Hello My Wonderful Family,
I am so very sorry that this letter has taken so long to write!! It has been quite busy here in the office, as is predictable after a four day audit tour. Thus, it has taken a bit to get to writing you, but please excuse my lameness this week.
It sounds like things continue on well in the home ward. I got the recent ward newsletter and was pleasantly surprised to find that Mom had written the long article in the inside, and Dad had his picture in there as a chili cookoff winner. That is really exciting news to hear that Paul Pratt was called as bishop in the Davie ward! I'm sure he will do great. Does he still have the beard? The Parly P. side burns?
Well, I think I will start with last Wednesday, when Elder Bartholomew and I were asked to present at a special missionary training seminar that was held at president's house. Elder Bart spoke on Finances, while I spoke on record keeping. No, not the most exciting topics. BUT, I had a LOT of fun doing the research for my presentation, and it came off really well. I spoke about how we need to really treasure our spiritual experiences, and if we want the Lord to trust us with really miraculous, testimony-building events, then we need to make sure that those events do not terminate with us. Wilford Woodruff was a perfect example of a man who treasured the spiritual experiences of his life, recording a faithful journal of every lecture, talk, revelation he ever attended or heard and of his life's events for over 50 years. I realized that I really have the most powerful, spiritual memories from those times in my life in which I have recorded such memories in a journal or some sort of a record. Thus, I shall rededicate myself to faithfully tracking such events. I think that, while a daily journal is really good, it is most important to record outstanding thoughts, impressions, and experiences.
As for the audit tour, it was actually a great deal of fun and excitement! I agree with Mom, that audits can actually be really fun -- especially when you have to hunt down that hidden expense that wasn't recorded and you get to feel the thrill of having everything add up just right. Yeah, I suppose that is kind of nerdy, huh?
First, we drove to Galati, where we had a pretty good audit, after which we went outside to our van and found a half-naked, angry-looking man standing beside it. He lives right next to the church, and apparently we had parked on his property. He told us that if he found our van there again he would tear it into little pieces and throw it down the street. While he WAS very hairy, he was a tad smaller than me and his attempt at intimidation made it hard to keep from laughing. We just told him to have a good day and drove off, under the shadow of his haughty glares.
Then, we made our way to Bacau. There, we had another really good audit. The branch president there is really young (he had his 26th b-day a week ago), but very excited and energetic. We stayed that night with the Zone Leaders and ate some really cheap pizza. It was cheaper than it was good, but it was quite filling at least. Across from their apartment, they are building a new Orthodox church that is just huge. A sign out front claims that it will be the largest Orthodox church in all of Europe!
We then headed up to Chisinau in the Republic of Moldova. We office elders are the first young missionaries to enter the country since Elder Miller (my trainer) and his companion stayed there under house arrest for 38 days before finally being allowed to leave. The process of being officially recognized as a church is on its way over there, but as for now, there is little on the horizon. So, it was a really exciting event for us, to say the least! The Republic of Moldova is a strange country, as it used to be part of Romania, but was absorbed into the Ukraine for a period. Thus, just about everybody speaks either Romanian or Russian or a mix of both. (Though nearly all advertising is still in English, of course.) I am glad that I know Romanian pretty well, as I fear I would not otherwise have known when people randomly throw Russian words into a conversation. As it was, in order to communicate, we would have to first, find someone who spoke Romanian, then ask them about every couple sentences was this or that Russian word means, as they would not realize at all that they were mixing the two languages. Really interesting. We had an amazing audit there! The branch there is really powerful, being almost entirely on its own, with the exception of two older missionary couples who help out with the CES operations over there. Even without proselyting missionaries over there for over a year and a half, they have had about 7 baptisms. After the audit, we went out to the Moldovan marketplaces where Elder Bart went crazy on belts (as they sell some interesting ones with larger, nice buckles), while I hunted for books written in Romanian but with the Russian (Cyrillic) alphabet. After about 2 hours and stopping at 4 bookstores, we finally found a large church bell tower where they had the New Testament written in Cyrillic. It has been a lot of fun to read, and it has even given me some new insights into Romanian by seeing it written with different (and at times more precise) letters. Really neat!!
After staying the night in Moldova, we made our way across the border again to Iasi. There we attended church. Iasi is one of two or three cities where they have girls from BYU who volunteer at the local orphanages. So, it was kind of funny to find a congregation that consists of almost half BYU girls (as there are about 14 of them and Iasi is a smaller branch). I ended up translating for one of them, who gave a talk on the nature of God. It was my first time translating for the entire congregation in sacrament meeting, and it was actually a lot of fun! The audit there was a bit more difficult, but we resolved everything after a couple of hours and started on our way home. We got stuck in traffic and didn't arrive home until really late Sunday night.
Monday and Tuesday we were busy catching up in the office, and then, Wednesday, yesterday, we had Zone Conference. It was a really good conference in which we talked about the sanctity and holiness of sacrament meeting and about how we need to truly STRIVE for obedience in order to receive the blessings the Lord would give us.
Well, I don't have much time left, but I will try to write you sooner next week, though we will be in Ploiesti on Saturday and Constanta on Sunday. I love you all muchly!
With much love,
Elder Frahm
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