Christmas in Chisinau
-SANTA DRIVING AROUND THE CITY
-let it snow let it snow let it snow
-die halloween
-Elder Solov'iov got an oro-gami swam from an old lady in the old folks home
-Elder Solov'iov and his love for cats
-Armenian Orthodox Cathedral
-sunrise
-our newest investigator
-OH YEAH so I bought this lil christmas tree and at first it was just plain but then I was like "lets pimp this out" so now we have a lil pimped out christmas tree
-the 17 story block
-change change change
Crazy fast week again I'm not sure where the time went but yeah Christmas is pretty much here which is wild. It's been a really exhausting and really fun week so let's get to it. 

One of the coolest things that happened this week is that we were able to give these lil gift baskets to the old folks home here in Chisinau which was super awesome. We sang to all the oldies and then we went to each room and we delivered a bag of goodies to them. It was really humbling and cute. Apparently as Missionaries we do a lot of singing around Christmastime, weird



Next coolest thing is SNOW. YES. SNOW. СНЕГ. ДА. It snowed a tiny bit early in the week but yesterday it dumped on us so now it officially feels like Christmas which is super tight. 

We had a lesson on Saturday with one of the funniest guys ever. He's a member and his name is Sergei. He loves english and he's always speaking in the biggest Russian accent ever. I died when he said "very nice, very nice" idk why it was just super Russian. But yeah he was like "you guys like cake" and we're just like "sure man" and then HE BUYS US A CAKE FOR NO REASON. And then we go to his house which is tiny and he was just super giving to us. He wanted to feed us everything in his house and we were trying to tell him that we were fine but he was very persistent. But he's the nicest guy ever and it was super humbling to be with him and to share a spiritual message with him. I've really grown to love the people here so much more. And also he bought us a Kiev cake which is actually one of the best cakes in my opinion you can feel free to look it up.

Our investigator Arif is still a stud and he's super ready for baptism. It's at the point where we are just really good friends with him and we love to be with him. He even showed his family the Restoration movie and they are totally cool with him being baptised. We taught him about the Priesthood this week and he thought it was cool. 

We went block-knocking a bunch this week and it was super awesome. COOL STORY: so we're walking through our zone when we couldn't find any good buildings to knock and so we going around this one corner and we see the most beautiful thing ever. The biggest an nicest looking apartment block ever. We both looked at each other and said "that's the one" so we get there and it's incredibly nice. We get in and it has 17 FLOORS. 17. and each floor has like 8 apartments so if you do the math it equals a bunch. So we go to the top and it has the greatest view of the city (pictures included, probably my new favorite place in chisinau) and then we proceeded to knock for hours. We only got to floor 7 when we ran out of time so we came back the next day. We found this one guy who was super sick so we're hoping to meet with him soon. 


Interesting things:
-It's apparently a tradition here for people to go house to house caroling but then after you're done singing the person in the house HAS to give you money or food. So caroling for Missionaries here is super awkward because once you're done caroling they will try to give you money or food and like we don't let them but then they will be considered very rude so that's fun. 

-They decorated the center of the city with tons of lights so it really gets me in the christmas spirit. 

-People don't really celebrate Christmas here. They have Old Christmas and New Christmas. Old Christmas is Jan. 7. and New Christmas is Dec. 25. They don't do much they basically just hang out with family a lot and have some nice meals. People here go wild for New Years. Apparently that's the huge thing here. But I'll be here for both of them so that will be rad. 

This week was a week full of love which sounds super cheesy but I honestly have just fallen in love with the city and with the people here. Missionary work feels so much different when you do it with love. We had a lesson with this one kid and he isn't really interested in religion and doesn't believe in God and I bore probably the strongest testimony I've ever given to him on how God is real and loves him. The Spirit was very strong but he decided that God wasn't for him. It was hard to think about but I knew that the Spirit had done it's part and that he had made his decision so I realised that all I need to do is have the gift of charity and love these people. It opened my perspective and things really started to change and I know I don't explain it very well but everything has a greater perspective for me now.

Love you all so much!

-Старейшина Уайтинг

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Hey everyone  Oh man it's been a fun week. Also we contacted pretty much all day every day but for some reason it was really fun? Also Elder Day got wrecked with a stomach bug and we've started to get colds but we've still been going out and getting work done.  We actually had people come to church this sunday! So that was sweet. Church is nice. I got to translate @ church and man my translating is so trash haha. It's really fun though. Something cool that happened is we prayed really hard to find a less-active member one day and we went out to some addresses to find them and on our way we stopped a guy and tried to talk to him and he was like "oh yeah i actually used to go to your church" and then we found out more and it turns out he was baptized a while ago and even had the priesthood at some point so that was so cool and we invited him to come back to church. So miracles do actually happen it was sweet. Now that summer is coming around everyone dec...
Read more
Image
2 Countries 2 Missions 2 Mission Presidents 3 Areas 3 Languages 9 Companions Hundreds of lessons taught Hundreds of hours of contacting 2 Years As I'm writing this it still doesn't feel totally real and so it's a really strange feeling coming to the end. This is the last time I'll be sending an email as I'm going home next week.  My mission really has been the best 2 years. But it really wasn't anything that I had expected earlier. It has been the most difficult 2 years, the craziest 2 years, and the most peaceful 2 years of my life. I've learned so much and so much has changed in myself and others that it has completely flipped my life around. I thought I knew the blessings of the gospel before my mission but I feel like I've come to actually know it and I've come to actually see the change and the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ in people's lives.  I've seen and met and made friends with some of the strongest ...
Read more
Image
Well I now have officially less than a month left on a mission so that's weird. I would say I have a healthy amount of trunkiness. But you better believe that I'm still grinding every day.  It's been a hype week. I'll just get into the interesting things: -My companion had interviews this past week and while we were waiting at President's house Sister Kumferman pulls out ticket to ride and we had a good old bonding time. The Kumfermans are literally the best and I'm so sad that I didn't have an interview with him this time around. I love them so much. -That night was crazy and we ended up joining a Gypsy caravan. We were walking down a creepy alleyway and next thing we know we're surrounded by gypsies and they're speaking their weird gypsy tongue. We quickly escaped and went across some railroad tracks but there was a very long train on the tracks that was stopped and so we were like "dang" and so we climbed underneath the train to ge...
Read more