Hey Everyone!
Things are going pretty out here in Timisoara. The weather here has been pretty Oregon-like. It was really hot and sunny for a couple of days and we thought summer was here, but then it rained pretty hard for a couple days and now today is pretty sunny again. Who knows what tomorrow will bring.
We got a lot done this week, it was super productive and we worked hard. The mission standard for contacting people is 140 a week, but Elder Garrett and I had never even broken 100 together...until this week. We had 184 contacts! We've had a ton of lessons and hopefully we'll have lots of new investigators from our efforts. The other elders had a baptism yesterday. It was a woman named Gina who is very large. It was a challenge to get her into the bazin. She had to step onto a chair, then onto two chairs, then step over onto a stool in the water. But she did it and it went great and she bore a powerful testimony at the end.
Not much has happened with our investigators this week. Gabriella is getting closer to baptism, but I couldn't even guess when or even if she'll be baptized. She had a dream, though, where she had to make a decision to join the church or not. Sounds like the Lord is trying to help her a little. Who knows what will happen. Nothing else really happened with our progressing investigators. That area of our work now is pretty hard.
I've had a couple of exchanges this last week. The first one was with Elder Middleton. We went to Arad(about an hour by train) to get a baptism suit big enough for Gina. It wasn't too exciting, rode a train there, met the zone leaders at the train station and got the suit from them, then hopped on a train back. We got back a little after 10:30(this was at night), so we went to his apartment for the night because it was closer. I didn't have a change of clothes, so the next day I was pretty gross, but I took a shower at least. The shower was pretty amazing actually. I really hate taking a bath everyday and so it was nice to have a real shower. My other exchange was last night with Elder Woodhouse. We went bloc-knocking and it was awesome. Elder Woodhouse had me teach a lot and I had to explain parts of the 1st lesson that I haven't explained since last transfer. With Elder Garrett, I teach the Joseph Smith story and that's about it. It was really good to have that exchange with Elder Woodhouse. It pushed to teach better and to teach different things. We had 5 lessons(that's a lot for one night!) and each time we each taught different things so it was always a different lesson. I really learned a lot and he gave ideas on things to add to the lesson. I really like his style of teaching because he is super friendly with the people and has fun with them. Of course he doesn't screw around and forget why he's there, but it's just a really good atmosphere where the people can feel comfortable and enjoy the message. I want to take some of that and use it, too, to have that kind of way with people.
S, sounds like you had a lot of fun with the play! Sounds like your cast party was good. Good luck with your science project. Wow, Mom, sounds like your presentations have been going extremely well, especially at the stake enrichment night. Good job! Oh, and how was the coast?
Well, everyone have an amazing week! I love you all! We're having a big ping pong tournament between our district today. Wish me luck! --Elder Ross
