Re: What a Week!!

Hey, sorry this didn't get to you on Saturday. The address got typed in incorrectly. Enjoy -- :)

Hey Fam,

Well, I would say that this last week has almost certainly been the craziest of my mission; but also one of the most satisfying. The highlight of the week was Tuesday evening, when we had the amazing opportunity to go and listen to Elder Nelson, of the Quorum of the Twelve, and his new wife, Wendy (Watson) Nelson, address us along with Elder Wolfgang Paul, from the 70, and his wife. There was a meeting for only missionaries at 4:00, where they talked about how the Lord uses the unlikely to bring about the impossible. I was really impressed by Sister Nelson's comments, as she proved herself to be an extremely good speaker and one who phrased things in such a way that her ideas were very lucidly and powerfully conveyed. You may already know, but she was just recently married to Elder Nelson a few months ago, having never been previously married. She has become, however, one of the leading authorities on marriage and family studies in the world, being some sort of leader in BYU's department of such studies. Elder Irion, one of the current APs, and, therefore, one of my roommates, happens to be Elder Nelson's grandson. Elder Nelson said that the primary reason he came to visit us is that Elder Irion wrote to him about 6 months ago and said, "Hey grandpa, you dedicated the land of Romania and opened it for missionary work about 15 years ago, but its been a really long time since you have come back here." Elder Irion was really excited, not only to see his grandpa, but also to meet his new grandma. It is neat, talking to him about his relationship to an apostle, that even though his grandfather holds one of the busiest, most important roles and responsibilities in the church, he still attends about 80% of the weekly Monday night family gatherings that their family holds. He also writes his own little section in the monthly "Nelson Family Newsletter" that is sent out to all the family members, in which he always refers to himself in the third person as "Daddy." (i.e. "Daddy, got married last week, after which he presided over the organization of the Papua, New Guinea 3rd Stake.") It's fun to see a little bit into the family life of a man with such a special calling! Unfortunately, Elder Bartholomew and I had to leave right after the missionary meeting, so we did not have the chance to hear Elder Nelson's remarks to the 600+ members who had gathered from throughout Romania to hear him. He apparently spoke much concerning the importance of families and teaching our children, so that they may become better, stronger, and more firmly rooted in the truths of the restored gospel than we. (Oh, he also mentioned that when writing our families, we should try to write eloquently, so that our language skills do not digress during our missions. Therefore, if ever I err in my erudite elucidation of events and their unfolding, feel free to correct me. :)

While everyone and everything was being prepared for Elder Nelson's arrival, we office elders and Alin, a Romanian YSA who works with us in the office, were gearing ourselves up for a crazy week of visa processing. On Tuesday, to add to everything, about 30 members from the Republic of Moldova showed up at the office without anywhere to go until the member meeting with Elder Nelson at 6:00. We, on the other hand, had a laundry list of things that had to get done before we were to pick up the 7 incoming missionaries at the airport at 1:30. On top of that, we received a fax that morning that one of the members from Moldova, who is preparing to serve a mission, needed to get a Hep AB shot that very day, while he was in Romania, because they don't have the necessary shot in Moldova. So, we had to find a clinic where the shot was available and accompany him to it. After we got back from that, a shipment of books and keyboards had just barely arrived from customs, and we had to help carry it all up to the office, after which we sped over to pick up the new missionaries, after which we went to the Elder Nelson meeting, after which we sped off with the new missionaries to get them their entrance physicals, after which we had to feed them and get them to their respective apartments for the night, etc...

At Wednesday's transfer meeting, every single missionary in the country was present, making it CRAZY. My district from the MTC bought a set of 8 ties, one for each of us, and we all wore them and sat in the same row, which was a lot of fun. It was quite a big transfer for my group. Two of them became zone leaders, and four of them were made trainers, so that four out of five new elders are being trained by someone in my group! I can't wait for my own chance to train. I think I would really like to have a boy of my own!

We then spent Thursday and Friday at the minister of internal affairs, where we go to process visas. The people who work there know us really well, but it is really crazy for them to process a bunch of visas at a time, like we always make them do. On Thursday, we went with the 7 greenies and one more, making 8. It usually takes about 15-20 minutes to process each one. When the Greek people behind us found that we were doing 8 at once, they started yelling at us in English, while their lawyers were yelling at us in Romanian, and the lady behind the window, with whom we have spoken regularly recently, just laughed, saying that she warned us that this would happen if we came with so many at one time. So, we just ignored them for the most part, and things settled down once they saw how organized and efficient we were with our papers. It ended up only taking about 7 minutes for each, and everybody in the room was surprised at how quickly things went. Friday was about the same. Luckily, however, it was less crowded and fewer people got angry at us. The 11 visas we did on Friday included my MTC district, which, being a more restless crowd, spent the three hours that we waited telling stories, laughing at jokes, and juggling camera cases. It was actually quite entertaining!

Well, I'm sure that you are just about bored to death after my account of all the inane details of office life. I'm sorry if this e-mail was all scatterbrained and crazy; that's kind of how the week was in my mind. Hopefully this next week we will be able to have regularly studies and block knocking, as we were leaving for the office at about 7AM and returning around 10PM every night this last week.

Oh yeah, about your e-mails. Thanks for responding to my gummy bear and marshmallow request! Thanks also to dad for the letter he sent me. It's always fun to get an actually snail-mail letter once in a while. Tell Jamie Leavitt congrats on the baby and that Dostoevsky is actually my favorite author, I would say. Say "hi" to Sara for me and that I'm really glad she enjoyed my letter. Courtney, great job with the genealogy work; that is something really cool to learn how to do. Belle, keep up the good work swimming and playing water frisbee with Dad. As for the pictures, no, I don't really drink that water, and yes, that was just a posed picture at the chapel, though the bedding we were in WAS our actual bedding from that night.

Well, I have to go.

Love you all,
Elder Walker