ELDER JAMES COOPER IN THE ROMANIA MOLDOVA MISSION: BIRDS AND BIDEN

Hello everyone!!

Gosh the second week of transfers has been so busy and when it's finally over, you realize how slow it was! But, A lot has happened just the same.

An actual church building. You can see it outside out window in
our apartment. So great!

So we had zone training this past Tuesday. Elder Daland and I were asked to give a presentation on extending baptismal commitments by the second lesson. It was actually fairly difficult to prep for this, seeing how I have never done it myself. Havent had anyone to put this to practice on! haha We had two visuals. We took two people out of the room. Set up a very easy obstacle course and hid a candy bar somewhere at the end. We took one of the volunteers and blindfolded them. We told everyone in the room that they could tell them how to get to the candy bar and could give them directions. We then brought the other volunteer into the room not blindfolded, and told everyone they could do the same thing. the one with the blindfold represented an investigator without a Baptismal commitment, and the one without represented one with a baptismal commitment. Basically we were trying to show a couple things. That it is still possible to reach the end goal without a baptismal commitment by the second lesson but that it is easier for the investigator to reach the end goal with his "vision" So ya... After that R canceled his lesson with us,. but we had another guy come and we talked a bit about our church and also helped him with some English stuff... That was Tuesday.

The Bird

Dont know if I told you this before, but every week we teach a mission prep class, to two members who are preparing to go on missions. :) So at the end of the class I hear this noise and look over to the door just in time to see this bird fly in and nail the sacrament door! I grabbed a broom and was trying to chase it out side. It got a way for a while and ended up on the second floor when I trapped it! I had a miniature battle with it, that involved some playful banter. I end up victorious, and it retreated out the window. It was pretty crazy.

Also this past Saturday we went and did some service at the church farm/garden. It was super fun. The Assistants drove us out a couple miles out side of town to the farm. We ended up working there basically all day. Our job was to clear the iarba and to make some rows to plant some potatoes in. It was super fun, and now I kinda want to be a farmer! During the middle of us working, there was a 30 minute rain storm that came in from no where! That is when the member decided to feed us so we didnt get too wet. She cooked us some great stuff! After the storm passed we went out and worked again... this time accompanied by THOUSANDS of mosquitoes. No joke, the final count of bites on my body is 56... it was like trek all over again! Besides the mosquitoes, it was an awesome experience to go and do some farm work!

So everything is going just dandy as you can tell. We stay super busy here. We have a lot of good things coming at the end of the transfer. Mainly, a few baptisms if everything goes according to plan! R, who the missionaries have been meeting with for 7 months prior to me getting here, is set to be baptised the 21 of June! We then are planning on setting a date with a married couple for the 14 of June! It is crazy how much is going on here haha. I've gone from barely getting a lesson a transfer, to having 3 investigators really close to baptism! It is kinda overwhelming to be honest, but good non the less :)

Glad to hear everyone is doing good! I love you all so much! (just like in every email) Thanks for being such a great group of support, you help make it possible. :) Until next P-day!

Love,

Elder Cooper

PS. While contacting this week we saw something super cool. A massive American escort! There were so many police on the streets and so many armed forces it was crazy! Our attention was then brought to the road. We started seeing all these police motorcycles leading the way of the escort. Then after like 10 motorcycles past, we saw blacked out cars and SUV's all with American flags attached to the side of them! It was just like a movie! A huge formation of them came down the road and it was intense. Apparently good ol' Joe Biden came here or something like that, to discuss Ukraine with Romania or something... still not 100 percent sure... but anyways it was super cool!