Really Going Places Now

We had a wonderful Service Project on the 12th of May.  It was called Do It Romania, where anyone interested helped in cleaning the country.  Mormon Helping Hands were there and having fun.  It was great to work with our branch and help clean up this beautiful country.  We all hopped on the bus to get to our location and away we went.

This is a broom that is used alot here, it is made of twigs and used for outside sweeping.

We all worked hard and were very tired.

We also visited a mental hospital this last week with our humanitarian missionaries.  They helped in replacing the old washing machine that I thought you might enjoy seeing.

This machine does not spin out only wash by agitating back and forth and then clothes are placed in another machine to spin out.  Then the drying racks collapsed this winter with the harsh conditions we had so we will be helping our humanitarian missionaries replace the drying racks for the hospital next week.  When I say we, I mean them- I'm not too good with a hammer.

Lastly It was Elder Heninger's Birthday, so Happy Birthday to You

What a privilege it is to serve here in Romania.  We are so lucky to be able to be here and we are learning so many things while helping the church to grow.  We are grateful to our family who loves and supports us and to God who has given us all we have.  Keep the Faith!!

Lots of work to do now

We had a wonderful Seniors conference in Bucharest.  Great classes and great food and lots of sites to see.  We had reports on Training and YSA and Public Affairs and Humanitarian Efforts.  Lots of work done and more to go.

The Elders even sang which was fantastic!!

We took at little trip around this lake in this boat behind us.  It felt like Heritage Park, it was fun.

We went to the Park where the first apostle came to dedicate the land for missionary work in 1990.  It has a very hard name, I can't pronounce it or spell it, but was so beautiful.

The sites in downtown Bucharest were amazing.  The design and architecture blows me away.

This is an angel carrying a fallen soldier to heaven.  It is enormous and sits out front the Marriott Hotel.

This an original bank from before Communism and during communism was the only National bank  and still operates as a bank today.

Original Orthodox Church.  People were worshipping and lighting candles for others.

This church is from the 1700's. I got a few pictures on the inside as well.

This is the ceiling.

This picture is in the National Theater building, it is amazing. Two of our missionaries perfrormed here and they have amazing voices.  

Elder Heninger was asked to serve in the Mission Presidency with Pres. Hill. We are very excited and look forward to learning so much from him. We also get to drive a car Yahooo!! It's great, a little blue Skoda.

We are excited about the gospel and hope you are too.  We love you and miss you all.

Easter in Brasov

Easter is a very special time of year in Romania, maybe even more important than Christmas.  The first weekend of the month is Catholic Easter and it falls on the same calendar as Canada or America.  The next weekend is Eastern European Orthodox Easter.  They begin their celebration six-weeks leading up to Easter which is called Lent and they "fast" or refrain from eating certain foods as a preparation - prayer, abstaining,& repenting to heightening the commemoration for the Holy Week.

On Holy Saturday evening, the Resurrection mass takes place. At midnight the ceremony of lighting of candles is the most significant moment of the year. People, carefully, take home their lighted candles with the holy light of the Resurrection. Before entering their houses they make a cross with the smoke of the candle on top of the door, they light the oil candle before their icon-stand, and try to keep this light burning throughout the year.

This is a typical icon, and they pray to these and cross themselves at every passing of the orthodox church. 

There are many festivities in the main Piata. 

Since we didn't have a big Easter dinner we had a delicious treat in Centru and enjoyed watching all the goings on. 

Sunday was very nice church and we enjoyed the talks and spirit of our meeting.  We watched the new Bible Videos and invited one member and her daughter over for a small lunch.  Our friend who came for lunch lives out in the country and must hire a special cab to get back and forth to church.  She didn't know if she'd get home as the cabbie may be celebrating and too drunk to drive.  She is a great member and has a daughter serving a mission right now in Spain.  She is humble and hard working and a special lady in the church in Brasov.

I finally was able to attend the Black Church.  This is a main tourist attraction here in Brasov.  Brasov was founded by the Transylvanian Saxons and was one of the major urban settlements in the 1300's.

This is quite a site.  This is the largest hall church east of Vienna and the largest eccesiastical building in Romania.  It was begun building 1385 and received it's name after the great fire in 1689, which left the entire town in ashes and blackened the church walls.

It took 100yrs to build and then after the fire they spent the next hundred years renovating. it.  This church was built before Columbus sailed for America.  It's OLD.

Today we climbed about 100 stairs to the top of the highest point here called the Citidel.  The old fortress that looks out over the whole surrounding area.  Here are a few shots from the top at the Citidel.

Hope you enjoyed our history lesson today.  It's fun to learn so many new things about places we've never been before.  We are anxious to attend our Seniors Conference and District Conference at the end of the month.

Very busy month

We have had a very busy month with wonderful memories and special experiences.  This is Elder Heninger as he awaits to leave from the train gara in Brasov for our exciting trip to America for our daughters wedding.  It was a whirl wind of a week but we crammed as much as we could into our 7 days.  I will have pictures to show on my next posting.

MaryAnn's wedding was amazing and considering the many places people were coming from we had a large number of family and friends there to support them.  Thank you to all those who were able to join us.  Thank you to MaryAnn and Adam who took care of everything so we simply had to drop in and literally drop out again.
The temple is really what everything in the church is about.  It felt like heaven to me and we were so thankful for the blessing of being there.

This was a special treat.  You can just imagine how much we enjoyed these two cuties.  It was a little tough to say goodbye but we knew we had to get back and we were anxious to return to some exciting work here in Romania.

The day after we landed we had meetings for the public affairs in Romania.  Elder Heninger and I are on the committee for public affairs and are hoping to bring awareness to the church.  We left the next day for training branch leaders and saw some beautiful parts of the country.
Driving through the Romanian countryside was beautiful and I took some photos of Sighisoara-Transilvania.

This Gospel offers opportunities that can't be found anywhere else.  It is a wonderful thing to focus on helping people come unto Christ and realize the blessings of the Atonement.  That they can live free from guilt and burdens by repenting and changing and live with faith in Jesus Christ.  I love it!!

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.