Hey Everyone!
This week has been really good and, as you guessed Mom, we had zone conference. The conference was awesome and I learned a lot of things about how I can be a better missionary. I think I started to get into a pattern and was doing things just to do them, but I've been jolted out of that and am focusing more on following the Spirit and stretching myself.
For example we talked a lot about contacting people throughout the day, not just going from one lesson to another, but to be finding people all the time. Then President sent us outside in the middle of the conference to go street contact for an hour and a half. I went with Elder Selck (my dad!) and it was awesome! We had a different attitude about it and had a lot of success. We only had time to contact about 15 people in that time because we had about 6 lessons from it. That is amazingly good! I learned a lot, too, from Elder Selck and how he teaches. He gets to know the people instead of just launching into a presentation, and then tailor makes a lesson on the spot for them. It's sweet and I've tried to do that more and it makes a huge difference. Elder Platt and I contacted yesterday for just a half an hour or so and got 3 lessons! So, pretty much zone conference was sweet and I learned a lot.
The conference was in Chisinau(in Moldova), which was awesome! We got to see a bit of the city and it's really cool. Transportation was horrible, though, I mean getting to and from Chisinau. To get there we took a Maxi Taxi, a van packed full of people and it was a 4 hour ride! I couldn't even sit facing straight, because my knees would hit the seat in front of me. It was one of the worst experiences of my life, lol. But seriously. Then on the way back, we took a bus. I had more room, but the first three hours were on really bumpy, windy roads and I spent the whole time on the brink of throwing up. Anyway, now I'm back in Iasi and I'm glad to be here and get back to work.
Well, we still don't have too many investigators, but there are a lot of people that we are hoping become investigators. People we've met, but haven't had two lessons with yet. I made about 10 to 15 calls last night and we have a few lessons set up so we'll see what happens. Something super exciting is that our bomb investigator Nicu is set up for baptism now! His date is the 7th of October, the first Sunday of next transfer...I better not get transferred! And then, his wife got back from Italy and her and his son all came to church on Sunday. Yay! Hopefully we can start working with her, too. We'll find out. We have a lesson with him today.
Not a whole lot else is new. The BYU girls are here now. It's actually way fun, because I get to do a ton of translating and I love it. I'm not too good, because I'm still new at it, but it's just a lot of fun for me. Man, last week I got pulled in Relief Society! They were talking about food storage and so that was way hard to translate and I didn't know what was going on half the time. The BYU girls just told me it didn't matter too much, so when I didn't understand I would just talk to them and say really random stuff and then the romanians thought I was translating what they said. It was super funny.
J, sounds like you did super well at the last game. That's sweet! Nice, too, on how getting a good rep with ladies AND their dads! lol. Keep tearing it up.
Sounds like things are going really well back home. The little ones are playing soccer, going to school and growing up. That's really sweet that W said that he was Ross-sick. I miss you, too, buddy! Christmas isn't too far away and then I can talk to all of you! Btw, I'm glad you were so sensitive to E's needs at the football game, Dad, haha. That was really funny and I know E did alright. He's a tough kid. Mom, that is awesome about your business and how it is succeeding with this huge project. I can't wait to hear more as it progresses. Also, that sounds like a great idea, having the students learn and teach from Preach My Gospel. I don't really have any ideas, just to make it a real role-play, with someone as an investigator. And they have to remember to teach it really simply because that person has never heard any of this before.
Well, I should go. I love you all! Have a great, even fantastic week!
--Elder Ross
