Is It Worth It? A Thousand Times Yes!

I just spent over an hour typing an update and it disappeared with an incidental touch.

We are here in Romania. The trip went well; we were almost an hour late getting into Amsterdam from Atlanta so we were lucky the flight from Amsterdam was delayed. We arrived in Bucharest Saturday, 20 Sep., early afternoon. We were greeted by our mission office mates and taken to our 5-star hotel. We rested a few hours and then were taken to one of our local branch buildings for a session of district (like stake) conference where we met our mission president and a number of people from our branch and district. The people of Romania are wonderful. They are very hard-working and personable. The Romanian church leaders are very knowledgeable and dedicated. We even understood much of one of the talks because the leader spoke slowly in an animated fashion. One of these leaders had been jailed by the communist police for smuggling Bibles into the country over 20 years ago before they were introduced to the gospel.

We started our apartment hunting on Monday; we (and many others) thought the process would be exasperating and long. We basically found a nice apartment right away. The owner said he'd give us an answer Tuesday and the answer was yes! He and his wife are very kind and concerned about being good landlords. We moved in on Wednesday. It is a good-sized one bedroom apartment with a very small kitchen (that just means I can't help Krisy cook). It is big enough for a sister trip. The apartment is in a great part of Bucharest, within walking distance of the mission office and a very modern mall. We walk everywhere.

We have spent over 2 weeks in the mission office trying to help the other office couple (they are "Nelsons", too. These 2 have been manning the office on their own for 3 months so much of our work has been getting them caught up. Krisy trained a bit but mostly threw away about 1/2 the office, organized, moved furniture; it now looks like a real office and everyone seems a lot happier. I spent the time cataloging and filing 3 months of financial records. We are now, as of today, up to date so I can start working on my own projects: cars, phones, computers and buildings; and, there's a lot to do. Now that we are done with this portion of the work we are excited to get involved with real missionary work.

We spent last weekend at a senior couple's conference; we traveled, listened to conference when we could and worked. Romania is a beautiful country. I thought it would be still reeling from many years of communist and dictator rule. There are still vestiges of it but I was surprised at the progress they've made in the past 20 years since their democratic revolution. I thought most of it would be filled with communist block apartments in poor condition. Many of these apartments have been completely renovated with A/C and insulation and look quite nice; many others are in the process of being overhauled. The country is very clean. In our conference we journeyed to Transylvania, a very large, high plateau surrounded by mountains. We visited one of Dracula's castles, other castles as beautiful as anything in Germany, resorts (winter and summer) and other beautiful Middle-Aged towns and cities. It is a tourist paradise as the prices are much better than anything I know of in western Europe.