Moving Day

Luckily we weren't moving by horse and wagon but we drove by many, many of them in the Romanian countryside.  We however rented an Opel made in Germany and it was almost big enough.

It was a fun drive and so much nicer than the train or maxi-taxi.  Here's a few shots of the trip. Several big orthodox churches.

All the small towns sell produce and baked bread.  It's kinda fun.

This is a huge loaf of bread it weighs about 5 lbs. It takes most of the width of the left side of the cars dash board. It was delicious and lasted three days and we gave half of it to the Sisters.

This is the road side stand where we bought the bread. She is cooking Kurtos bread, over a charcoal fire, it is sweetened with sugar and spices that are melted into the bread  as it cooks.

Now here are some pictures of our apartment.  It was hilarious- Dan said it was the first time he finished a realestate deal and got kissed on both cheeks. !!

Our apartment is newly renovated so we are  excited.

Sorry the kitchen and bathroom pictures only come in sideways

I would like to thank all my grandchildren and children who prayed for us to find a nice place to live in Brasov (Brashov).  We appreciate all their faith and prayers.  We still wash all dishes by hand and do not have a clothes dryer, take the bus to church and talk to random people about how we are missionaries from Canada and are here for 2 years to teach about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  We feel so priveleged and blessed to be able to have this opportunity.  The Gospel is True !!

Wonderful Week in Brasov

We spent a wonderful week in Brasov looking for an apartment and we found one !!

This is in the hotel lobby.

We spent alot of time getting in and out of cabs so I thought this picture was appropriate.  Dan was awesome, getting newspapers, buying maps and calling ads.  He has been training for this mission for years, he's a natural. 

This is it!!

How do you like it??  Sorry I'll have to blog more pictures after we get the keys next week.

We are very excited because it is newly renovated and nice and new.  There is no elevator in the building (to break down) and we are located on the second floor. Just enough for lots of good exercise and not too much to wear me out.

This is our chapel!!Isn't it amazing.  We feel very spoiled to have such a wonderful place to meet.  Our branch is small but there are 3 children and 2 youth and several married couples.  We had supper with our branch president and his wife, attended the branch activity for women's day, attended the missionaries no smoking campaign, and attended church on Sunday.  We are beginning to get a feel for our city.

This is the Catholic Church downtown.  It is very big and beautiful.  This is an old WW2 Jeep that Dan thinks is Russian.  He was quite intrigued and had to take these pictures for his brother Ken.

Even though we haven't really driven a car for 6 months Dan loves to see the different cars here in Romania.  We saw a Toyota he had never seen before, it was a Corolla with a diesel engine.  There are lots of fancy Peugeot as well.

Here's two of our friends with their Russian Cachula's.  Don't believe anything a guy says wearing this hat.

Six Months Gone By

We had a great trip to Brasov looking for an apartment.  Travelling by maxi-taxi was cold and we both needed to warm our toes when we arrived.

We love the wonderful city of Brasov and look forward to enjoying many things here.  We stayed in a hotel that was 400 yrs. old.in the Historic part of Brasov.  It was so cool, kinda like old style European
Austrian culture.

It was right in Centru so we were able to walk most everywhere we went.

This is the main Piata (this word is pronounced Pe-at-za) or central courtyard of town. Very fun!!

 
We found two apartments that we thought would work and are in heavy negotiations as we speak.  This is right up Dan's alley, and he has enjoyed doing his real estate deals.  We are also dealing with our landlord to see if we can use this apartment here in Iasi for the sisters.  Missionary apartments are really quite complicated especially when the church needs the right to change people and apt. often and contracts can be difficult.

If you look closely you can see my neighbour is drying her clothes outside on the line.  Yes that's        -15C
and snow everywhere.  Who knew this was possible?

Here is Elder Heninger with two of our sweet friends from our branch in Iasi.  We will miss the beautiful people here in Iasi who have taught us so many things.  Six months flies by when your having fun. 

This was great!! Don't park illegally or this will happen to you.  The old crane picked up this car and swung it over to a flat bed and away they went.
Happy travels to you all.  We love and miss you.

Frosty the Romanian Snowman

No doubt about it !! It's winter

Aren't we lucky we don't drive a car?

This is Elder Heninger going to buy a snow shovel.  This is the store for man stuff.

This has been the coldest winter in 50 years.  We are doing fine but many people have suffered.  The roads are very dangerous.  This week driving in a cab we ran out of gas and the driver jumped out and popped open his trunk and took a 2 litre pop bottle full of gasoline and poured it in.  I had never seen that one before.  They like running their cabs on very low fuel.

This is our cute sister missionary shoveling snow at the church.  We've been doing alot of that.

We took another train ride to Bucharest for our visa's and Yeah!!!! we got them.  We were told we would have them in 20 days and 5 months later we received them.  Hey, it`s Romania

While in Buc we attended a mini Seniors Conference.  It was wonderful to be with Pres. and Sis. Hill, we can`t get enough of them.  We received training and shared ideas, had a fabulous meal and all went to a documenatary called Hand Held about orphan children after the fall of Ceausescu and the stuggles the country suffered.

We feel blessed to be able to serve at this time.  We love all our missionaries here in Iasi and in Romania.  We feel love for the members we have met and their great sacrifices to live and serve in the church in Romania.  It is hard here but the warmth of the gospel burns bright in our life and we hope in yours.  The gospel is the only path to real joy.  We love you and we miss you all.

Winter in Romania

For some reason we thought we weren't going to see snow, but it finally came.  This week has been cold and next week is forecast to be cold as well, with highs of -11C and lows of -18C.

We made another trip to Bucharest for our visa's. We love the office Elders, they pick us up at the garra (train station)and take us to the (metro)subway on our way to the visa office.  Where we wait..........

This time they were not ready and we needed to have finger printing done.  So we got that done and then they said to come back in 20 days.  Great.......... So of course we needed to do something fun so we went out for dinner with two other senior couples in Bucharest,

It's always fun to see the cool buildings and architecture in downtown Bucharest.

This is the Arc de Triumph, copied from the original in Paris France. This is located in a large traffic circle in town and very cool.  Here are some other pictures of Bucharest

This last building was being built for the center of communism for the world.  It is primarily empty because of the fall of communism in Romania.  It is the second largest building in the world.

We had a wonderful meeting with our mission president.  He is such an outstanding man.  We loved brainstorming and getting excited about our work.  Stay warm, love Heningers

la Multi An or Happy New Year

This is a picture of our branch on New Years Day.  They love to take pictures of everything.  I spoke in church New Years on moving forward and not looking back in our lives. 2 Nephi 31 :20.   Of course things were slow during Christmas and New Year but hopefully now we will be back in the swing of things.

Here's a fun pictures of my handsome companion.  Our weather has been mild and we have no snow but a few mornings are very chilly and a cachula is required.

We had a real adventure this week trying to find the post office.  Apparently there are 13 postal stations in Iasi so we went to the one closest to us.  They said "oh no you can't mail a package to Canada from this station" so they gave us the address of the one we needed to find.  When we got there they said the same thing "oh no....."  apparently we were not at number 13.  So she wrote down the address again and said see Duane.  Too bad there are no street signs with names of roads in Iasi.  After 3 hours of looking and wanting to give up we actually found it.  Miracle of miracles!!  so our youngest grandchild Lyla may be getting the one and only package we send home from Romania, if it actually arrives.  Happy Birthday Lyla.

This Sunday we went to church in Bacau.  We got up at 5:30 got ready and hopped on the tram-vi to take us to the Maxi-Taxi.  Left at 6:50 for the two hour trip to Bacau.  This is a picture of the beautiful building where they meet for church.

When we arrived at 9am we bought our ticket to go home and walked to the church. 

Church was wonderful, and there were 11 members and 3 invesitagors and 6 missionaries.  The place was packed.  The testimonies were very special and we taught a lesson in Sunday school on "How to teach a Lesson" It went well and our Eng/Rom mix was ok.

After church a new convert was given the Aaronic Priesthood which was very special and we got ready to head home.

The Maxi-Taxi filled up fast and once again 2 ladies had to sit on stools in the middle of the isle.  It was when the driver picked up one more person and she had to sit on the floor for about an hour that I felt so bad for her.

It was dark by the time we got home but it was a great day.  We look forward to going each month.

We send our best wishes for the new year and our love to you all.