OKAY so this week has been crazy & a lot has happened. Looking back it's been a long week but also the shortest week of my life. Weird. Funny how that works.

Halloween was this week so it was a spoooky (with a ukrainian accent) day. Psych.  We didn't really do anything..Well we blew up some halloween balloons and we taught english. We gave out some candy so they were super hyped about that. 

On Wednesday me and elder dumbrell's companions went up to Balti so that they could get some passport stuff done. So the dynamic duo was back to it and I stayed at his apartment for the night. He made me some Australian stuff that morning and yes I have to admit it. I am now a fan of Vegemite. I know I know it's hard to believe. Well. I guess I'm no longer even an American. He also gave me some Milo which is just a type of hot coco. Overall a good morning. ALSO they have a scale at their apartment and guess what. Ya boy has LOST weight (толька 4 фунты). So to all of you who send I would gain weight on my mission you can eat it (с любовью). 

This week was zone conference and this was a cool one because everyone from the eastern part of Romania joined us so I got to meet a bunch of cool Missionaries including Elder Paul who is the older brother of the Elder Paul who I served with in the MTC. Super cool. A member of the 70 was there and he gave a bomb lesson about being a high yield, low maintenance missionary and he talked about how each missionary has their own talents and skills that make them amazing and that success comes from hard work. It's really hard to explain but it was super good and I loved it. 

Saturday was super cool and probably one of my favorite days here on the Mission. We started off the day by doing service for a girl in the ward named Nina who is 22 and is super cool. We walked for a while to her house and it felt like the outskirts of Chisinau. You had to take a super steep road to get there and it had cool views. We reached her house and it was so rad. It was the coolest house ever and they had pigs, and chickens, and a couple dogs. We basically raked all of the leaves from her yard for like 3 hours. It was one of the moments where I realised like "hey I'm in Eastern Europe and I'm a Missionary." Kinda funny but it really hit me that I was halfway around the world helping people here. It was the greatest feeling and I just felt so good all day. 

That same day we had a pretty cool celebration. It was the 20 year anniversary of the church in Moldova. The first person was baptised 20 years ago and so they threw this lil get together. The first ever Mission president in Romania/Moldova came and gave a speech. Then they showed a slide show of the church growing in Moldova and it was the coolest thing to realise I'm doing the same thing. It was rad. 

Cool things this week:

-A girl in the ward told me that my nickname here is "Ken." Apparently they think I look like barbie's boyfriend here so that's pretty funny. They'll say "who's elder whiting? oh you mean ken okay okay."

-A 5 year investigator got baptised this week. His name is Constantine and he's a shoemaker (he's made tons of shoes for the missionaries). He's super awesome. When he was bearing his testimony he said "better late than never" hahah

- I met this guy named Hu from China and he's a member of the church. He's been living in Canada for the past 10 years and he's afraid of flying so he's been taking boats and trains across the world to visit his family in XiangHai. I showed him my extensive chinese vocabulary of "I like your hair" and "do you have a green couch?" so круто.

That's about it but for my spiritual thought I learned how true the word of wisdom really is. I've seen so many people here who are suffering from the effects of alcohol and smoking. Their lives are completely taken over by this addiction and it's so sad to see how hard their lives are. It's a real testimony builder to me on how important it is to keep the commandments. 

Love you all and I love hearing from you!

-Старейшина Уайтинг