Trauma, visits and hearts

New arrivals

Surori Baker and Later, Vărstnici Anderson, Roberts, White, Christensen

We have had another round of transfers which brought us three new faces.  Sora Baker (3rd from left) joined Sora Later, Vârstnicul Anderson (3rd from right) joined Vârstnicul White and Vâstnicul Roberts (far right) joined Vârstnicul Christensen.  We are excited to have them for at least the next six weeks.  We are blessed beyond measure to have the opportunity to work alongside of them in this amazing work.

You can draw your own conclusions as to what may have happened but suffice it to say the P-Day activity was cut a bit short and the next 13 hours were spent at the dentist (1 hour), taking X-rays (separate location-1 hour), ER (separate location-7 hours), CT scan (separate location-4 hours).  Bedtime curfew violated (2:30 a.m.).  Next day dentist (glue job-1 hour, root canals pending).  We won't mention names to protect the innocent, but the flat back pose might give it away.  Still conscious but traumatized.  Needless to say, it was a long day and a blessing that it wasn't worse.  There's some healing to be done but all in all he's doing well.  The work goes on.

We had a few unexpected visitors this week.  Elder and Sister Ford, Elder Newell and Elder Neuendorf from the Kyiv/Moldova mission.  Their mission home is in Chișinău Moldova which is only 2.5 hours away from Iași (which is ironically their evacuation location).  They came for a few days to reset their Visa's while waiting for paperwork, which is fairly common in Eastern Europe, at least for those not part of the European Union.  We had the opportunity to spend a little time with them for a dinner and district council the following day.  It's as if we've known them before, I guess it's a mission thing.

We had a wonderful opportunity to have Sora Anton to lunch.  We've been to her house a few times and wanted to return the favor.  She is beautiful inside and out and is a very talented artist.

We had our Family Home Evening this week and for the last several weeks have been discussing Elder Renlund General Conference talks.  It has been a wonderful opportunity for us to prepare for his visit this weekend (more on this later).  Also, as part of it this week we practiced a song.  The children have been asked to sign this song at our upcoming District Conference, with Elder Renlund and Elder Gerard.  It was recorded by one of our church members who lives in Oradea Romania, on the extreme western side near the border of Hungary.  She has a remarkable voice as you will hear.  Samyra and Miriam will be going to the conference with their mom Dana and will get to sing with them.

Spreading a little love on Valentines Day.  We took the blender and fixins over to Sora Genoveva's and whipped up some smoothies and then snuck into the Stoica's block and helped Sora Later and Sora Baker "heart attack" their door.  I didn't notice until right now looking at the photo, the alignment of the hearts.  They were putting tape on them and handing them to me as fast as they could.  I had my back to the door and was standing off to the side as to not be seen through the peep hole.  We could hear them talking right next to the door, so it was mostly done in silence with my left hand.  I guess once a surveyor, always a surveyor.  When we returned to our apartment we were greeted with a couple Milka bars.  Thanks V. C. & R.

We had the trio to dinner again.  Oh, how we love these three souls.  They have become like family.  No matter what happens once our time in Iasi is complete, they will always hold a special place in our hearts.

The babă patrol was out in force and I couldn't resist.  

(that could be an ear in the foreground)