Changes Ahead

Hello family,

July 18th, 2012 - That was the day I said goodbye to my family, my friends, and my old life. I remember walking through the front doors, being guided by a bunch of relief society woman to a line, receiving my name tag and thinking, "Oh no... I have to learn THAT language?" Little did I know of the major changes (good ones) I would be forced to make in my short time at the MTC. 

This is just my opinion but I feel like I've made a TON of changes since then. I glad I haven't missed a single day of writing in my journal because that's been a good way for me to look back and see how I've changed. But now, I get to look forward to the year that I have in front of me.

Last lunch for Elder Schiers in Orhei. Brothers for life!

We have done a TON of villa knocking this week. It's a lot of fun and we meet a lot of interesting people. One day it was about 8:45 pm, and we thought, "Well, we have 15 minutes, let's walk down this street and ring the first doorbell we see." We ended up meeting a young man who's an engineer named Constantine and he really liked what we said about the Book of Mormon. We caught him right as he got home so we just stood at his gate and talked about the Book of Mormon for about 30 minutes. He mentioned how he always wondered who we were because he had seen us so many times at the supermarket down the street. The bummer was was that he worked every day, all day, so we'll have to catch him again when he's home. Very nice guy and he seemed like he'd want to meet again. The next experience was a man who yelled at us, told us that we didn't represent Christ, and that if he talked to us, it would be a sin because we are from the devil.... Ouch.... We just calmly told him to have a nice day and walked away. I sometimes wonder why people are that way, but that's life! The third experience was pretty funny. It happened just last night. We were in an area that has probably never been knocked, we rang a doorbell, no one answered, so we continued up the street, after 30 seconds a guy came out and yelled, "Hey! Did you ring my doorbell?" "Yes, we did." "Well what are you guys doing?" "We are here to talk about Jesus Christ." "Who?" "Jesus." "Ahhhhh.... I've been waiting for you." We both got really excited because that has never been said to us our entire missions. But that excitement quickly dissipated with his next statement, "I have a book that proves Jesus Christ doesn't exist." Well darn it... Our response should have been, "Well. We have a book that proves he does exist." But we just gave him our number and walked away.... We were SO CLOSE to one of those awesome missionary stories, but we'll just have to wait for another day!

A random donkey wandering the streets. He was nice enough to stand still for the photo.

Дима has kind of stopped coming to the church since he found out he wasn't going to EFY, but that doesn't mean we're going to give up! We call him everyday to see how he's doing, and one day he even called me and told us that he invited an American Embassy work to church. He's such a funny kid. I love the people that I get to meet here!

As for the changes ahead, Elder Monroe and I are finally splitting up. President Hill called us and said that there will be THREE Zebra companionships in Moldova: 2 in Chisinau, and 1 in Orhei. He's going to whitewash Orhei, and I'll still be Zone Leader in Chisinua with Elder Barney. So guess what that means? After 7 months of being the advanced English teachers, we had to say goodbye to Elder Monroe. So our class made chicken, potatoes, and brownies for us. I'm gonna miss teaching English with Elder Monroe, but the Lord puts us where He needs us! I've spent around 6 months with this Elder, and we've had our lowest and highest times together. Бог с тобой пока не свидимся! 

Our English class. Best English students in the world.

Well. I love you all, and as always, I hope you have a wonderful week full of happy memories with family and friends. The church is true!

-Elder Farnworth