When it rains pretzels

This is me and my new companion, Sora Owen, on a day that didn't get above -5 degrees celcius.

This is a picture of our Christmas Eve feast, with all the different types of meats and of course, the pork fat!

Hey family and everyone!!! How are all of you? I'm amazing.

I hope that you all had an amazing Christmas...mine was just great. I have a lot to write today so I'll try to get through everything that I have on my list...First, the work.

Our Area Presidency for the mission gave us a challenge/invitation to ask all of our progressing investigators to be baptized before the end of the year. And we are taking the invitation literally and are inviting everyone to be baptised - including some people that aren't even investigators yet! It's been really fun, and we'll see how it ends up going, but hopefully we'll see success.

Vatuta said that she wants to and will get baptized, but she is praying right now to know when, because she didn't feel prepared for the date that we gave her (Jan 9) but we told her to pick a date and pray for that date within the three week period, and she said that she would. She came to church on Sunday, loved it as always, and said "Don't call me until Tuesday - I still have some time to pray, right?" Of course she does. So we'll meet with her on Tuesday and watch the Lord work miracles.

Also, we invited Ion to be baptised for the upteenth time, ok maybe it's just the 3rd. And he said "no, I've told you many times" and I responded by saying "yes, and we've told you many times that as long as we meet to teach you, we'll keep asking you." He said, "it's just not something I want. If I wanted it, I would come to you and say 'hai, when is my baptism, hai fill up the font, faster, faster!' " ("hai" means "c'mon!" in Romanian) so then we talked about why he doesn't want it and were able to give him some commitments that he accepted that will help him continue to progress towards baptism. One of his reasons was the fact that he didn't feel clean enough to make a covenant with God. Wow. I wasn't expecting that answer and compared to the many other answers/excuses we get (I'm already baptised, I don't believe it's true, I don't get why this is so important, and so on) it was just really sincere. He is still making progress, and it's exciting to see that. I still have confidence that he will search for the waters of baptism before too long.

In other news, we are enjoying trying to find the people that God has prepared out here for us. it's going well as far as our enthusiasm goes. The actual finding of people is on a roller coaster down-slope, but that just means that we'll be shooting up here pretty soon. We're still looking, and God is still guiding our steps.

Ok, Christmas traditions = food and lots of it. We went over to a member's house for Christmas Eve and feasted a Romanian feast which includes lots of meat - mici, sunca, carnac de porc, liver, all of these are different forms of meat that comes from a pig. Then you have bread (and lots of it...you can't eat at a Romanians without eating tons of bread) Sarmale which is delicious, meat wrapped up in cabbage and prepared so that it is delicious, Then you have lots of what they call salads, but it's more like spreads for bread - salata de beuf, salata de ciuperci, and salata cu mere = a french spread which is good, but I really don't know what's in it, a mushroom spread, and a spread with apple and celery. Then you have the "side condements" which on that night consisted of shredded sugar beets and pork fat with the consitancy of jello...yummy? not. Of course you have suc (juice/soda),

and then lots and lots of cookies and cakes at the end.

Some other traditions are that they have carolers (usually gypsies) that sing and if they sing for you you give them money...that's just how it works. Or, you have gypsies that dress up as "bears" but they look like rainbow paper mache puppets and they dance around with other gypsies that "play" or rather hit drum type things and blow in trumpet type things and they go around the streets and busses clapping and clicking and not really doing anything too special, but they collect money off of it.

As for New Years traditions, basically all the Romanians just get together and get drunk. That's all it comes down to - unless it's members of the church and we just get together for some karaoke and party and music and food and just good ol' fashion fun.

Random fun things, there is a lady that is inactive here, and me and my companion have been trying to figure out how we can get closer to her, because she's kinda distant and cold. But she LOVES to emroider and is really good at it, so my companion suggested that we ask her to teach us. She's done cross stich before, but I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to that type of stuff, but I said "ok, lets try" We asked her and she loved the idea. She's really proud that she can teach us something, and it's been fun. She even offered to give us some of her patterns so that we can do it, and I told her I wanted something little to start with. She gave me a really hard pattern that has 42,578 or something like that stiches! ....that's easy? I at first wanted to try to finish it on my mision, and I figured out that would mean 200 stitches/day. I tried and by day 7 with only 300 stitches done, I decided that probably won't work...I think my new goal is to finish before I get married lol! I asked her how long it would take and she said it would take me a year if I did a little bit each day...crazy! But fun.

I'm kinda getting it, but there are still times when I need my companion to come and fix whatever mess I created somehow hehe.

Cool history for whoever wants to know, this year marks the 20th year of freedom from Communism for Romania. 20 years ago on the 23rd of December the Revolution broke out in the streets of Bucuresti, Constanta, and Timisoara. Hundreds of people died within the next few days until the Communist leader, Cercescu was killed on the 25th of December, 20 years ago. The 26th of December is the day that they celebrate their first day of freedom from government. But their 4th of July equivelent is on the 1st of December where they celebrate the unity of the country of Romania - still under communism at that time, but they were officially a free country from the oppression of outside countries and the Romanian borders as we have them today were established. It's a really cool time. Ok, history lesson over...

So my family informed me on the phone that I don't tell enough "fun" type stories in my email, so I'll try to do that more.

Todays story: About a month ago, my companion and I were bloc knocking around 7:30pm or something. Sometimes people get mad when you knock on their door. At one door, we knocked and from behind the door they asked who we were and then yelled at us to go away, so we said "ok, have a good night" and went to the next door. But before we could knock on their door, the door we just left opened rather violently, and the husband yelled at us "what do you want!?" "We have a message to share..." "no, we don't want it, go away" ok. and he slammed the door. We talked to the next door and then moved on to the next after that, and realized that the wife from the "angry door" was spying on us, and when she saw us move to the next door she got her husband and he came out and started yelling at us again, and we calmly tried explaining to him that we were no longer at his door and that we weren't trying to bother him. "How dare you come here at this hour, at 10 at night" "sir, it's 7:30" (But honestly that doesn't matter...if the sun is down it's late and qualifies for "at this hour?")

And then he kept going and again we said "sorry, but we're trying to talk to them now, we're not bothering you" and then he interjected with "do you want me to beat you with a stick?" what? and then he reaches behind his door and shakes in our faces a long wooden rod and says "this stick? Do you want me to beat you with this stick?" "no, not really" (picture him yelling with a red face, and me and my companion talking as quiet as possible and you'll get the hilarity of the difference). When we said no, he got confused a little bit, and then said "oh, well, do you want me to call the police?" "no, we don't" but his wife in the background said, a little too excitedly, "I'll call the police!" and by this time, he's made enough noise that people from floors above and below are coming out of their houses to see what is going on.

They finally got him to stop shouting long enough to ask us what on earth we were doing. We told them that we were missionaries trying to share a message of joy about the restored Gospel, but if people didn't want it we continued on, and we weren't trying to bother anyone and had tried to leave but he kept yelling. They just said "yeah, you better go" all the while with the angry man yelling at me "aren't you ashamed? aren't you ashamed?" and I looked at him and said "no, i'm not and never will be, but you have a good night" and then we turned around and walked away with him still confused and red in the face. It was one of those experiences where you get out of it, you look back and you just can't help but laugh your head off. I mean, who randomly had a wooden beating rod behing their door? HAHA!

Don't worry, we weren't once in danger, and I wasn't scared at all because they might get loud and mad, but I don't think I've ever seen a Romanian actually act on it. But it was funny.

Ok, and my sisters wanted me to keep teaching you vorbe, or Romanian sayings, because their favorite is still "suntem prieteni de catarama" which means "we're friends of the belt buckle" or in other words, we're tight. I told them on Christmas the equivelent to I'll believe it "when pigs fly" which is "cand o ploua cu covrigi" which translates litterally to I'll believe it "when it rains pretzels". And a new one for today is "intr-un ceas" which litterally translates to "in a watch" or "in a little bit/in a short time". I love it.

So now that this letter is forever long, I just want to tell all of you thanks for thinking of me on Christmas - my parents told me that you all said hi, and I appreciate it. I love being out here as much as I would want to be home with you all, I know that I am doing what God wants me to do by being out here to share the greatest message with His children - that is the fact that Jesus Christ is our Savior and that He still lives, that He loves us and we can find the fulness of that love through the Restored Gospel. We have a living prophet which proves that God's love for His children doesn't change - He loves us just as much now as He loved His children in the Bible. I know this is true, and I know that it is by living the principles of the Gospel that we can find true happiness regardless of our circumstances.

I love you all so much, and I'll talk to you again next week.

Always, --Sora Karina