This Week I Felt Like a Missionary

January 27, 2014

Hey guys,

   So this week was a fairly busy one, which was awesome. I have a lot to say that I might include next week if I run out of time, but here's what went down.

   We had our first English class this week on Tuesday.

Teaching English

Spiritual thought at the end of English class

I was pretty nervous at first, but I just tried to relate to them as much as possible because they know as much English as I do Romanian. So that was fun trying to teach them. And then after the class, we tell them that the English class is over and there is an optional spiritual message if they want to stay for it. To my surprise 2/3 of the class stayed and we gave a brief message of why we were here and read a little out of the CLM (Carte Lui Mormon) After that we were excited because I guess a lot more people showed up to English than regularly and everyone that had been there longer than me said that this was one of the largest classes they have had. So our two weeks of contacting payed off.

   So on Friday we went to Feldioara which, if you remember what La Țara is, it's in the middle of nowhere in this small little muddy town with maybe 2000 people and an orthodox church and one convenience store. So our plan for that Friday was to take the bus down there and to contact all day and then teach a 30/30 lesson with the investigator that the girls gave us. (a 30/30 lesson is 30 minutes English and 30 minutes Gospel. If they want it and they agree to both, we come to their house) So we got off the bus and it's a sunny day, with that nice strong bitter cold wind that makes it feel like we're in snow or something. So we are walking around and no one is interested and so after about an hour and a half or so of people telling us that we do a lot of good around here they just don't want to talk to us, I decided to offer up a little prayer in my heart, that if it was His will that we could find some people that would be interested. Probably about 10 minutes later we started talking to a guy on the street and he just kinda wanted to argue with us, so we just listened and gave a little of our opinion, and then right in the middle of our convo with this guy, another guy (we later found his name was Ionuți) walked up and I was like "how's it going?". He said good and then we kind of just focused our attention from the guy who wanted to argue to Ionuți. He said that the sisters had taught him a while ago and that he had lost contact with them and then he saw us. So we talked with him for a while and he gave us his address and told us to come pick him up for church on Sunday. So we left that convo pretty pumped. We found someone, yay. So we started walking again and the next guy we saw, about 5 minutes later, we asked how he was doing. His name was Ion. He said good and he said, hey you're from that church that just put the sign up, right? and we were like yea and he was like, oh cool and started asking us questions about the gospel and after we had a good convo he was like alright well I come to your guy's church on Sunday and check it out. After that, we were stoked! We thought we wouldn't find anyone in this little town that would be interested and then, boom, two people. After that we went to teach the 30/30 investigator, George. We taught him English and then during the gospel part Speyer and him talked more and I just just kinda listened and actually knew what was going on. So he had a problem with really knowing if this book was from God and feeling the Holy Ghost, so I pulled out Moroni 10:4 and asked him to read it. He even read more and was like "wow, that's really good" So we asked him to pray about our message to see if it is true and we will see how that went next time we meet with him.

    The next day, BOOM, snow, like we got about 6-7 inches that day and it was -8 C. So I bundled up pretty good that day. After the days work of English and correlation and stuff, that night we went Block Knocking.

apartments

The Communist apartments that are still around that mostly everyone lives in are called blocks and we go in and knock on the doors and say, hey we are missionaries from our church and are here sharing a message about Jesus Christ are you interested? Some responses are nice and most aren't, haha. Most people don't even open their door. It's pretty funny when you are looking at the eye hole and you see light, then you don't, then you see light again and nothing happens. And if they open the door most close the door before we get through our sentence. But this night we knocked on a door and an older woman answered, I said "Good evening"  and a 0.5 second passed and without anything being said she shut the door. So we turned around and knocked on the next one. About 30 seconds later the previous door opened up and a different lady was at the door. She was like, "are you guys Mormons?" We were like "yea". She invited us in for 10 minutes, so we came in and sat down. She gave us each an orange and just started talking to us for like 20-25 minutes straight. When Elder Speyer got a word in she agreed and started talking again. So she talked to us for about an hour or so. I had no idea what was going on. I just knew that she was talking a lot haha. At one point in the conversation she was talking and I started feeling something that I thought, wait could I be feeling the spirit right now? It was weird, I was like no I couldn't be (I actually thought that she was making fun of JS [Joseph Smith] or something) and I was like no this couldn't be right. 

I have to go, but I will finish the rest next week!! 

Cliff hanger.

-Elder Houk

There was so much snow they got to go see Frozen.
It was in Romanian so he couldn't understand much but he liked it.