A Visit from Utah Friends!

Austin and Elder A.

Ranell, Austin and Elder A.

Ranell, Butch, Austin and Elder A.  Ranell said, "This is the one we took for FaceBook.  So fun!"

On August 20, I received the following text and photos from my friend Ranell Johnson who was traveling in Romania:
"Aneisa: We were able to meet up with Austin and his companion, Elder A.  We had a nice visit over dinner.  They are both doing well.  After visiting with Elder A. we found out that my husband, Butch, knows his father.  Small world! The other small world thing was that Butch thinks he went to high school with Austin's best friend's father, Mike Shepherd.  We are so glad that meeting up with them worked out.  We had a guided tour & we didn't know what time it would end---but, it all worked out."
She goes on to say: "It was the highlight of our day.  He really looked good.  He has a great attitude and a love for the people.  I told him I wanted to give him a hug, but knew it wasn't allowed, because that's what you would want to give him!"
Wow!  What a wonderful gift for a missionary mom!

Here is Austin's update:

Things here are hot still. It's been cooling off a smidge, but not too much. It's cloudy right now, and it was cloudy yesterday. I asked her husband what he does. He is an attorney, but he owns a big law firm and manages the business side of it. He went to law school, but doesn't really practice law. So that's what he does. They are both super nice people. We went to eat at this super popular restaurant in the old part of Bucharest. It's super touristy, but at the same time, it has good prices and it's in this really old building. They bought us dinner, they just said order whatever we wanted. I got chicken cordon bleu with potatoes and cheesecake for dessert.

We didn't teach any lessons this week, and no new investigators either... haha. It's been super hot lately. We had 2 companion exchanges this week as well. One with the other set of elders and one with the zone leaders. So it was kind of a jumbled week that just ended up in contacting most of the time. And yeah, I played the piano again. I'm fastly running out of hymns I can play. And that's from the easy hymn book.. haha. Students at english is a very interesting subject. We had a lot at the beginning, but our medium class only has like 3 or 4. We are in the last week for that though. I think total, we are at about 20, for all 3 classes. Not a whole ton. I'm pretty sure the gift card thing is only in the US. I've never seen one gift card for sale anywhere here. I'd say don't send one, the reason being, that lots of places still don't take credit cards here. They have to pay taxes and report income like that. It's still a huge cash based economy.

Other news is, we found an apartment. Finally. The contract should be signed either tomorrow or today. I haven't called the office yet. We should move in this week though. Just in time for someone to move out, we find out transfers this weekend. No idea if I'll stay or go or what. We'll have to wait and see.

That's about it, happy late birthday! Till next week,

Me in front of the Hard Rock Cafe