Using Family History Work in Contacting

This week was pretty standard (surprised? haha) We did have zone conference though. They are starting to try and emphasize using family history work in contacting. Which is really interesting, because there has been a proposal for the Church to digitize all the records of Romania from microfilm. It's going to be a big project, but the church has already contracted 6 million dollars in funding to support it. The early terms of the deal we know are that the archives will supply 10 linear meters of documents a day. That's basically a stack of papers 10 meters tall, lots of documents. The plan still has to be approved on several stages, but it's looking like it will be approved. From what I've heard, the records are very in depth, as the secret police kept so many generations back on every person during communism. And, there are many records in Romania that go back into the 1500s. Romania was actually one of the earliest countries to start issuing birth certificates, so that's a goldmine for people in their work.

I think that's about all that happened this week. We played handball today and indoor soccer. Some of the other missionaries have an investigator that works at a gym or something, so we go play on the big court there. It was pretty fun.

Sunset from the office balcony

I'm Learning to Play the Ukulele

Q: What's new in the Romanian mission office?

About the same still here in the office.

We were at the Mexican embassy with the sister from Mexico last week. They are helping her do some paperwork to send home to get her criminal record sent here. We went back today and finished it up and sent the documents to her dad. They'll arrive in Mexico city on Wednesday, and hopefully we'll be able to move forward with it all next week when we get the documents back. It's expensive to send documents around the world.

Q: What's the best thing that happened for you this past week?

Well we had something kind of cool happen this week. So there's this guy who's a member, and hasn't been to church for about a year . He has bought a few cars from us in the past, and he recently (over the last few weeks) has been going to lunch with us. He just calls us up, asks if we want to go with him. It's happened the last couple weeks and he just picks us up, and buys us lunch. Really nice guy. He owns a beauty salon and is a really prestigious hairdresser. Anyways, he came to church with is wife and son yesterday. First time in over a year. So that was cool. We've got to be pretty good friends, Now he just needs to keep coming to church too.

I'm learning how to play the ukulele a bit, it's kind of fun. I practice when I need a break from the office work. Elder baker knows how to play really well, so he teaches me a little here and there. 

Q: It's been a month or so since you've sent a photo. Do you have any new ones you could send?

And for the pictures, we haven't really done anything picture worthy, so I really haven't taken hardly any pictures for awhile. I'll try to find some stuff to shoot, maybe next week.

But that's all for this week!

Sometimes Translating Gives Me a Headache!

Nothing really new in the office. We got put in a threesome companionship again, which I'm not too excited about. But we found out today that he'll be leaving to go with someone else on Wednesday. And church was yesterday... haha. But it was long...... Sometimes they don't always stay on topic and they talk about stuff that doesn't necessarily apply. Sometimes I translate, but I dodged it this week. It gives me a headache haha.

I'm not sure when our clocks change here, sometime. We asked one of the members the other day, and he didn't know. We are thinking it's the last Sunday in March. We'll see though. It's real crazy that Carson is done. Seems like I watched him walk into the airport just yesterday. Weird how time works. I just have a touch over 3 months.

Nothing's really changed here in the office. I'm sure you've figured it out already, but it's pretty much the same drill here. Just taking care of the mail, visas, and whatever else could possibly go wrong. I did write a big chunk of something I could put in my homecoming talk during sacrament meeting this week, I felt pretty productive after that.. haha. We're still working on getting the Mexican sister's visa. There is lots of paperwork to gather, and when we have it all, we're putting her and her companion on a train to Budapest to apply at the Romanian Embassy there.

The Joys of Office Life

Sounds like Austin has run into a snag or two this week working in the office.  He is getting good practice with problem solving skills!  Here's his update this week:

Not much is new. We have just barely got a sister here from Mexico a couple weeks ago, and us being the office elders, we have to do all her residence permit stuff. The initial thought was, based on what we found out, she just does everything the same as an American citizen would. We get to the immigration office, and turns out, it's pretty different. She has to have a special visa, that's an actual sticker in her passport in order to apply. And she can only get said sticker at a Romanian embassy. Yup, she has to go to Budapest to apply and then come back, then go back and pick it up. Nuts. And, she has to send documents home that allow her parents to obtain her criminal record for her and then have that sent to her here. It's a bit of a mess. We're slowly learning more and more though. Joys of the office life.

Also, we went to apply for some more permits with the new senior couple today, only to find out that part of the process has changed on us. The deal is you have to have some sort of health insurance when you apply for your permit, then you get long term insurance after you receive the permit. When we got to the insurance office, they told us that they don't give it anymore. So that threw a wrench in our plans. So now we have to get private insurance in order to apply, then long term insurance after they receive the permits.

That's basically the fun for the week.