Monday, September 2, 2013

Summer is over...

 Russian car at the kindergarten we do service at.
Doing some more service underneath the kindergarten
stacking some chairs and tables.
The first day of school for Moldova is today and so everyone has there outfits (which took them precious time to pick out) and backpacks on to show that they're all ready to shine on their first day back to school! And you know what this means for us missionaries? That everyone is back from the sea, vacations, and their villages to be found and taught the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Even though most of the young people we know aren't so excited to go back, we're really excited to finally have the majority of the population back in Chisinau. I'm not even joking when I say that most of the people here left right as August started. It was a tough month for finding, but August is finally over and September has started. 

Elder Westover's first time knocking!
Elder Westover is a fantastic missionary. This is a ton of fun working with him and he especially enjoyed this past Thursday because we had an exchange in Balti. So that meant Elder Monroe's companion, Elder Temus, would be with Elder Westover here in Chisinau while Elder Monroe and I were in Balti with some other elders. They seemed to do just fine that one day without their trainers! We have a great group of missionaries here in Moldova, and I'm grateful that I get to work with each one of them individually. The elder that I was with in Balti always has a smile on his face and is a very optimistic person. We went tracting for an hour and in that hour we were able to find a man who knew about Mormons, and a family who seemed interested in our message. Both of them wanted a Book of Mormon but we weren't able to give them one because the Elders up in Balti only have 2 copies of the Book of Mormon in Russian. It was hard not to give it away, but that's what stop-bys are for! I love the people that I get to meet everyday whether they are interested or not. My energy and love for finding has only grown since I've entered the mission field.

We've been really busy this past week, but we had one night where we got to go knocking for 3 hours, and as a trainer I have to show Elder Westover how it's done. So we got to a door and a lady was on her second story balcony and asked who we were. After we told her that we were missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ, she came down to talk to us at her front gate. She had been an atheist but something happened in her life that made her a believer. She had never seen or heard of the Mormons before so it was a perfect opportunity to show her the Book of Mormon. She listened really intently, took it, said she'd read it, and that we could come back. A few doors later a girl peeked her head out of her front gate and said, "Oh, hey guys, sorry I would let you in but my dogs would eat you." (she said this is perfect English) To make a long story short, she lived in New York for 3 years, her husband is American, and she has a Mormon friend in California. Small world. She even asked us how our day was, which no one ever does, so that was nice of her! Elder Westover did very well saying all that he could say when someone answered their door. It took me back to my first days of knocking and it's weird to think that I'm now in that "experienced" missionary position.

Funny experience of the week: we had to go to the church for a lesson early in the morning and right as we opened the front door we heard a loud snap. The handle broke and so I told my companion not to shut the door because if we did, we wouldn't be able to get it open again. I went upstairs to get ready for the lesson, and when I came back downstairs I see my companion on the other side of a closed front door.... We both just started laughing because I was now stuck inside and he was stuck outside. Luckily there was a window on the first floor that we could climb through, so Elder Westover, and our investigator made it in for the lesson. The door still hasn't been fixed so on Sunday we had to use the front door (which we don't usually use) as the entrance. 

I have a ton of other stuff I could say, but email just overwhelms me and I get easily stressed by all the things I COULD write. I love you all and have a good week!

-Elder Farnworth

P.S. We're working with a really cool person right now, but this person informed us this morning that they don't want to appear on my blog, so I can't reveal their name or what's been happening..... Also, I'm going BACK to Bucharest again with Elder Monroe and so I'll pretty much be there this entire week for meetings and transfers. 



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