Okay, first off congratulations to Brad and Jenny on their new baby girl! I am excited to come home to a couple of new nieces! I hope I get pictures soon. Mom, about the suit cases...I am not sure yet. I am not sure how big the nativities are. I will do some research and get back to you next week. I also feel like a day in every city will be good. I mostly want to see the members and then we can see other sites around as we are traveling from city to city. I tell you what, I will think more about it in depth this week. I will write down who I want to see and when and then next week I will send you a separate email!
I have a lot to tell you about the open house and this last week, so lets get ready! I hope this all make sense there is SO much to tell, but I don't have the time to tell about every important detail.
SO, this last week was probably one of the most stressful weeks EVER on my mission and I would say in my life...I felt really nervous, not agitated, but just STRESSED. I want to give a shout out to my awesome comp Sora Atkins for putting up with me. Well, we went with our branch president President Pasare to do personal visit to meet with many of the local leaders of the well known businesses and organizations here in Ploiesti. We went out for hours on Tuesday...It was great to talk with them face to face and explain what we are doing and why we wanted them to come. We had a great turn out and many came. Later on Tuesday we had lunch with a reporter of WilTV here in Ploiesti. It was amazing I felt so important, but really Sora Atkins and I have NO idea what we were doing. Two young American Sister missionaries meeting with four older, very successful hard working men. I'm just glad that we have GOD on our side. Anyway, the out come was perfect. He wanted to put together a 45 minute segment about us as an LDS culture and he asked us to put together the questions we wanted asked. THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN! Virgil, the reporter, is also a great friend of President Pasare. He was wonderful plus I am pretty sure that Sora and I won him over. ha ha That is the spirit ladies and gentleman.
I will tell you more about the interview later. All week Sora Atkins, along with all of the awesome Elders and the members worked really hard to get everything accomplished. I felt every day we had SO much to get done and not enough hours to get it done. I always had my planner with me and I had this huge list in the back of all the things we had to get done. The Elders were amazing! We had six helping, Elder Hickenlooper, Nemrow, Cox, Bruner, Rasumssen and Ward and then the Marcov's who are the Senior couple here with us. There is NO way we could have made it through with out them. They took on the large projects and did an AMAZING AND AN OUTSTANDING job. They baked lots of banana bread for the Open House too. They were amazing.
Anyway, the week was going well. We had a few things more to do, but we are stayed on top of everything. Friday, President Pasare had to go to Bulgaria for a day! This was Friday!! The day before the EVENT! Oh man, I was nervous. We had TONS to do. Well, we kept working and we made some calls to check up on all the Americans who were coming for the event just, so they had an idea of what was going on. Well the first person I call was President Spooner and he had no idea about the activity. We then panicked, (well I panicked) Pres. Doru was the one who had told us that they were coming, they being Gary Spooner and Kent Holtz. The reason they were so key is because they are very important people in the business world here in Romania and the important business leaders from Ploiesti and Bucharest were coming to see them. If they didn't come...we would look bad. Well, then come to find out Brother Holtz was in AMERICA. He also had NO idea! We were not sure what to do. Don't worry Brother Spooner changed his schedule and came. We missed Brother Holtz, but all the others were present and we got a couple others to help us.
For the interview we invited the Hill's, President Doru (District president over the Bucharest district), President Chirila (1st counselor in mission Presidency), Gary Spooner ( the owner of Ford for the eastern European area), Kent Holtz (Eastern European Chevron Company owner), Randy and Vicky Wolsey (humanitarian missionaries), Brother Critchlow and Brother Bensfield they both work at the American Embassy. The Bensfields are the couple that are related to Natalie and Rick Porter. We did the interview at 4:00 on Saturday with all of the above mentioned.
Saturday comes...the church looked great. The missionaries had worked so hard. All the interviewers had a lunch at 1:00 and then the interviews were at 4:00. They got back from lunch and Sora and I are running around like crazy, trying to make sure everything is looking perfect. The McFaddens had all the things they need for the food. (They did a wonderful job) I will never be able to repay them. We were trying to practice our hymns, Sisters in Zions and The Army's of Helaman Medly with the youth and get them lined up so they knew what they were doing. Then President Pasare told me that they wanted Sora and I to be in the Interviews! WHAT? We were not prepared for this...I was so nervous, but it went well. So, we will be on TV! I will send you the link when I find out what it is.
The OPEN HOUSE was great. We had about 200 people there about 150 were there for the program. The people loved it and more than anything, we accomplished our goal of helping the community see a new side of the LDS people.
The Lord was along side of us the whole way. We could not have done it with out Him. I am so happy we had this idea. I loved planning it and seeing it all come together.
I love you all. I miss you tons.
Love,
Sora Hickman
