Orhei Vechi

April 19 2016. I apologize because there will be a lot of pictures this time. One of our beloved members, Nina, tells me I take pictures of EVERYTHING which is true I guess. So on Monday, our P day, we went to Orhei Vechi, an old church and monastery about an hour north of Chișinău. We went with the D Cooleys and that is always an enjoyable day. We toured the place, going thru some every primitive villages. I will explain as we go thru the pics. The fun part, on our way out , we stopped for a funeral procession, walking down the road, carrying a coffin. I said, look, the top is off the coffin. So they stopped right by us, put down the coffin and there he was , a corpse in full view of everyone. It was a little odd, I wanted pictures , but Deb said it would be in poor taste- like that has ever stopped me. Anyway, it was a picturesque day, 31 above. That night, we ended up teaching Institute on short notice, and had 12  student, 3 were missionaries, 2 were less active and 4 were non members. It was great, teaching brings us the greatest joy of anything we do here. such nice young people and such a spiritual lift for us.

Du Nguyen, Elder Brownell on left, Elder Swafford on the right. Elder S has picture issues, never can open his eyes or be serious.

This is almost our entire group at the Church after a baptism . From left, Deb, Elder D Cooley, me, Elder Gunn, Elder J Cooley, Elder Sparhawk, Elder Brownell, Sister N Cooley, Sister A Cooley, Sister Nichols, Sevghi Savran, Sister Draper, Sister Kitchen - in back, Sister Brinkman, Tolic, Elder Swafford, Du, Elder Paterson, and Elder Brown.

Did I mention how much this country loves red tulips? They are everywhere and are gorgeous. Most common place for them, in cemeteries.

A nice village well, with some fancy tiles on the side.

Debs favorite sight, we are making  a collection. 

The river and valley around the site. The farmland is intensely farmed, many workers were out and seeding, hand mostly.

All of those cows and horses have a rope or chain on them. Just imagine it.

To go into an Orthodox church, women must have their head covered. Deb would not , but sister Cooley showed their elegant head coverings, dish towels. Inside this rock was a church, very ornate. No pictures without paying  inside.

We found this church to be a holey place.

Stairs carved in rock to the Church inside, hundreds of years old. The stairs, that is.

A famous old cross, in all the pictures of this place. I do not know how old it is, but hundreds of years.

. I even taught in English, but it was translated into Russian and Romanian. Wow. Today we are working on lessons, institute and English, with a Piața trip in the middle to find string and tape and dice- for games. Well, now for the pictures. This may take 2 separate blogs to do.  Anyway, the place we visited was beautiful, the farmland is just fantastic, but mostly worked by hand and horse. We saw a couple of tractors on the smaller side. To be continued-