you ancestors for FREE!

You can also plug in your family's information if you cannot find it, which adds it to the database, and build a big family tree!

It's pretty addicting, learning about your ancestors and seeing their photos. We like to call it "Facebook for the dead" hahah joking but....seriously...ahaha

We talked to them about the importance of family history and how we need to preserve our memories, photos and records online, so that they can never be forgotten.

Haha.

Most of the members didn't like the idea of "digitizing" their life stories haha and I thought that was so funny. It's just the generation gap haha. I love them all.

https://familysearch.org/

3.) GETTING "CROSSED"

So most people here, when they know we are "Mormons" always cross us, using the "Father, Son and Holy Ghost" hand movement over their chest.

I thought this was a postive thing like, "Hey, thank you so much for blesing me with the Father, Son and Holy Ghost" kind of a thing.

So I would always tell the people, "La fel! Mulţumesc mult! Aveţi o zi buna!" ("To you too! Thank you so much! Have a great day!").

And then Sora Smith says, "They do that to protect themselves. They think we are of the devil."

Oh . . .

Hahaha. I still think of it as a positive thing though....

4.) AMERICAN ROOTBEER

The Senior Couple in Timişoara threw a little party this week because Elder Hunt (the Senior missionary) had his 65th birthday in Romania!

We celebrated by making rootbeer, since they don't sell rootbeer here in Romania.

Crazy right? It just doesn't exist here.

So we got some carbonated water, sugar and the vial of rootbeer flavoring the Hunt's brought with them from Utah and mixed it all up!

Bam.

Rootbeer.

We had the 3 girls there with us and they had never had rootbeer before.

They were hooked.

5.) CHOIR PRACTICE

All of the missionaries taught out first ward choir practice!

The Timişoara branch needed more unity and we thought, "Hey, let's unite them through singing!".

Now when it comes to singing (at least in church) our branch is a little (a lot) tone deaf. So we were pretty worried about, you now, assembling a CHOIR.

We taught them about voice parts (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass) and then we all, one by one, sang a line of a hymn, in a given voice part.

Then, we asked the ward members to sit by the missionary they felt sang the way they did (and also if they could comfortably sing the same part).

We broke down each musical part, line by line, to the hmyn which was "The Iron Rod". We showed them what it should sound like and taught them how to sing.

By the end of class, they sounded LOVELY.

It was a miracle.

BY SMALL AND SIMPLE THINGS.

I've been in Romania less than two months and it has been rough. No one likes feeling rejected.

But, I have this little secret that keeps me going.

Every day, I find at least ONE thing that makes me happy.

I always write all of these things down in a little journal of mine. It helps me remeber that we live in a beautiful world and that there are many incredible things that we often miss, because we are too busy, too stressed and simply because we are "too blind".

So, my challenge to you all is to not just look, but look UP and look DOWN. There is beautiful things out there but we have to look for them.

It might be difficult.

There won't be a neon finger saying, "Hey! Look at this!" (If only it was that easy).

But, I know you an do it. And I know that when you do it, you WILL be happier.

Lots of love,

-Sora Kendall Lee :)