2nd Week in Moldova

Hey hey hey everyone welcome to the next update of Elder Whiting. It's been another wild one here in Chisinau and so I'll get right to it.

So first of all to explain sidewalks, so apparently sidewalks here are free game to park?? It's whack but it's so funny. There's like so parking here so everyone just parks and drives on the sidewalks all of the time.

Another funny thing I learned. In Russian there is no difference between a dove and a pigeon. Like it's the same word. And in the bible it talks about how the holy ghost descended in the form of a dove so basically what I'm getting to is everyone thinks that pigeons here are like sacred animals so they're everywhere. And nobody messes with them so the pigeons here will just walk right by you.

Basically we still don't really have any investigators so we spent most of our time contacting. We found this one guy and we taught him a lesson this week. MY FIRST LESSON WOO. It went super well and he seemed interested so we're hoping to meet with him again. Which now leads into my craziest experience here so far. MY SECOND LESSON WOO. So this next lesson was the same day as my first lesson and it was actually a guy that I met and talked to in Russian. He was super nice and I gave him a book of mormon and things were all good. We went to by where he lives and he was late meeting us but we eventually met up with him. He was super nice but first thing he offered to buy us alcohol. We said no thanks and so he bought us little juices and a big old beer for himself. We were like 'oh no he's going to be hammered the whole lesson.' Little did we know that he was definitely going to be hammered the whole lesson. He tried talking to me about american conpiracy theories in broken english like how '9/11 was a government job' and stuff. and then we enter his apartment where he offered us tea, coffee, and a smoke. We said no thanks but he insisted so he made us like an herbal tea because thats all we could have. He immediately took his shirt off and smoked out of his window. We tried to teach about the book of mormon but the spirit was long gone. Basically we left as soon as we could which was like an hour into this. There are so many other crazy details but I don't have much time. Apparently my comp said he had a very dirty mouth but I don't know Russian swears. haha I LOVE THIS MISSION. good times good times. Afterwords we laughed so hard because it was literally the strangest thing ever. 

We did some service this week for a member here and we basically chopped down a tree in his garden and that was super fun. He fed us a traditional moldovan meal afterwords and it was so good. They had the cutest little family and it was very humbling to see how little they had. 

Other things that happened this week

-I had a guy flip me off this week. WOO FIRST ONE. I think I have the record here of the fastest one. Represent represent 

-We tried some creative contacting this week so we put as many ties on Elder Solov'iov and tried to get people to guess how many ties he was wearing then if they got close then we gave them a book of mormon

-A girl in the ward got her mission call to the birmingham england mission so that's super cool

-one of our good friends in the ward got drafted into the moldovan army so he left for Russia today to go live with his dad so that he didn't have to serve. It's really sad because we love Nichols. He does parkour and has a youtube account(go look up my boy Demon009900 hahah). 

-The weather has been gorgeous

-I saw meet the mormons in Russian and didn't understand any of it.

-I bought a sick watch that was made in the soviet union in like the 1970's and it still works. It's like 500 lei here(expensive) but about 27 dollars in america.

-played soccer this morning and it was so fun

Anyways I think that's everything. EVERYONE GO READ MOSIAH 2-4. King Benjamin's speech to his people is amazing and it really hit me this week. MAke sure you read your scriptures and say your prayers. Love you all!!!

-Старейшина Уайтинг

Questions I specifically asked: (Mel)

How is church there?

1. So church here is so different than in america. It's only 2 hours and there's one russian branch and one romanian branch. There's only about 20 people that show up to the russian branch and it feels very casual. A lot of people just come in whatever clothes. It seems to go by super fast and I don't understand like any of it haha. 

 Do the Senior Missionaries take care of you?

2. There are senior missionaries here but i'm not sure what they do. They talk to us occationally but they mostly just like teach institute here and do some other stuff idk.

Where do you email from?

3. The last president(ivory) was very rich and built a very nice building in chisinau for missionaries so we have some computers here that we use.

Do you just eat out for lunch?

4. haha we typically eat out like 2 times a day because it's so cheap. But a lot of the time we buy stuff for pasta and make it at home. at night we typically go to the market by our house to buy milk and cereal for breakfast. I dont really like cereal here so i'll just buy yogurt or something.

Do the members have you over for dinner?

5. Members are typically very busy and don't do that much for missionary work. We got fed once this last week but that was because we did service for them. It's pretty rare to get fed here.

Do you have a calling?

6. I dont have a calling

What do you do for Pday?

7. All the missionaries in chisinau get together pretty much every day to do contacting or to go eat or something. We all got together and played soccer for like 2 hours this morning and that was so fun. They have some pretty nice fields that you can rent out for super cheap. We spend a lot of time with all the missionaries here in chisinau.

What has been your favorite food?

8. That's a tough one. I'm not really sure. Pretty much all of the food here has been really good. The wings I had here the first week were super good so maybe those. It's been awesome though.

If i had one complaint here it would probably be that I've been pretty disappointed with a lot of missionaries here. Many have been out for a long time and are really lazy and don't do much. My comp is good but there's not a lot of strict obedience here which I haven't really liked. I feel like I'm never really working hard enough and I'm trying to keep the rules as much as I can ya know.