More traditions, same celebration

 Hristos A Înviat-Adevarat A Înviat




What a beautiful tradition.  During the Easter season the formal greeting is Hristos A Înviat (He is Risen) and then you respond with Adevarat A Înviat (Truly He is Risen).  We attended a midnight mass for Orthodox Easter, April 12th.  It was pretty cool.  Everyone comes with a candle.  They fill the inside of the church first the rest of the people including us gathered outside. The priest begins the service and is heard with a sound system outside.  At one point they light a candle and begin to share the light with others inside and then come outside.   You receive the light from a random person and then you share it the same way.  As you stand there with your candle burning the priest makes his way outside and concludes his sermon.  People begin to file away but no one extinguishes their candle and as you walk home you can see flickers of light coming from every direction.  Everyone is returning to their homes from the dozens of churches (we can see over 20 from our apartment and those are just the ones we can see), with lit candles in hand.  We even saw people driving with them.  The tradition is that as you receive the light of Jesus you are to share it with everyone and once you receive it you are to take it into your home.  It's a pretty awesome tradition, one that we could all learn from.









Easter Sunday was such a special day with beautiful music by Sora Baker on Piano and Sora Spencer on the violin they played the song "Gethsemane".  Elders Anderson, Patchett, Gramham, and Roberts sang "I Know That My Redeemer Lives".  The ILP girls sang "I Stand All Amazed", and when they got to the last verse they sang it in Romanian.  It was a beautiful surprise for our branch.  Music invites the spirit so strong to any moment of time.  It is always an honor to have President and Sister Fowler with us.  They gave wonderful messages of our Savior Jesus Christ, He Lives! Our Easter Masa was a lot of fun as we shared in a wonderful meal with Sister Genoveva's delicious Sarmale, and many other yummy Romanian dishes.  Another Easter tradition is everyone gets a colored egg, mostly red.  They repeat the same greeting as above and then smack their eggs together.  The hope is that you are the last one to have a crack in your egg as you are said to enjoy the longest life or best health, and it is believed they will see the others in the afterlife.  The egg represents the tomb, the red dye signifies the blood of Christ, and the cracking symbolizes the opening of the tomb.  Again, another awesome tradition.  Easter is everything to the Romanian people.
We also said goodbye to another group of ILP girls from the US.  They bring quite a light to the branch.

Tender Mercy: Elder Leavitt, Elder Anderson and Elder Patchett helped carry Ionuts down 4 flights of stairs in his wheelchair to attend church service. They don’t have an elevator in their apartment building. It was such a special Easter with them attending. They both bring such a light and joy to our branch. 



Președintele & Sore Fowler were actually in attendance and were able to enjoy part of the day with us and take a few treasured photos.  


Eggs everywhere!  They have a beautiful tradition of hand painted eggs, some are actually real and some are wooden. 









Primăvară fericită!  The spring has been exceptionally beautiful.  It reminds us of the newness provided to us through the resurrection of our Beloved Savior Jesus Christ.  Even after our leaves fall off and our limbs become brittle, we know our Hope in Christ is real and new life is just a season away.



Meal choice for district council was breakfast.  I've always been a believer that you can't go wrong with a hearty breakfast any time of the day.







I think someone was spying on us.

We went streeting for our district activity.  Blessed is the only word we can use in describing our incredible missionaries we get to serve with.  They are a light to everyone they meet and have strong testimonies of Jesus Christ that they love sharing.  We met the sweetest man playing his mandolin he made our night and we made his.  It was a great evening complete with a half-time “suc ” run. 


As usual, always intrigued with maps.  This one really caught my attention.  It is a relief map of the Country of Romania. Iași lies on the eastern edge near the border of Moldova and is just east of the Carpathian Mountains.  It is a great representation of the terrain and the magnitude of the mountains.



More of our Senior brothers and sisters.  She was so sweet as she was selling her homemade cheese.  We used a lot of sign language and spoke the language of love.  No calculator for her just a piece of paper and a pencil figuring out our total.  Check out the homemade sausage.  The cheese was delicious.  We hope you all are feeling the peace and love that only our Savior Jesus Christ can bring in your life.  We love our family and dear friends all over the world. 

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