Elder Mayans

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