Claudia!

Mici with mustard and bread. A good Romanian snack/lunch.

A cool bridge at night in Parcul Romanescu.

A foggy morning outside Michael's window.

Ready for winter with his new coat.

Hey again everyone who is reading this! Today was another normal week, nothing too big happening. Mostly we are all just waiting for Claudia's baptism coming up this Saturday! We visited her Friday and she was just as happy as ever, with her family and everything. This family is seriously such a cool family. They all are super awesome and love meeting with us and can't wait for Claudia's baptism. I wish I could tell you more about it but... it hasn't happened yet. So I'll tell you next week! A cool thing that happened this week was that we decided to finally get around to going to the community Elder Johnson and I found last week on exchange. The community was built buy the Evanghelist Church and when Elder Johnson and I were there everyone was super open and wanted us to come back. So, Elder Kopsa and I went back. Almost immediately after stepping inside the gate, we were met by the leader of the youth group who lives there. Three minutes and many words by him later, we were no longer inside that gate. So, we began walking. We rang the doorbell on the gate of a vila nearby and a man answered. We said we were there to share a message and he began telling us about how he's the pastor for the community we just left and we should leave that area of town and never come back. So we kept walking. About 20 minutes later we found some blocs. They looked really nice and there were lots of cars parked around them, which usually means that there are successful and young people living there, so we decided to go knock some doors. We got into a bloc and knocked on the first door. An old lady answered and started yelling at us for being there "so late into the night" aka 5:30 PM, and that we should leave the bloc and never come back. After getting several other doors slammed in our faces, and after another old person yelling at us, we started rethinking our decision to knock that bloc. So we went outside. We sat for about 30 seconds, trying to decide whether we should just leave, or if we should try one more bloc. We finally decided that we would try just a few doors in one more bloc and then leave. There were some girls walking by, and Elder Kopsa and I said a little "buna seara" (good evening) under our breaths. One of them stopped, and asked us if we were a protestant church, then without waiting for a response said that she knew someone who might want to talk to us. She led us into the bloc, and to a door. We sat down with the lady and the first thing she asked us was what our church was called. She asked us question after question, about baptism, why we have the Book of Mormon, when she can come to church, etc., etc. and then told us that she wanted us to help her quit smoking. It was such a cool experience and it was so awesome to see how perseverance in the face of old people yelling at us pays off. Anyway, just a cool story from this week! I can't wait for Claudia's baptism this coming week and I'll tell you all about it next week! Dacă nu poţi citi aceasta, mai e ok!
Elder Michael Abbott