How cold is it?

Well, it's cold enough to freeze the Black Sea.

And it's cold enough to stop the work on our bloc.  The building is getting a facelift and the scaffolding outside our windows is covered with a sheet of ice.

You know it's cold when someone decides to take pity on the wild dog that has taken up residence in front of our bloc entry door.  They found a piece of the foam insalation that is going on the building for him to lay on.  

It might be too cold if your windows freeze over.

The guys with the shovels probably think it's cold enough.  Sometimes they even wear gloves.  This is how all the sidewalks and pathways to the bus stops are cleared.  Which probably explains why, in most places, there is a thick layer of ice under the snow.

We watched many people try to get their cars out of the snow and ice, including one man who worked at it for over 3 hours in 15 degree temperatures before finally, with the help of 2 others who came by, managed to drive away.  Some just give up and get on a bus...

or take a taxi at this unofficial taxi stand below our window. 

And others will just wait for Spring!

This is the walkway we must take to get to the Church.  Please note the park benches. 

It was cold enough that the demonstrations downtown went from thousands

to hundreds.


And it is cold enough that we wish we had hats like Elder and Sora Howells!

We've been told that Spring is just around the corner.

Winter finally comes to Buc.

We were very proud of ourselves for living through our first Romanian summer.  There were a few very hot days that almost finished us off but we made it!  Then there was a short lovely autumn followed by a mild beginning to winter.  We thought all those stories of brutal winter weather were exaggerated since we had no snow and the temperature ranged from 25 to 40 degrees for weeks.  Then, about 10 days ago, we had a few inches of snow and our YSA had a great time building a snow man behind the chapel during their activity that day.  It was nice to finally see snow on the ground.  However, that was only the beginning.  A few days later we had a 2 day blizzard that dropped over a foot of snow during high winds and much lower temperatures.  Now it was time for a real cleanup. 

Elders Cross, Pettit and Ekins clearing the sidewalk in front of the church

And because they couldn't help themselves, they made a snow tunnel.

They were kind enough to make a pathway around the Church building that passed the entrance to the tunnel. 

Sora Wahlquist hauling supplies to the Church in the snow.

This is a little path someone cleared along the front of the church property.

A week later......

The joy of snow is long gone!  But the snow is still very much with us.  Temperatures have ranged from 0 - 20 degrees since the snow, often with a stiff breeze.  It was only 12 degrees with a stinging wind when Elder Wahlquist took the following pictures at 4:00 in the afternoon.

Some cars obviously have not moved for a week.  They will still have quite a bit of digging to do to get their car out.  There are piles of 4 inch ice chunks all over the sidewalks.  These piles have been made by men with shovels. 

The snow on the sidewalks has turned to thick ice.  The men with shovels (and sometimes with no gloves) have cleared little paths through the ice along the broad sidewalks for people to get to the buses.  Walking anywhere can be quite hazardous to your health.  Even the cleared paths often have a thin sheet of black ice because of the low temperatures. 

These piles of ice chunks are everywhere that the sidewalk has been cleared.

As you can see, some merchants are more interested in clearing the sidewalk in front of their stores than others!

I am so over this winter!

Remember the two old hecklers on the Muppet Show......

Well, they're alive and well and serving a mission in Romania!

Elder Patton and Elder Wahlquist



Here they are on a happy outing to McDonalds.

Missionaries enjoying Buc's first snowfall.

Elders Johnsen, Gunter and Cross in the Church parking lot.



Good Gifts

Friends and family have been very generous in supplying us with the basic necessities of life that we can't find here - like chocolate chips and brown sugar.  However, this Christmas season we received some special gifts.

Each missionary received a can of A&W rootbeer for Christmas from President and Sora Hill.  The only missionaries that weren't moved almost to tears were those from outside of America.  We had rootbeer floats using the first can on New Years Eve.  Maybe we'll wait for our anniversary to enjoy the other can.

There is a wonderful American family in our branch that let us pick out something from their food storage shelves.  This is what Brent chose.  Ah, the memories!  If only we could find Spam here.

And here is what I chose.  "Fat Bars" baby!!!!!!

Elder Cross is one of our beloved missionaries.  He is also a fellow Coloradian/Coloradoan/Coloradan.  His mother, who must be a wonderful human being, sent this to me all wrapped in Christmas paper.  This means another batch of chocolate chip cookies.  Thank you, Sister Cross!

And speaking of missionaries.......

We invited our district to a hot cake and bacon breakfast the Monday after Christmas.  We were going to eat and watch a Mormon Tabernacle Choir concert on tv.  Unfortunately, the concert time was incorrect so we missed it.  But they seemed to enjoy the hot cakes and bacon. 

Every six weeks is transfer day and we always try to take a district picture.  This transfer we lost our district leader, Elder Nelson (second from the right on back row). 

NOT A GOOD GIFT!

While we were cleaning out a closet at the church we found this doll.  It is just too amazingly creepy to ignore.  Don't you think she belongs in a "Toy Story" movie?

BTW if you have not received a personal thank you for something you have sent, it has not arrived.

Our Romanian Christmas

We started playing Christmas carols at the beginning of November and the P-day after Thanksgiving we put up our little Christmas tree.  Please take note of the nativity that our grandaughter Clara made. She told us that the reason there is only one wiseman is because the other two took a wrong turn on the way to see baby Jesus. Turns out they weren't so wise after all.  So the one wise man brought all three gifts.

The first week of December we took a trip to the city of Arad with the Howells.  He is a counselor in the mission presidency and we have been asked to help them with leadership training.  It was nice to see another part of Romania.  Because it is a two day drive we spent the first night in Sibiu which is a beautiful city in the mountains.  They had their Christmas decorations up and we took a stroll through their city center (centru).

A choir, wearing traditional costumes, was singing in the town square.

Lights on the cobble stone walkway.

The square was lined with booths selling everything from yummy toasted nuts to lamb skin slippers.

Back in Bucuresti the Christmas decorations finally started showing up. Evidently they don't start decorating until the 1st of December.  The city is full of round abouts and they all have a fantastic decoration of some kind.

We went to a Sector hall to watch one of our YSAs sing in a chorus.  Ioana is the 5th person from the left wearing a choir robe.  The performance was free and began at 5:00pm.  They did a terrific job and the last few carols were in English.  We were some of the youngest people in the room!

Two days before Christmas was the missionary dinner.  We had a wonderful time eating and visiting with the missionaries in the two Buc zones.  Have we mentioned how much we love these people?

Christmas Eve day we spent the morning walking in a park with the senior office couple, the Pattons.  This is the fresh pine bough covered booth where children visit Mos Craciun (Santa Claus).  We're not sure what Romanian fairy tales these  people out front are from.

They decorate their trees a little differently than we do.

The park was lined with fun displays for the children and note the booths in the background.

We don't know quite how to explain this picture.  While we were walking in the park, all of a sudden there were about 15 young men dressed in Mos Craciun outfits running past us to the top of the little hill that is in the middle of the park.  This the very spot where Elder Russel M. Nelson dedicated the land of Romania for missionary work in February 1991, less than 2 months after the fall of the communist regime.  Every missionary is brought to this little hill on their first day in the mission for a short service. 

We spent Christmas Eve at the home of the American family in our branch.  This is Elder Pettit, our zone leader, helping with the reading of the Christmas story.  He is Samuel the Lamanite and yes, those are Jack Sparrow dread locks.

Here we are with the Pattons, President and Sora Hill, their son Joseph and us.

On Christmas morning we went to sacrament meeting with a lovely program of music and the spoken word.  Then all the missionaries in Buc went to an orphanage where we spent time visiting with the children.  Then we sang some Christmas carols to them.

Then the older children sang for us.

It was a fine Christmas!