January 24, 2016  This has been a full week.  Transfers, traveling, a baptism and new leadership.  Transfers were on Tuesday and we lost Elder Potter to Nicosia.  We will really miss him!  We did get Elder Kittsell from England and hopefully will have pictures to post of him soon.  He is wonderful and we are looking forward to working with him.  We were lucky enough to keep our sisters, at least for a little longer.  They are doing amazing work here.

Elder Potter

Elders Ludengor, Shaner and Sharff

President and Sister Heder came over for some training and we had a mini zone conference.  The first part of the training was as broadcast from the Church and was excellent on missionary work and keeping and making commitments  and finding investigators.  The second part was with our zone followed up on the same.  Our missionaries absolutely love being together.  WE did lots of role playing and I'm getting to where I kind of enjoy it!  Well, kind of.  

Today we went to Limasos to reorganize their leadership.  The two new Elders - Shaner and Sharff spoked.  Oh my, very impressive.  I was furiously taking notes and amazed at their wisdom.  Both the Limasos and Pafos attendance is up which is so encouraging to see.  When I say up it is up from 13 to 18 which is fantastic!  These to cities do not have the Philippine work force that the other cities do and that makes quite a difference.

My morning walks are still one of my favorite times of the day  The sunrises never cease to impress and touch my soul.  As you can see, I am a little more bundled up.  We are much cooler than we have been but really not too bad.

Here we are heating up water for the baptismal font.  In spite of all the effort made, the water was still very very cold and Marcello almost changed his mind and got out twice.

But, he persevered and the baptism went well.  Another member who is also from Romania gave one of the talks.  He has only been a member for a year but did a great job.  It was so neat in that had his talked written both in Romanian and English.  He would read a few paragraphs in one language and then read the same thing in the other language.  It meant so much for Marcello to hear these messages in his own language instead of through an interpreter.

This was dinner after being on the road since 7:30 this morning  We have just enough time to relax for and hour or so before we have seminary.

All in all it has been another great week.  When I look at my planner every Sunday night the upcoming week looks pretty calm - but that is deceiving because by Monday night and Tuesday noon the days have all started to fill up.   That is good - that is what we came for!

January is a big birthday month for our family, so a special shout out birthday to QUINN, LIBBY, GARRETT, MARCIE AND JAKE!!

Love to all and remember to love your way and look for the good!