Miracle Week!

Doesn't a mom have enough to worry about without worrying about Old World snakes with fangs, too? I guess not.

Almost like home. I wonder how many other foreign towns have Hollywood type signs, too?

Back at the MTC...

back in Romania...

Buna Ziua America!

This has been such a super great week! We've had a lot of new people we've been talking to this week and it's so cool to see all the things that are going on in Deva! I honestly don't think I can say that we've found anyone this week, but God found a few people for us!

Our first miracle find came Thursday when we were walking down a small road after we had decided to go look and see if a park on the other side of town would be good for contacting. When we had arrived at the park we found that it was a field of tall weeds with several trees scattered around, and absolutely no people. Across the street we found a small playground with some benches, but again no people. We started walking down a small road to get back to a main road to do street contacting on our way to a different park. We saw a lady (Mirela) with her little daughter (Agnis) walking toward us, and we decided to talk to her. We barely had time to say hello when she said "Hey. I want to ask you something. What does your church believe about God? Because in the Bible it says that he's a spirit." We were a little bit shocked to get such a random question but we said that we believed that he had a body. She asked why the Bible said otherwise and we told her that we believe that over time the Bible was changed by people, but that a prophet had been called and retranslated the Bible and that through him we found out that God has a body. We then asked if we could share a message with her and she said "Yeah I'm just going to the playground right now if you're not busy I'll meet you there" and with that walked away. Elder Hyatt and I stood there for a minute, and when we realized what was happening we followed her to the park, where we gave her an hour and a half lesson about the Restoration. She said that she's been looking for the true church because she joined a Baptist church in January but no longer believes that it's true. She said she'd read and pray and that we could meet again later. We have another lesson with her today.

After the lesson, we made our way to the other park (where we were going before Mirela stopped us). On the way, we received a phone call. Elder Hyatt answered. It was a girl named Roxana who had talked to missionaries and received lessons in March, and who had wanted to be baptized but then got to busy with school. We had called her last Tuesday to see if she was still interested to meet with us and she said she'd think about it. Thursday morning she woke up and felt like she really needed to get baptized. So, she called us, and now we have a baptismal candidate! She lives in a city called Alba about 60 miles away, but she said she'd come to church this week (this upcoming Sunday) and we could talk more about it.

Friday we gave 2 lessons to people in parks and have 2 return appointments, and Saturday we met briefly someone on the street who said she'd been looking into our church and wanted to come. She came to church yesterday and we have an appointment with her this week (maybe you're starting to realize why this email is called "Miracle Week"). We've also had 2 people in the last 4 days ask if we could help them quit smoking, as well as a total of 5 people (a quarter of the total attendance) at church yesterday who were neither members nor investigators and simply want to learn more about our gospel. Two of them received Book of Mormons, 4 of them gave us return visit times, and the other one only lives here but is only here Saturday night and Sunday morning, is therefore unable to visit with us, but actually has never had contact with our church and just came in to see what was happening, but wants to come every week now. We received a referral for a lady who wants a free Book of Mormon, and who also said that 2 of her other friends want some too.

In the MTC we always joked that God has a sense of humor, and we also saw that this week. We decided that we would try to do something to increase our investigators too, and set up church tours last night for anyone, with free watermelon as an incentive to come. Over an hour and a half we had a kid we know from the streets who's not very interested in the church come and eat a bunch of watermelon and leave, and one guy come in, talk to us for 4 or 5 minutes, and then leave, without taking any watermelon. If God did that just to show how much we need his help contacting people, he definitely got his point across. The spirit it a lot more powerful than watermelon.

Haha anyway, this week has been so great! I'm loving it here in Deva and all the cool stuff that's happening here is super awesome as well! I hope all is well back in the States! I love you all!

Sincerely, Elder Michael Abbott