7-21-2014
Hello Family and friends!! It’s been
a wild week with a lot going on so hopefully I remember everything in my e-mail
today. I don’t know if I will though. We went on a really awesome but really
long hike today so I’m pretty wiped out now. I’ll send some pictures of it
don’t you worry.
So to start of I’ll talk about the
conference that I mentioned I was going to last week. The conference was held
in Brasov which is another beautiful city with really tall mountains that
surround it. Cluj, the city I’m serving in right now is about 7 hours away so
it took a long time round trip. We left Tuesday and got back Thursday. On the
way back we took a sleeper train through the night. My body does not do well
with those sleeper trains because I woke up and could barely walk my back was
hurting too bad.
At zone conference, a lot of changes
were made in the mission because the new President has some new ideas and some
things he wants to try. So before we were mostly doing contacting and trying to
meet with as many investigators/people as possible. Now we are going to try
something that they are calling the Balance which is that we focus 1/3 of our
time with members and visiting them, 1/3 of our time meeting with less actives,
and 1/3 of our time with investigators. It is a pretty big change but I think
it is good for this mission. I think helping to strengthen the branches as they
are right now will be really great and have a better relationship with members
and less actives. The only thing that is a problem is that a lot of members and
people we call are either too busy or don’t want to meet up with us. So we will
see how everything turns out in the near future.
This week we actually meet up with a
less active, Vasile, who actually served a mission in France. He lives with a
wife who isn’t a member in Cluj and is really busy with work. We went over
there with a member and talked to him and shared with him a little lesson. He
wasn’t too fond of going back to church but he liked us and was grateful for
the visit. Other than that we have been calling soo many people and a lot of
them are saying they can’t meet up.
Church yesterday was really good. We
had a full room of people and the branch is so funny with all of the little
kids running around and screaming. It was also the first time I have seen a
baby blessing out here. Familia Sas had a baby a few weeks ago so it was a big
day for them. Then second hour, three minutes before the lesson started,
someone walked up to me and said that I was teaching the lesson. haha Yeah so I
didn’t have anything prepared. We go in order with the lessons so is was on
Enduring to the end. It actually went pretty well I was proud of myself.
English classes have also been really
good this week. This class is a lot more talkative than before so it make it a
lot easier to teach. One lady got a little mad at us because she wanted up to
teach her English a certain way. It got a little out of hard because then the
whole class started arguing. I eventually had to raise my voice a little and
tell everyone to calm down. then I told the lady that this is a conversational
English class and this is how were going to do it. ha And I guess it worked
because they started listening to us after that. haha They are a little needy
sometimes.
Today we went to Turda and then on a
really crazy beautiful kike through a canyon. It took all day and was really
long but it was a lot of fun. There were a lot of hikers and tourists there so
it was a little odd. It’s always weird to hear some Americans talking because
I’m not used to people talking like that. ha That’s the most for this week. I
love you all. I’m so thankful to be a missionary and serve the Lord. I’ve got
about 9 months left and I’m really trying to make the very best of everyday.
Have a great week everyone and enjoy the summer!!!
Elder Mayans
