Romanian Family

Hi there!  

Hope It´s been a good week for everyone. This week had a huge range of emotions. We were given a reference of this family from Romania from a set of Elders in Granada. They´d moved into our area and he said they were golden. We met them for the first time on Monday and just kind of got to know them and introduce ourselves. The dad wasn´t there but there were 6 kids and a mom. We commited them to baptism (without a date) and they all said yes. We were super, super excited for our first breakthrough in weeks!!

We stopped by to visit them again that week and the whole family wasn´t there, but the mom and the younger kids were so we read part of the story of Nephi getting the plates and asked them to finish the story, just to get them into the Book of Mormon without giving them anything too deep. We wanted to try and keep the whole family on the same page. 

When we stopped by again only the oldest kids were there. We talked with them a bit and asked them when we could come by with the whole family there. When they called their mom they told us that we could come over any more.

What? It totally caught us by surprize. The whole family was so strong and so excited. When we´d brought Books of Mormon for them the second visit one of the kids had opened it up and started reading the introduction right away. They were so ready for the gospel. 

The kids explained to us that their dad didn´t want anything to do with the church. In Romanian the word ´´mormon´´ means ´´tomb´´. They said that in Romania missionary´s had come by before and tried to explain but that he didn´t understand and didn´t want us coming by any more. They said that they´d tried to get baptized back then and he´d said no. It was heartbreaking. We could tell they wanted it. The whole family did. But they needed to follow what dad said, which I totally respect. It was just so hard to see just good kids who want such good things not be able to. So they asked us to not come by any more. We´d given them 4 books of Mormon, 2 in Spanish and 2 in Romanian. They gave us back two, one from each language and said they were hiding the others so they could read them when he wasn´t home. As we left I told them to read 3 Nephi 11. It´s all we could do, and I wanted to make sure that they at least got to read about Christ since they weren´t going to be able to read much or often.

So that was pretty tough. I have faith in those kids though. If they don´t have the opportuntiy to accept the gospel now, they will in the next life. It really made me super grateful for the family I have.

We saw a miracle this week too. An old investigator that Hna Brown and I had been visiting and dropped (pretty sure I mentioned him last week) met with us at the beginning of the week. He opened up like he never has before and told us he really wanted to try this time to do the things we asked him. He didn´t want us to think he was flakey and didn´t want to learn, he´d just been going through a rough time. We were only able to meet him once this week because he was in the process of moving, but we should be meeting with him this next week. So that´s really exciting. We have a bunch of other people that we´re trying to visit this next week. It feels like we finally have people to work with, even if they´re not solid people. It´s a lot better than the nothing we started out with!

On a lighter note, the funniest thing happened this week. We were in an eating cita with Elder Erickson and Elder Gonzalez (we didn´t realize we were double booked until we got there.. Sometimes the members here try to do that since theres so many of us in one ward. We just kind of have to let it go). Elder Erickson was really excited for their jalepeños and had a ton of them in his salad. So the mom gave him some other peppers to take home, these little round red ones I don´t know the name of. He pulls one out of the bag and is sniffing it. The family all tells him to not eat it because it´s really spicy, much more so than the jalepeños. So being the person he is, he pops it in his mouth. 

I wish I could have taken a video. It was one of the funniest things I´ve ever seen. He tried to play it cool for a while but his face started turning red. He coughed a bit and then started drinking a lot of water. He just held the water in his mouth. Meanwhile the whole family is laughing and shaking their head at him. In the closing prayer everyone had a hard time being reverent because he was panting. When we left he said his tongue was numb. I wish I could explain better his reaction, it was the funniest thing.

This week for Thanksgiving Hna Roan and I got together with a member of the ward (maría Jose) who loves cooking and speaks really good english. She wanted to try doing a cclassic thanksgiving dinner. It was fun, but a nightmare at the same time. There was a little bit of confusion about who was bringing what ingredients so we were short some things and the poor elders had to run to the store for us. More than once. I won´t say how many times because it´s super embaressing. 

They don´t have whole turkeys here until Christmas so we did two big chickens. It was my first time having a chicken like that, we had to pull some feathers off and the lungs and a few other parts out of the chicken. The chicken was super fresh and they just don´t clean them as well here and they do in the USA. The food was super delicious and it all turned out great. We had the chicken, mashed potatoes, jello, rolls (we did pinwheels and braids and stuff too), stuffing, green beans, a salad, gravy (both María Jose and her daughter hated the gravy), I made up a peach crisp on the spot and an apple pie. It was a lot of fun and everyoen got to take some leftovers home. We stuffed ourselves to the brim, it was so nice for all of us to eat classic American food.

Today I had to buy new boots. The ones I brought out here had a rubber heel which didn´t stand up on the cobble stones here in Spain. The heel collapsed on itself like you can see in the photo. So sad, loved those boots. But they were killing my feet at the end of this last week. So we went to a chino and bought new boots for pretty cheap. The great thing about Spain is that even the cheap stuff is really high quality. I love it. 

I love you all a lot!!!! Have a really great week!!! I know Christ lives and loves us. He´s watching over us and wants to help us.  2 Nephi 2:22. 

Loves!

Hna Woolley