Oh man I have so much to tell you all this week! SO hold on tight because we had such a awesome week!
To start off with a few items of business. I am in 3rd Nephi 16. I have taken my reading a lot slower this past week because I was studying a lot about the life of Christ. Also, Tiffany wrote last week and asked when I was being released and where we would fly into. I'm released on September 12th, but we will travel for about a week so we will be home I'm guessing like the 20th-21st of September and we will fly into the Colorado Springs Airport, I'm sure. Also, Amy Crockett emailed me and she is going on a mission to the Central Salt Lake mission! SO, awesome! Congrats Amy! I got a letter from Sarah Griggs. She is doing WONDERFUL! It was great to hear from her.
Well, as most of you know we celebrated Easter here in Romania yesterday. Easter or Paste as you would say it in Romania is a very large holiday, bigger than Christmas. We had Sacrament meeting yesterday, then a little program, put on by the little primary, it was SO very cute. We were then invited over to Brother and Sister Musat's (he is the 1st counciler in Branch Presidency) and then with President Pasere (the branch President) and his family. We ate and we ate and we ate some more! We started with cheese and Veggies and this other stuff called drob. It is pretty much a meatloaf of all the insides of animal like the heart, liver and kidneys I liked it. Of course, it wasn't my most favorite thing, but not bad. Then we have a meatball soup with bread followed with Sarmale (cooked cabbage wraps), lamb roast and chicken legs. Finally we had dessert which was a cake made from little sweet crackers and cozonc which is a sweet bread. It was AMAZING! I LOVE sarmale and the lamb was pretty good also.
We had planned to do a meal together as missionaries, so I made funeral potatoes, chicken and the elders made rolls and veggies, but then we got an invite and we thought no big deal. We will just eat 2 meals. By the time that we were all done with eating we couldn't do another meal, so we will do it later today.
Another fun cultural experience was going to a midnight mass at the BIG Orthodox church here. It is the start of Easter. So what they do is the priest had a candle and he passes out the light and it is suppose to be light from Christ. Then you light your candle and if you can keep your candle lit till you go home it means you will have good luck for the whole year. Unfortunately my candle blew out before I even got across the street. It was fun, we were there till about 1:30 am. They read from the Bible and say, "Isus a inviat" ( Christ was resurrected) then the crowd responded back adeverat a inviat (meaning true he did rise). It was fun. It was really rainy so not a lot of people were there.
Finally, for my week, on Friday night we got to go to a SOCCER GAME! President Pasere, he asked President Hill if he could take the missionaries out for cultural experience! It was one of the best cultural experiences I've ever had. Really though it was so much fun. Cluj and Ploiesti tied.
We had a wonderful Sacrament meeting yesterday. I was so impressed and just felt so blessed that I have an understanding of what Christ did for me. I am so grateful for His Atonement and for the great power that is it. I read a story from the April 2012 Ensign entitled."The Atonement" by Elder Bednar. It was great because he talked about the relieving portion of the Atonement, but also the enabling power of the Atonement. I often forget that we really can't do ANYTHING without his help. He enables us to overcome our trials and hard times and for this I am grateful.
I love you all! Attached a a few pics from dinner and Sora Stark and I are in our Sunday Easter outfits.
Va iubesc,
Sora Hickman
