Working with Walker

Hello Family,

So, this last week was full of interesting, surprising, and promising occurrences. First off, we have a new elder in our district who, disconcertingly, is named Elder Walker. He is a brand new Zone Leader who is very obedient, hard working, and will certainly be a great aid to the work here. With all that, however, I can't help but be constantly thrown off guard when people call for 'Walker' or I see something written to Elder Walker or even when I sign this letter Elder Walker. *shudder* Weird!

Apparently, Moldova was, indeed, opened back up, and Elder Mckeeth and Elder Sperry from my group are two of six missionaries (including 2 sisters) sent in. What a deal! President Ashby promised us when he visited us in the MTC that this would happen, but it seemed to ever be eluding us. It is super exciting to be here to see it, and I look forward to hearing about what takes place there.

As for us, it was actually really nice to not have to go all the way to Bucuresti for transfer meeting. It was just the second time in my mission that this happened, but I really enjoyed staying and working here in Bacau. On Tuesday, we had some pretty good secondary English sign ups. In all we have about 100 people who came to sign up, which should certainly keep us busy for a while. Our first class on Saturday went pretty well, though kind of overwhelming as we taught medium and had to maintain the balance of enough English for them to not get bored and enough Romanian for them to understand. We talked to a couple of youth who came to the classes, however, and one of them even came to church on Sunday. Yes!! His name is Iulian and we will continue working with him. There is also a kid named Andrei who is 17 and really cool. He loves talking with us and would have come to church if he could. We gave him a Book of Mormon and will try to meet with him 3 or 4 times a week.

We had a couple of really, really good discussions with Maria this week. Unfortunately, for some inexplicable reason, when she came to the baptism last week, she said she felt a chill run through her when she saw Gabi get baptized, and she's now just frightened about it. I'm not really sure what to do with her. We have taught her just about everything, and she accepts pretty much all we say. She comes to church and has friends there, she reads from the Book of Mormon and loves it, she feels Joseph Smith was a true prophet, she prays every day and at all of our discussions, but she just doesn't feel "prepared for baptism." She told us this week that she accepts all we say because it all sounds true and feels good, she just has a retention when we bring up baptism. She came to church Sunday, where we watched the Sunday Morning session of the April conference of last year, and she loved the talks. Hopefully, with the help of Sora Mihaela, her best friend from church, we will be able to help her get over any concerns she may have.

Otherwise, I have really been enjoying my scripture studies in the last little bit. I am trying to finish the old testament - the last of the standard works I have to read - before the end of my mission. Right now, I am in the middle of Isaiah and really enjoying probing it in all its many aspects. I love the fact that the scriptures really do have so many real life applications that no matter how many times you read them and soak them in, you can never fully plumb the full depth of their prophetic insight and divine direction. I am also really enjoying listening to some talks on CD that I made while I was in the office. At lunch time, mostly, I find I particularly love listening to talks by Elder Holland and Elder Maxwell, and I constantly finds applications of their teachings in the discussions we have with members and investigators.

As for the branch, we spent a lot of time this week teaching members and it seems that things are moving in a good direction. It is a bit hard that two of our strongest youth members left on mini-missions for the next 6 weeks, but we are doing well anyway. Elder Kozlenko was YSA pres in his district, so we spent some time helping the new YSA pres and FHE coordinator here understand their callings and generate fun, spiritual activity ideas. They are very enthusiastic, it is just kind of lame that we only have about 6 or 7 youth total, of which 2 are students and the rest work about 12 hours a day, making it a bit hard for them to meet. Nonetheless, they are going to start having a weekly youth activity, starting with billiards this Friday, so that is a good start.

This Wednesday, we had an audit, which went super well. It was kind of fun to be on the other end, and to watch the new office elders struggle for a bit before figuring out that the apparent "problems" they saw were just oversights on their part. *malefic laugh* Another cool part of the audit was that I finally got that young women's package, which was a very nice surprise, along with our family Christmas letter - wherein, though the eloquent prose was set out by dad, I may share some of the credit for the dictionary layout, huh? I also received a very pleasant and encouraging letter from Jonas Anderson, my former branch president from New Haven. He seems to be doing really well, and it was a very nice and much appreciated gesture on his and his wife Rachel's part. Oh, I also got some letters from Jenn dated back to December. Apparently, they had been sitting in the back of the mail closet along with my yw package for the last little while. *eye roll* The office group was appropriately apologetic.

Well, I am glad to hear that everybody on your end is doing well. I would really love for Courter to go to South, both for her educational opportunities and for the chance to keep in touch with the faculty, etc.. Keep on working Quart. Be behaved, Belle. And parents: I too look forward in an excited, but definitely not in a trunky or overly exaggerated way, to having you come and touring Romania, Italy, et al.. I love you all very much, miss you dearly, and absolutely treasure the work that I am doing here.

With much love,
Elder Walker ... Frahm