So, guess where I am right now! I'M IN DEVA! I love this place already! It's a super pretty city and it's got some really beautiful hills and a Cetate on the mountain on the north side of the city. It's funny too because they have giant letters just under the Cetate on the hill that say "Deva" like the Hollywood sign. The people are great, really funny sometimes, and they're pretty friendly from what I've seen. I've seen some freaky/wierd things here since I got here, and I don't know if it was wierder seeing an insane gipsy lady walking across a busy intersection while cars just swerved around her, a lady randomly breast-feeding her newborn child at the back of a bus, or a guy who is probably insane, but who I know best as the "Indiana Jones Pope guy" because he has a whip, pulls poses and stuff for people to take pictures of, but then if you talk to him he wants to know what we know about the pope and stuff like that and why he sent us.... yeah he's crazy.
Anyway, my first day was cool. We went to the doctor to get "checkups" to make sure we were healthy enough to get Visas (walk in, stand on scale, measure height, take blood pressure, leave). Then I went with my Naș (Godfather), Elder Horgmo, to his apartment, which is the nicest one in the whole mission. It's not where I'm staying, though. We then went out English contacting (handing out English lesson flyers and telling people that we're teaching free English lessons, etc.) which was super fun. We went to a big park/track place and found a bunch of kids skateboarding to talk to for a while. Elder Horgmo and Elder Rasmussen (Elder Benson's Naș) had a manual contest with one of the kids, who was named Vlad, and then we gave them flyers and left. Elder Benson and I got a number from someone for a visit later that night, but since we're both here in Deva we just gave the number to the Buc(urești) elders. I stayed at the nice apartment that night and then the next morning it was off to more Visa stuff, and then Cișmigiu park, where we read the dedicatory prayer for Romania. Cool stuff there. Then we went to have lunch with President and Sora Hill, where they announced our trainers and areas, and then it was off to the Gară (train station) to go to Deva!
Elder Hyatt is my trainer here. He's from Eastern Oregon, and he's the Branch President, as dad said he found out on LDS.org or something like that. Anyway, he knows all of the investigators and members here super well so it's nice to have him there introducing me, because then everyone likes me. :) He's a super good missionary and he's fun to watch while he's contacting cause he gets super excited and stuff haha it's great. He's going to BYU right now too so we'll probably get to hang out when we get back from our missions.
I got here Thursday morning around 3 AM from București after an 8 hour train ride. Elder Hyatt and I went straight to our apartment and just went to sleep. After a 3 hour night, we headed to work. That first day was really cool. Just being in Europe and finally being able to walk around and be a missionary instead of sitting in a classroom for eternity was so great! It started to downpour while we were out knocking doors in the Vile (Romanian plural for Villas, pronounced vee-lay). We just kept going and got to talk to a cool Romanian lady and her son, who has chosen for his sport: swimming! It was really cool talking to him for a minute before he got bored and ran off to play with his dog. :) A few houses later we met a guy who let us in! We went in, sat down, and taught him a lesson about the Restoration. It was such a cool experience, and we left him with a Book of Mormon and got permission to come back the next Thursday! After more Vile knocking, we had more success, and managed to get a lady who yelled her phone number at us and said that her house had just been painted and that she wanted us to come back in 2 weeks. I wrote down her name but I don't remember it off the top of my head.
Friday was suuuper busy. We had a bunch of Branch business, because Elder Hyatt's the Branch President so we have to run errands and stuff sometimes, and we ended up spending 375 lei, which was pretty much all we had in our MSF accounts for the rest of the month. He only recently became the branch president so they had to get him a new debit card for him to use for branch stuff but we don't have the pin yet so we're just running the branch out of our mission funds until we can get the money from the branch card to reimburse us, and then use the branch card from then on. But, moral of the story, as of right now we're down to I think 4 lei and 50 bani (4.5 lei, which is about the equivalent of $1.60) and anything that we can find in our apartment to buy food, toiletries, notebooks, and pretty much just anything we need to buy for this next week. We're just hoping the office elders can get us the pin number for his new card sometime soon so that we can buy food for this week, because otherwise we'll just have to make do. We have a little food left at the apartment and that should last us at least a few days. :) Oh and maybe we could find personal money at the apartment too.... we'll have to look haha.
Oh, our apartment is pretty nice. I wasn't expecting much big but we live in a block (the Romanian version of an apartment building) on the north side of town. It's got a kitchen, two bedrooms (we only use one), a full bathroom with a shower and everything, a tiny bathroom which has enough room for a toilet and a sink and somewhere to stand while at the sink, and a nice big living room which we use for studies, which has 2 couches and 2 desks. We also have 2 balconies. It's super nice and I like it a lot. Romanians would consider us rich seeing our apartment for sure because they base their apartments and how nice they are off of how many rooms you have besides the kitchen and bathroom, which makes us 3 room people, which is good. We don't live in a Vilă, but I don't think I would really want to. They're too big and it'd just be a waste of money.
Saturday was fun. We went to a park and handed out English flyers and we also got to go talk to Viorel, an 11 year old member in our branch for a while. We stopped by his house and read the story about Teancum killing Amalichia from the Book of Mormon, but it was really funny because Viorel just got a new wrestling ring toy and had us translate the prize contract from the little briefcase that came with it because it was written in super small English. He kept talking about how he was going to be a pro wrestler and demonstrated very clearly how he was going to take down his opponents using a pillow as his opponent and throwing body-slams and stuff on his bed. :) It was super funny and really fun to get to talk to him. I think I understand the little kids more here because they speak louder Romanian, and I can actually understand that better for some reason.
Sunday seemed like forever, but it was only because we had a 3 hour vile knocking session. Sacrament meeting was cool because it was all in Romanian, which was a very different experience for me. Usually back home if I space out for a second I can get right back on track and know immediately what someone's been talking about, but it's a lot harder here because if I space out I have to listen for like a minute or two concentrating super hard to get back on track. It's alright though, cause Elder Nelson, the other trainer in Deva (training Elder Benson) was one of the speakers and I have a much easier time understanding him.
Today we hiked to the Cetate (fortress/citadel type thing up on the big hill) with Costel, one of the members here in the Branch. He's in his 20's and it was nice getting to talk to him because I understand him better than old people so I could have a good conversation and actually get by with the Romanian I know. We studied in a little wine cellar/cave/prison thing that was by the cetate for our morning studies because it was raining outside, and then we went up on the cetate to look around. The city was really beautiful from the view up there and the cetate itself was super cool. Someone had a little board that they put between the walkway and the ground by the cetate so that people can hop over the fence of the walkway and walk over to the cetate, although I think it was more for maintenance people and stuff, because there was a railway. We went over anyway and climbed up in the cetate and took pictures and stuff. It was super cool because it's an old fortress built on top of the big hill and it's super old. It was designed I think for military defence but now it's just a tourist attraction. It's not fully built though, and there's no roof over most of it, and only 3 sides that are still standing. It's really big though, and we had a lot of fun. If I can figure out how to attach a picture on here I'll send one so you can see.
Anyway, this place is so cool! I love the members here and I love speaking Romanian even if I can't very well. I think my favorite thing is to go English contacting (advertising the English classes) because the people here say some really funny things sometimes during that. Yesterday I went up to some teenagers and told them (in Romanian) that we were having free English classes. One of them (struggling with English) said "He's the bomb of English" pointing to his friend. I said "I don't know. I might know a little bit" in English and then said I was joking in Romanian and said it was okay though and started walking away and as I was walking away one of the kids yelled "maybe" at me :) haha it was funny. There have been a lot of times when people have laughed at how bad my Romanian is right now, though, I'm sure. A lot of people have asked me if I understand anything they're saying at all haha. I do understand enough to get back, though, so I'm grateful for that.
Well, the other elders are just finishing up so I guess I gotta go. I love all of you, though, and I hope all's going great in America!
Cu mare dragoste din Deva,
Elder Michael Abbott
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