I'm Doing Great and Excited to be Here in Cluj!

Me and Elder V. in front of the big Orthodox church in downtown Cluj

My questions to Austin this week: 1) How is your new area--is it a smaller town or city? 2) What's your apartment like? 3) How many members are in the branch there and how many come to church? 4) Are you enjoying your new companion, Elder V.? Sounds like you had quite the week prior to your transfer with moving into a new apartment and passing by a Pink Floyd concert. Have you seen the nativities you were telling me about? I'm wondering if you think it is worth $100? I would love one, but want to be sure that it is worth that much.

He says:
My new city is Cluj-Napoca. It's the second biggest city in Romania. It's really cool. It's a college city. there are about 50,000 students here at the height of the school year. I assume there are lots of members here, at church they usually have about 50, it's the strongest branch in the mission. Elder Van Dyke is awesome. We were already great friends a year ago in the mtc. He was in the group 6 weeks behind me and then went home while he was in the mtc. He came back to the mission and is in his 4th transfer now. So we're excited to be together. Yeah that last week was a joke of moving and cleaning and heat wave. But we're here in cluj safe and sound now. As for the nativities, i need to find out more about them. I'd only heard of them. The man that makes them is in a town really close to brasov.. so i'll try to find out some more info and let you know.

As for the week, not too much. We got in really early Thursday morning to Cluj and that day was unpacking, cleaning, and getting bus passes for the month. Over the weekend we did some English contacting, and just exploring the city a bit. It's pretty big. We had correlation meeting with the branch mission leader too. He's a way good man who has been in the district presidency for awhile, but just got recently released. The branch here is awesome. They are all super cool and just really easy going. They love to joke around. A lot of it has to do with the senior missionaries who are here. Coolest people. He retired from HP Computers some years ago. He actually signed up to go to Vietnam and tells us stories for days. He's a hoot and a half. Church was good too, I just tried to meet the people I could and make it a good first day. That's basically it though. I'm doing great and excited to be here in Cluj!