Transfers. Trains and Sunshine

This past week has been pretty crazy.

Had to say goobye to my good austrian friend Lex.. and my Italiano Baielli. I love those guys!

This was after taking the 14 hour train to Bucaresti.

In Buc we were walking around downtown to a bookstore and I saw these old white haired guys cutting hair in this old-school barber shop. So I had them cut my hair. I got cleaned up with a straight razor and one of the most solid hair cuts I've ever had. 

It was awesome to see everybody from my MTC group. We hungout and traveled around the metro to get food together with everyone, it was a good time. I've got some solid friends here. Transfers are always crazy, but a good time. 

Anyways, we had to get 3 cities worth of Christmas transfer stuff into the train back to Chisinau. The border dudes cut open the ones in the sisters room and opened everything including all their wrapped packages, hahaha.

We hid ours like champions, I guess. 

My companion is this cool kid Elder Bateman. He is a surfer/photographer from Florida. so we get along pretty well. He is a funny dude with the driest humor ever. Like epic amounts of dryness at times. it is awesome, haha. We have been talking about the weird slang used in surfing and snowboarding and it is hilarious.

We have some really cool ideas that we are going to be using instead of dying in the cold and doing normal grinding work. So we have been looking for hardware stores that have the supplies we need to build some streetboard display type things. Literally just traveled into the depths of a part of the city. I had been walking around going in these weird construction warehouses and shops trying to ask them where this mega-store is someone told us about. It took 3 hours to find it, but it was crazy. Like Lowes/Home Depot but bigger. 

The most annoying part is.. the weird toothless old russian man, first guy I asked, at the first bus stop told me the right directions all along. Everyone else was very floppy with their directions, haha.

We also had to find a guy that made grommets, like eyehole things in vinyl. We looked all over the middle of the city. We finally go into this flea-market store thing. We go up to the 4th floor.. all of it is fabrics and womens scarves. Elder Bateman asks this lady and tries to explain it, then shows a photo. She points us to the end of the hall through a random door. We go through and then we have to turn right and duck under a ledge, go down a ramp.. then enter a clothing repair shop. This guy is randomly in a small room in the very back of this shop. haha it was crazy. I was laughin pretty hard over it. This guy breathed like he was snoring and spoke mostly Russian but we worked it all out. 

He said we spoke perfect Romanian, this guy didn't even speak Romanian that well, haha.

We are going to be doing some epic stuff this next week, so I am excited. 

Christmas is coming up. and it's a great time of year. Watch He is the Gift on lds.org and remember that He is the reason for tha Season! He loves you. I love you. you deserve the joy he offers. Follow him, and you WILL be where you NEED to be.

Go on an adventure this week and meet some strangers!

Love you all.

Elder Boydstun

Transfers. swiss-german. auf wiedersehen LEX

Hallo

This week was pretty awesome as Elder Lex's last week.

We made incredible food everyday and it was great

It has been freezing rain and it is nuts now. Like it rains and as soon as it hits the ground, or whatever it touches... everything freezes. So watching people eat it and fall way hard was both sad and hilarious. 

I got these custom fitted shoes this week, and I was pretty sad about it because they were so hard and my feet were not happy.. but now they are like gloves and I love them. So yeah. this little semi-crippled dude named Constantin is a little shoe wizard. Missionaries have been going to him for a while and I guess now he is doing some service project for the church.

Yesterday this guy who is a world traveler came and said goodbye to Lex. He is the most awesome guy ever.. He randomly came to church one time before I got here because he had never been to a Mormon church before. Then he talked  to Lex forever.. This guy is from Switzerland and has dreads and a cool beard and is so happy. He speaks english really well and speaks swiss-german and high-german and austrian-high-german and learned turkish from living in turkey for 6 months. 

Yeah... there is apparently many variations to German. Anyways, he tried to read the Book of Mormon in English, but said the old-world American-English is way too hard and he had to try so hard to understand that it wasn't making sense. So we got him a German one later that night after traversing across the hills of Botanica in the ice rain. We talked about amish people and his adventures. I have a photo. I will probably send it. 

We showed all our English class the new "He is the Gift" video. A missionary in the office translated it into Romanian. (#sharethegift, don't hashtag in emails, this is an exception)

It really is a cool video. Go check it out... share the love of Christ. it is real and brings us together as humans despite our many differences. 

I also got an incredible letter from my friend Elder Minor from the mtc. 

The fact that we are all different is something we should embrace as we all are on our journey to Know Christ. Meaning we shouldn't stress so hard or worry so much about conforming to this perfect mold of the person we think we need to be. Not meaning we shouldn't strive to improve and grow as much as possible, but to take in our talents, our gifts and our differences to give something new to the world.

Christ doesn't just make up the difference. He is the difference. His grace is sufficient. follow him, and you'll be where you need to be. 

Anyways, transfers are happening. Elder Lex goes home to Austria. We both go down to Bucuresti today and it'll be a good time. I am stoked to see some friends and a little bittersweet to say goodbye, for now to a few others. 

My new companion will be Elder Bateman, I don't really know him. He's in his 4th transfer or so and I heard he likes surfing and is from Florida. So we will get along. 

Christmas is soon. There are an epic amount of lights and trees everywhere in Centru here. This transfer is going to be awesome. 

Oh yeah, I am staying in Chisinau. wooo

eine dose mitleid fur ELDER LEX. bloop! ooohhh...

Have a good week. Celebrate the 14th in remembrance of me. 

Does this mean I have to be an adult now?

Elder Boydstun

Knockin blocs

Thanksgiving was solid! 

 Lex and I made poppy seed cake, Lex's favorite thing ever haha. it was good. 

Chisinau is awesome, I love it here.  Anyways things have been a little slow for Lex and I.  At least on the number side of things. No lessons this week, but we did some good    stuff so it's alright...just keep goin forward!

Branch was still pretty solid, it'll get better from here on out too. some bumps in the way are expected, no stress! Anatolie is the coolest guy ever. 

Ps. I always wonder how you guys pronouce names of places and names :) haha 

Elections were yesterday, so I don't know what happened yet. If you can figure it out, let me know haha. hope the commies didn't win!  There are Posters with a  picture of these Moldovan political leaders meeting with Putin and it says "TOGETHER WITH RUSSIA!" and it all solcialist and stuff it's crazy haha 

Sometimes it is annoying to think that we don't get many lessons and stuff, but the things we do do here many times are small works that will lead to bigger things. So, it is awesome once you just relax and figure it out. It's funny to me getting emails from people (other missionaries) in the Americas saying "crazy 3 hours where we didn't know what to do since all our lessons were falling through so we knocked some doors and tried to call some people, then finally someone answered ..... then mid lesson it was amazing and we committed him to baptism in 2 weeks."   I am here like... yeah I knocked on 5 whole apartment buildings and one person talked to us for maybe 2 minutes outside their door asking us if we liked the beautiful Moldovan women. hahaha 

We spent a good chunk of time contacting this week and knocking blocs. There is always really weird things in blocs. I've always heard "if you want good stories from your mission, go bloc knocking."They are just huge apartment buildings that are sketchy and awesome, filled with all types of interesting people and things. So from helping some guys carry a massive, seriously massive, sack of potatoes off the almost death trap elevator - to getting yelled at by old women in Russian…it's wonderful.

Anyway, we were walking along, trying to find some potentials.. knocking some doors and getting lost, normal. On our way back to our place, we see a girl  from the branch working in this stand thing handing out flyers, so we stop and say hello. Her friend/co-worker looks at us and says "where are you from?" Elder Lex says "Austria, and he's from America".  She looks a me and says "so you speak english?" "Yes, of course I speak English." "Where'd you learn Romanian?" "Romania." Then she proceeds to hand me a small piece of paper and a pen. "What's this for?" Another girl in the back says "PHONE NUMBER!" So I laugh and give her my name and an english card and she gives me her number. I still got game SON! haha it was hilarious.. and most likely just because I'm American, but whatever! 

We also got permission to watch dispicable me with the branch, so that was incredible of course. that movie rocks haha.

We also found a street board at our church we've been using. Basically a wood structure with pictures of Christ and temples and some info on it. We just stick it in the front of the park in the middle of town. Some cop came at us, and I thought we were done for. But he was cool and just wanted to make sure we weren't doing a flash mob, hahaha. 

Something I've wanted to do for sure is just to become a better teacher. Sometimes you wonder if you're just not teaching well.. but always having to remember that his sheep will hear his voice! So as long as you're teaching the truth and testifying, you are doing what's right!

It's super cold and snowed a little bit and I was so pumped. I got a mini snowball to the head and I wish it would snow more. For now, it's just freezing cold. 

Sunday was awesome as the first week with the split branch. Bro. Cociu gave an incredible super heartfelt talk and I loved it so much. He is the coolest guy ever... we still had a solid turn out in members coming as well and it's only going to get better. 

Moldova is incredible. As I said, the elections were yesterday and I don't see any crazy public demonstrations from whoever lost, so I'm assuming things went well, haha. we'll see though! 

Today will be awesome though we are going to play soccer in some indoor place and I am pumped for it. 

Hope all is well. Hope Thanksgiving was filled with tryptopahn and love! 

va iubesc 

- Elder Boydstun