Buna Ziua si Prima Vara Fericit - Good Day and Happy Spring!

This week on our way home from block knocking, Elder Dearden and I were waiting to cross the street in the dark and a car slowly pulls up to us and gets super close to running over my toes on the side of the road.  He rolls down his passenger side window and we look in to find an Orthodox Priest who asked us "who gave you permission to be here?"  We replied "nobody, do we need permission to be here?"  He went on to explain that this is his sector of the city and we weren’t allowed to be there.  He told us that nobody around here wants to listen to us.  I responded and said "actually, not only do we live here in this sector, but we also have members here."  The look on his face was priceless and responded that we had no members here.  Threatening us to never come back here or he won’t be as nice!  It seriously felt like something off of the A&E show "Gang Wars."  Apparently the city is on a system where the Orthodox Priests split up the separate sectors. 

Our investigators are doing alright. Florin still hasn’t shown-up to church but Tavi is slowly working towards his baptism date in June. 

This week we had zone conference in Bucharest. It was pretty good and President Hill had some cool things to say but the thing I took out of it most is that when we go home, we will miss Romania so much!  When I entered the country, a group of Elders left.  Well just three months later, one (Elder Cunningham) returned and sat in on our zone conference. From across the chapel, I just watched as he nodded and agreed with everything President said about the good people of Romania.  He looked so sad, like he was missing something from his life.

This week we went on a hike in the mountains. We had to take a train to a nearby city of Brasov and then walked 8 kilometers until we arrived at our hike.  It was a slot canyon called Sapte Scuri, which means seven ladders.  As you hike through the slot canyon, you obviously have to use seven ladders to get to the top and around the waterfalls.  It was way sweet and I took tons of pictures.

Hope everyone is having a good week and I will see you soon!

Love, Elder Brown