Skip to main content

Week 1

First P-Day

(Cole's Words)

HEY EVERYONE!!! I am so excited to finally have a p-day and be able to actually email! My first 3 days were very hectic and crazy but this is only the first 3 days of 6 weeks. Let me lay down some details of my first few days.

My name tag with the scary (Romanian) spelling of "Elder"

On Wednesday, it was absolutely a culture shock to me. Everyone was saying hello and I felt very loved to be there. But right when I got there I had to go to class, which isn't so bad except my teacher only speaks in Romanian and refuses to speak any English. So my first moments of the MTC were very scary! But after all the scares I learned I am in a companionship with 2 other great elders. Elder Ward and Elder Atkinson are awesome guys and I love it already. My district or class has 7 people going to Romania, 3 elders and 4 sisters. Most everyone is from Utah or Idaho except me and Sister Sheffield so I'm still surviving. Class went well and the whole new missionary experience was great. 


My companions Elder Atkinson (left) and Elder Ward (right)

On Thursday was the first big day and I realized I'm not in Iowa anymore. Waking up was a hassle and it got to be very hard to get ready. But Thursday was a great day to experience a full day as a missionary without everyone saying welcome to the MTC. However, Thursday was also the day we started learning how to teach in Romanian which made everything just a tad bit scarier. My companions and I also had to teach about the purpose of a missionary in front of our district. Needless to say, we did pretty darn well. We also met our branch presidency and turns out the branch president knows my aunt! Crazy!! And also the branch president and his wife lived in Iowa!! Even crazier!!! Thursday was pretty awesome!

Today (Friday) was P-DAY!!!!!!! So what do I get to do?? Wake up earlier than usual!!!! Partay!!! But it was really great cause we got to go to the Provo Utah temple which was absolutely inspiring as usual. We also ate breakfast there and it was waaaay better than the MTC food. However when it was all said and done, we had to walk back to the MTC in the rain...but hey, rain is Heavenly blessings being sent down upon us!! Today has also been full of volleyball and basketball and laundry that I feel I messed up already. Oh well I'll have 6 weeks to perfect my laundry skills.

Me at the Provo Utah LDS temple  

These past couple of days have been very inspiring. We have talked so much on the purpose of missionary work. While I may been gone from family and friends for 2 years, my purpose is to bring others unto Christ so they can be with their families for eternity through faith, repentance, baptism, confirmation of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end. It is such a blessing to be the representative of Christ helping people achieve salvation. If any of you have time, read 3 Nephi 27:19-21. Such a great scripture.

I miss you all and love you all! I hope to continue feeling your love and support as I continue my training in the Romanian language (believe me, I'll need it).

Love you all!
Varstincul Bowen

P.S. I am also participating in hug time like in Trolls so don't worry about my hug exposure


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Stand Ye in Holy Places

Hey everyone!!! So this was a really big week and a good amount of things went down, but I don't have all the time to talk about them, so I'll just give you all the basics! Bowen and Hoisington in the street! So the highlight and downfall of this week was when we set a baptismal date with Felix for about 24 hours. So we met up with him this week and we had a lesson about the Plan of Salvation. We had Fratele Matei with us and he was a big help for us because he loves this lesson. So we teach and it went really well and we set a date for August 18th! We were happy, Matei was happy, it was great. But we were talking with him at night and he said he no longer had any faith. So naturally, we meet up with him again and it was an interesting meeting. Essentially he is looking for historical evidence that the Book of Mormon is true and he doesn't have that evidence that it is true. So, we dropped his date and we won't be meeting with him anymore until he starts having ...

Back to the Land of Promise

Hey everyone, sorry you didn't hear from me this last week. We had some Carbon Monoxide problems, but no worries, I am alive and well and I am able to email this week!! So transfers happened again and this time I am not safe from the chopping block as I will be checking out of Cluj :/ It's been great here and I loved serving here but the Lord needs me in other places. And that place just so happens to be Pitesti once again! It's been a year since I served there so it'll be good to be back!! I'll be with a missionary named Elder Rawhouser so it should be a good time! We are going to get stuff done!! This was a pretty good week for us in Cluj. It was honestly a good ol' hardworking week that felt super long and hard until we saw the fruits of our labors at the end of the week. We had a couple really good lessons with people and tried to reset our expectations with our friends. We had a lesson with a guy named Calin for the first time and it went really wel...

And I Did It My Way (I Wish)

Hey everyone how's it been?? It's been pretty wild here so listen up! So first off, transfers happened and the A.F.P.T. ( Alaska Fighting Palm Trees ) will be breaking up. Elder Kemeny is leaving me here in Timisoara and going to Sibiu. I'm going to miss him, but he's going do great things. Now the question is who will be with me. Good question, I don't know yet because I will be training one of the new missionaries here in Timisoara!! I'm pretty excited but also pretty freaked out because new missionary. But it'll be good. This was a great week for us here in Timisoara and the future really looks promising. This week we really wanted to have urgency while we taught, contacted, and did missionary work and we saw good success doing so. We saw probably the most success out of English because many people marked that they were interested in the Gospel. We made sure to contact them right away to set up something and it went really well! Hopefully it keeps...