1st Week in Moldova

Ohhhhhhhh boy. Oh boy I can't even describe to you how wild this week has been. This has by far been the most life changing, crazy, difficult, fun, amazing, confusing and emphasis again on craziest week of my life. Let's take this to the beginning

Okay so I don't even really remember the MTC anymore lol I feel like I've been here for a month. Not really but yeah basically I said goodbye to my best buddies and it was all bittersweet. We left at 4:45 in the morning and I think that was actually the most emotional I've gotten about being away from home. I was tearing up a little bit as we were passing the exit with the innout because ya know that's my hometown. So we got to the airport and I saw the most beautiful thing in the world. CAFE RIO. Oh man was that amazing after MTC food haha. I called the fam back home and we hopped on a plane to minnesota and I slepted the whole time. We landed in Minnesota and had a 6 hour layover there. I talked a little to a guy that shined our shoes and gave him a pass-along card. MISSIONARY WORK WOO. haha we could barely understand him and he seemed hardcore baptist. still cool tho. Then we flew to Amsterdam and that was like an 8 hour flight which I basically slept on the whole time again. I forgot to mention that there were four of us flying: me, elders Martindale, Dumbrell, and McNab. Elder Mcnab is a romanian elder and lets just say he's quite the character haha. We talked to a few people on the plane and in the end gave away 2 book of mormons and 2 pass along cards so that was sick. We also met a Russian couple along the way and tried to talk to them a little bit. Turns out Russian is fast? yeah weird I know. Also turns out that I don't know anything? also weird. 

Back to the story. I land in Amsterdam and everything is super green and foggy there. It's in the morning and everyone is speaking dutch. We're all groggy from sleep so we feeling like we're in some weird european dream. So weird. We fly over to Romania and bam we're here. We meet the APs, the Mission President and his Wife. They are all seriously so amazing. The APs are super chill and the President is super cool and his wife is the nicest lady in the world. They immediately take our stuff back to the mission home while we go to a park in Romania. 

First impressions of Romania: 

-The driving is absolutely insanity. There aren't like any lanes so you kinda just drive where you want and how you want. One of the funniest things this week was when we were driving with the APs they said "hey do you all know Mario kart?" and we're just like "yeah" and they said "yeah the same rules apply here on the road" hahaha we were dying because it was literally so true. 

-The city is GORGEOUS. I can't even describe it to you. Mostly because I haven't been there for a week but yeah I'll describe more of where I'm at later. 

-yeah other than that I don't remember, I'll describe more about Moldova later.

Back to it. We went to the park where romania was dedicated for missionary work in 1990 by Elder Russell M. Nelson and it's kinda like central park in NY but more europe-y and more jungle-y. If that makes sense. Super sick. We went on top of this hill and read the dedicatory prayer. Super super cool. Then we went to the mission home, ate dinner, and then had interviews with the president. He basically just talked to me about my life and what I like doing. He's the coolest guy and I can't wait to learn more about him. We then headed to the train station where we were going to take a train to Moldova with the APs. LITERALLY THE COOLEST AND MOST GHETTO THING OF MY LIFE. They call it a sleeper train and it's straight up the SOVIET UNION HOGWARTS EXPRESS I KID YOU NOT. I was in heaven and also scared for my life I love it hahaha. We were on that bad boy for like 14 hours and like at 3 in the morning some Russian security came into our room to check our passports because we were crossing the border. Fun fact: the romanian train tracks are made to european standards and the moldovan tracks are made to soviet union standards so they have to pick up the train halfway through and switch the wheels out haha. SO SICK. So yeah we eventually made it to Chisinau and that's where we met up with the Mission President again and then we headed up to the top of the hill where Moldova was dedicated for missionary work in 2001 by Elder M. Russell Ballard. It was an awesome prayer and they told us some cool stories about Moldova. Pres. Hettinger told us that when he was in the MTC for Mission president training that Elder Ronald Rasband came up to him and told him that Romania/Moldova is where they send the Navy seals of missionary work to. So I guess I'm part of the special forces here. SO RAD. On top of the hill is where we found out who our companions were going to be and where we were going to be serving. 

Things I should mention first, so there are only 2 areas that you can serve in as a Russian missionary here. Chisinau and Balti (Kee-shi-now and Beltz). Chisinau is a very big city and Balti is not very big. There were only 3 new Russian missionaries, Me, Elders martindale and dumbrell. We were told that one of us would be sent to Balti with an Elder from America and that 2 of us would stay in Chisinau with 2 Ukrainian Elders. We were told one of the Ukrainians knows little English and the other knows a lot. Alright now guess who I was assigned with.......(drum roll please)........ The Ukrainian Elder who knows a lot of English! Elder Solov'iov. Elder Dumbrell was assigned with the other Ukrianian, Elder Rubitskii and Elder Martindale was sent to Balti with Elder Huntsman who I think is from Kaysville. SUPER COOL. So I know what you're thinking. You're probably like, "oh man that must be really hard for you and Elder Dumbrell because you have natives but I know it'll be very good for you because you'll learn so much Russian" right? Yeah no it's not like that. Pretty much all of the Ukrainians here are all trying to learn english so we spent like 90% of our day in english haha. I try to speak Russian as much as I can but it ultimately goes back to English. We're all trying to work on it. Elder Dumbrell's a little bitter because his companion is always trying to speak english but he really wants to learn russian haha. But yeah my companion is from North Eastern Ukraine kinda by where all the fighting is going on. He says that where is lives is safe though and that nothing happens there. He is so funny and is such a sick guy. The Ukrainians here are HILAROUS. It's so funny to hear them cracking jokes all of the time in their Russian accents. Also because it's my first week I rely pretty heavily on my companion and he pretty much has to translate everything for me. 

Now let me take some time to talk about my place of birth. Chisinau. It is probably the coolest city on this entire planet. The driving is just as bad in Chisinau as it is in Romania if not worse. I LOVE IT. One of the funniest things is that they have cross walks everywhere and citizens here have right of way like way more in America so they just walk across the road while cars are flying and it's a totally normal thing to do here. It's so funny to just take a leap of faith onto the roads and hope that the cars will stop. Another thing is that there are random dogs everywhere and so that kinda threw me off. We're not allowed to go near them which is sad:( also I partially don't want to touch them because they're super gross. Also I can't even really describe Chisinau to you because it's literally the most wild city. It's the greenest city in Europe for one thing so it looks like a lot of concrete buildings in the middle of a forest. It's so tight. It has a lot of European style buildings that are very old and super pretty and like random cool sculptures of famous people in Moldova. It can be very beautiful and very dirty at the same time. So like sometimes I'm like "wow this city is gorgeous" and others times I'm like "wow this city is kinda gross but also still gorgeous." If that even made any sense. But yeah I wish I could show all of you because it is AMAZING. Seriously one of the most amazing places in the world. We basically take trolleybuses everyone and they are jam-packed most of the time. And it is HOT. We sweat like crazy but it's so fun. Another thing is that pretty much all of the signs here are in Romanian and then a little bit in Russian and then a tiny bit in English. Also there is graffiti EVERYWHERE. Like literally so matter where you look there's graffiti, same in Bucharest. It's so crazy. It's funny sometimes because it will be like a random english word haha. 

We went to our apartment and it is seriously the BEST APARTMENT IN THE WHOLE MISSION. I made a video so I'll spare you the details but it has the best view and it's so rad. In Chisinau there are 8 Russian speakers and in Balti there are 4. Me and elder Dumbrell are the only non natives in Chisinau and the rest are from Ukraine. There are technically 3 other Russian speakers but one is an AP, one is with a romanian companion and the other is now learning romanian in romania. Balti has an armenian, and three americans. 

Alright now for the people in Chisinau. So first of all the young people here have the SICKEST style. Like they all look so fly all of the time. they all wear the best shoes (blake you would love it) and yeah I can't wait to buy so much stuff here. Speaking of buying things, because it's such a poor country(the poorest in Europe), everything here is dirt cheap. They tell us not to convert money here into american money in our heads because we will spend so much money. but yeah no one call really help converting it I do it all of the time just to get a feel of how things are here. I already bought a couple ties and sweaters. But yeah back to the people. Somebody told us on the way to the Chisinau that there are a lot of beautiful women here and we were just like haha yeah thats funny but NO JOKE THEY ARE EVERYWHERE AND IT MAKES NO SENSE. Literally surrounded no matter where you go. Trials are everyone and they are real I'm telling you hahah. Another thing is that pretty much everyone smokes here and they all pretty much have the same names. Think of a Russian name and that's about 100,000 people here. A lot of Sergeis and stuff. So far I can't tell the difference between Russian and Romanian so that's a big problem so me. it's so hard to tell the difference right now. Most people here prefer Romanian but pretty much everyone understands and speaks Russian. It's mostly a political thing here so they'll say they only speak romanian even though they know both languages. We also teach english classes here and that's way fun.  

Some random things about Moldova

-the milk comes in bags so that's weird to get used to

-the bread and juice here is delicious

-the food here in general is so good. we eat a lot of pizza. (it's got nothing on tenneys tho) 

-I can't really remember so I'll email more next week

We were whitewashed into our area which basically means that we don't have any investigators so we have to start from scratch. We've been doing a lot of contacting like on benches, the street, and other random stuff. Contacting is so fun and it's so hard. Our zone has been trying to stress contacting in very creative ways and so we brought out a guitar and keyboard and played some music while we tried to talk to people. It's been a blast and I've even been able to give away some book of mormons to people all in Russian! The gift of tongues is real. But a lot of the time I'll try to start a conversation with people by asking them if they speak English or not and typically the younger adults love it because they all like to work on their english and the fact that I'm from america is really cool to them so I talk to a lot of people in russian/english here. It's very fun. 

I have so much more I can say but I don't want to overload everyone and I'm just super grateful for the opportunity to be here. One of the hardest things here was transitioning from the MTC where I felt the Spirit all of the time to now not feeling it nearly as much. I'm trying to put myself in more situations where I can feel the Spirit but it's hard when you're surrounded by so much garbage. But I'm so thankful that I get to share this gospel to those who don't have that in their lives. There is a visible difference with people who have that light. I've met so many cool people and hear some amazing stories so far. I was bearing my testimony about Joseph Smith to this guy on the street and even though he didn't seem that interested the Spirit hit me so strong and I almost started to choke up. There are little moments like that where I know that this is the true church and that what I'm doing is worth every second. This week a teenage kid who was baptised just recently had his house catch on fire because there was a very old stove. His dad was burned a little bit. His mom died a few weeks before his baptism from cancer and his parents have been pretty against the church. We did some service for him on saturday where we cleaned out the top floor and it was so humbling to see how little he had. There was beer and cigarettes everywhere. It's been a very humbling time for me here and I've been learning so much. 

I'm so happy to be here and I love this city so much. I still don't know the language very well and I don't know where I'm going most of the time but I couldn't be more happy an excited to be here. It's the best thing in the world. I love it I love it I love it. I love you all back home and I'm so grateful for you all. Stay sweet

-старейшина уайтинг