FIRST MONTH DOWN!

This week marks our 1st month anniversary living in Eastern Europe. Our experiences here have been surreal and we sometimes find ourselves wondering if we'll ever wake up from this crazy dream. We are now familiar with the Metrou system and can get around quite well. On foggy mornings, we stay in our apartment and use the time to go over former projects, make reports, and do some basic accounting. If you think this sounds impressive, you can be sure that we're out of our comfort zone and flying by the seat of our pants most of the time! We are currently in contact with an organization that assists the Rroma (Gypsy) community and we hope to report next week on our upcoming project. We have learned that things take time here and their word, "imediat" translates to our word, "whenever"! Our language skills are sadly inadequate most of the time and we waver between "We can learn this, dangit" to "There's no hope; hand gestures work!" We still study and try to speak and understand and if we look back on the month, we've really improved! The weather is mild now and we sleep with windows open until the road noise drives us loony. The rain of last weekend sent us scrambling to buy hearty umbrellas and a winter coat and now that we have 60 degree weather, the joke's on us! We love it here and consider it a privilege to work as Humanitarian Missionaries.

Enjoy the pictures of the week.

This picture was taken from a glass elevator and shows the beauty of this city. Although there are thousands block apartment buildings, this scene shows one of the stately fountains and yes, grass. Notice, there's no one on the grass. Two words, "Just dogs"!

We attended our first "District Meeting" with the Elders in our district. Transfers are this week and during the meeting, our district leader got a call from the Mission President. This shot was not posed and shows these cute Elders straining to hear some news.

This is Primary! You guessed it...I'm in good company with Logan and Joanne and Holly and Jonathan and Suzette and Barb! My actual calling is "Oversee-er". If I could only understand anything, I could also be the "Overhear-er" as well! This is "Singing Time!" HELP!

Denny is the "Oversee-er of the English-speaking Gospel Doctrine class and on the High Council.

Taking a tip from Jonathan, I never miss an opportunity to take pictures in a church! We took off our tags (it's manners) and joined in like family at the baptism of two babies. There were flash cameras all over so this was a rare opportunity to catch pictures of this ornate and ancient Orthodox church.

Notice the video camera.

Here, the mother reads the script while the Priest holds the book.

And, here's the "Church of the North Face". Who needs an REI?

Behind these murals is a huge city mall. Denny bought his coat here one day and when we went back to pick it up after alterations, it took us an hour to find the store!

This is crazy! These pictures were taken from our balcony and show 2 Gypsy women holding babies going from car to car asking for money. They dip the baby down to show it to the driver.

Then...the light changes and the cars whiz by leaving the women in the middle of 50 mph. traffic. I held my breath! The process starts again with the next red light!

Cars drive everywhere they can, even on the sidewalk!

For now, this is the best picture I can get of a local Romanian man.

This is a portable car wash. All you need is a hose and 2 ramps and a cute design!