Cetate in Lipova
Elder Hyatt and Elder Abbott
I am not sure what the story is here, I will let you know if I find out! Maybe these are Mirela's and the Fotea's children.
The train from Arad
Hello Everyone!
Another week passed in beautiful Deva this week, as well as in several other towns/cities across the western part of Romania! I spent plenty of time this week on trains, going to and from Lipova, Deva, and Arad for 2 full days this week. Monday started off awesome with a day in Lipova at the Cetate there. It's a beautiful castle on top of a hill and we met up with the entire zone for a day there. It was a 3 hour train ride to get there, and then another 3 hour train ride back. However, on the way back our locomotive broke down, and we were pulled off onto a side track to wait for a new one. We waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and then, about 30 minutes into our waiting, a semi-truck on the road by the train tracks flipped! Later Elder Hyatt and I went to go look at it, and it turned out that it was trying to pull off of the road but hit a ditch and rolled. It was super loud and pretty intense. As we waited and waited and waited the train got hotter and hotter and hotter. After a while everyone in our wagon had drunk all of their water. Being 4 strong 19 year old boys among a train full of ladies in their 60's to 120's, Elder Hyatt, Elder Nelson, Elder Benson and I volunteered to get everyone water from the well nearby. We got out, started filling up water bottles, and heard a train coming. We turned around, and saw our new locomotive driving down the tracks... So we ran. We got back to the tracks to find our train being pulled back to the rail switch, so we just waited at the train station. Luckily when the train came back it picked us up, so we made it back to Deva safely, but about an hour and 45 minutes later than we had planned. I also spent Saturday on trains and cars and the city of Arad this week, as Elder Hyatt and I went there for a District Training meeting (because he's the Branch President in Deva). It was fun and I loved Arad. We drove to Arad with the Zone Leaders who were just finishing splits that morning and driving back to Arad, and then we came back on a train (which didn't break down). With how much time I spent on trains this week, I'm really glad I loved toy trains. :)
Our investigators here are doing great! We have 2 investigators right now who are making huge leaping steps, which is awesome. One of them, whose name is Cornel, has been an investigator for a long time but has never made much progress. However, in this last week he committed to the Word of Wisdom, told us he wants to join our church instead of the Jehovah's Witnesses (he's been investigating both this whole time), and came to church with us for the first time, then stayed for the entire 3 hours and made friends with all of the members. To make everything even better, it turns out that one of our other recent converts, Anton Stoica, knew him before and that they hadn't seen each other in a while but were really excited to meet up again. Our other awesome investigator is Mirela, the lady who we met on the streets a few weeks ago. She's been reading a lot out of the Book of Mormon and has been asking tons of questions and yesterday she gave us her first real commitment to pray about the Book of Mormon (before she's just said she'll try). She met us and the Fotea Family yesterday at a playground for our lesson and it went great, and she really likes the Fotea family, and it seems like they really like her. It's great because she has a 6 year old daughter, as do the Fotea's, so the kids got to go play and make friends during our lesson.
I'm loving Romania! Next week we find out about what will be happening at transfers, so I'll let you know if I'm staying here in Deva or moving somewhere else next week! None of us have a clue what'll happen except for Elder Hyatt, who due to his Branch President status is guaranteed to stay here for another 2 transfers at least. I hope everyone's doing great back home! Have a great first week of school all of you (I'm sure some of you have already started) and keep being awesome!
Cu toată dragostea mea, Elder Abbott
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