"Hristos a Înviat!!"

"Adevărat a Înviat!"

That is the typical Romanian greeting and reply during this, the Easter season. It means: "Christ resurrected!!" -- "It's true, He resurrected!" For the orthodox world, Easter is going to be tomorrow (it always differs from the Catholic/American Easter for some reason). So, tonight,
all of us missionaries are going to the midnight orthodox mass that precedes Easter Sunday. Since we are in Bucharest, we have the neat opportunity to go to the largest, and most central, orthodox cathedral in all of Romania, which is in the center of the city. I've heard that it can be fairly boring, but it's something that you just can't pass up.

As for my health, things continue to improve with every day. My asthma-like symptoms seem to be diminishing, and my cough is almost non-existent. I do still feel tired a lot, but we have been trying to take it fairly easy. We have been driving almost everywhere instead of walking, which has given me a lot of time to practice. It is kind of fun to say that I learned to drive stick on the streets of Bucharest. It is very crowded here, and there are a bunch of crazy drivers, but it is really not ALL that much different from Florida -- except that the roads are not as nice. So, I have pretty much got the stick thing down, and have not stalled out for a couple of days now.

As for office life, I am starting to figure out what I am supposed to be doing, and I have had some really full, productive days. I am basically the membership secretary for the church in Romania and Moldova. I record all membership changes, turn in reports, and register convert data. In a couple of months, I will take over the financial matters and become the financial secretary when Elder Bart leaves and I get a new junior companion to be membership secretary. (Or at least that is the theory -- nothing is ever for sure in the mission field.)

This last week, I spent some time going down to customs to pick up a bunch of stuff for a huge new chapel that is being constructed here in Bucharest; I washed and vacuumed out a bunch of cars; I spent a lot of time trying to straighten out poorly kept membership records from the
past 6 months; I waited an entire day (about 7 hours) to file a police report concerning a church owned car that one of the senior missionaries accidentally damaged when he backed into it with another church owned vehicle (Apparently in Romania, they have the laughably ridiculous law
that, in order to get any car damages repaired, you need to first obtain an authorization for repairs from the police station in the area of town in which the accident occurred. Another fun part of that is all parties to the accident must go together, making it a fun, argument-prone 6 hour wait for many people who are forced to be together for the mere fact that they were involved in the same car accident.); and I filled the rest of my time with random odd jobs that come up -- everything from membership changes to searching for summer tires for the president's minivan.

It was a fun week, but, somehow, extremely exhausting. Today we had a really good Zone Conference. We talked about purifying ourselves and consecrating our efforts that we may teach with power using our given authority. It was quite a spiritual experience!

Elder Bart is extremely fun to be with. He is very smart, very competent, and he always lets me drive. A wonderful combination!!

Well, I have to get going, but I look forward to hearing from you. I love you all, and especially those with back pain!!!

Much love,
Elder Frahm