Orhei Vechi 2

April 19 continued, I will publish the pictures and explain each. Again, a gorgeous day, I have got to find a hat. As the pictures testify, I am not growing hair here. I do think they grow almost anything else here, though.

The path up to the Church on top, all dirt and gravel, all the land underneath is limestone. Right now Deb is walking over the underground church.

Shows the small river, Râut Râu, and the church.

Small village of Butuceni, quite backward. All of the fences were painted blue and green. 

Inside the Church on the hill, very ornate, notice no seats at all?

The ceiling of the church on the hill. Reminded me a lot of church buildings in Italy.

We were not cross about doing this picture together.

Like a figurine on a ship, Deb on a cliff surveying what is to be.

The river was very noisy, at first we thought it was ducks. It was just big frogs, loud and very numerous. I thought some delicacy eating was in order, according to my wife, I was wrong.

This is the signage one sees when leaving any town or village, lets you know you are out of town limits. It is rather cool.

More frogs, literally hundreds,  a blue heron would be happy, happy , happy here.

Some of the carving in the cliffs where rooms were used in past years

There were 2 hang gliders as the valley and cliffs made it perfect. It was odd to see these in such a primitive setting, they caught enough wind that they would float around for several minutes and end up back on top to restart.
So that was the day, quite interesting, There were old walls hundreds of years old, but they kind of looked like - old walls. 

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-

The week of rain and food

April 16 2016. We have had a week of mostly rain. I keep thinking we need to wash our poor Opel and then it rains. One day, maybe today as it is sunny right now. I am at our Church building, filling up our font, which takes about 3 hours, I was here at 530 am. One thing about it , traffic is nice early in the morning, it only took 15 minutes to get here. We have had a busy week. We have been working on English lessons, started Institute classes in Orhei, and will have a second baptism today. Thursday I was able to conduct a service in Romanian, after a lot of practice. It was okay, although I forgot to practice how to say refreshments and serve ( 2 types, human and food) so some English popped in. Wow , this language is a challenge. It is getting nice and green, tulips and daffodils are up. It is hard to describe how flower crazy this place is. If a man forgets to buy flowers here, it truly is grounds for divorce. And red, do they love red tulips. I hear the poppies are going to be beautiful as well. The best part- people are starting to smile, as the weather gets warmer and it gets greener. So today you get to see some of our food staples and the food labelling. Imagine going into your store with these labels. Sometimes the pictures help, sometimes not.

Okay, these are two of the breads we eat. On our left, ciabatta bread, and it is delicious. Fresh, it is the closest to Debs bread. The other is Horvatski bread, a little darker, full of sunflower seeds and cheese. Oh my, it is like a full meal deal. These are the 2 favorites-  Cost- the first about 60 cents, the second about 70 cents.

This is the chocolate pudding Deb almost tackled Elder Sparhawk  for. We obviously could not read the label, but it is fantastic chocolate pudding, closet thing to her chocolate milk, which they do not have, the other is butterscotch. Just in case you could not read the label.

On the left, Debs favorite juice, an apple grape mix. Very nice and again the label is not helpful. The picture is. On the right, the best milk we have found. It is on the shelf until opened, but is quite good. Types of milk here- 0.5%, 1.5%, 3%, 6%. The last is just cream- Cam , where are you?

Ketchup is on the left, picture helps. Although we bought salsa in a package like this, it was just spicy ketchup. Middle is a mayonnaise, tastes just like Ranch. We found it quite by accident. The last is a mayonnaise that is cheese flavored that is delicious. Now none of this is low fat- hard to believe there are so many thin people here.

Our flour on the left, luckily there are small Romanian labels on the back. Hard to find any bag bigger than 2 kilos. Sugar on the right, almost all packages are 1 kilo, cost of 60 cents a kilo. By the way, brown sugar is also granular, not at all like home and expensive and hard to find.

Upper left is coconut, at least in Romanian. It is a much finer grind than Canadian, and that package is as big as it gets. Bottom left, cinnamon, again in Romanian, always in a plastic bag. Lower middle is our mushroom soup or as close as it gets. In a bag and quite different than home. No soup in cans here. Bottom right is the cream of chicken, again a powder. It is okay, but hard to find. We have stocked up in Romania. 

 Anyway, that is the story for now. I did find a big rip-off, my suit pants when trying to get over a small fence in the cemetery when doing pictures for Billiongraves yesterday. The entire front leg is gone, just before the service. So we are down one suit. Thankfully it was the old one, both me and the suit.

Correction

So for those who read, I was tired. For every spot you see Budapest, insert Bucharest. Oh, the errors of my ways. We have not yet been to Hungary, if I had typed in Romanian, it would have been Bucureste, with a sedilla under the S. Sorry, readers, I blame fatigue and stupidity. And a 7.5 hour drive.

Bucharest

April 10, 2016  We just got in from Bucharest, having driven there on Friday and coming back today. Our trip there took 9.5 hours- traffic was terrible on an unfamiliar road, and coming back we took 7.5 hours, even though it rained for 6 of those hours. We learned something valuable, Moldovans are not the worst drivers in the world- Romanians can run them good competition. Wow. We saw 3 accidents on our way there, one very serious, and had numerous hair raising events. Yes, I am now growing fuzz on top. Bucharest is a crazy, busy, beautiful city. We went down for a YSA event, kind of a missionary prep course. We were not certain what our role would be, but we ended up giving a presentation, doing lots of dishes and cleaning, and helping to obtain and set out food. They are like YSA everywhere- there is never enough food. For some reason here, they all love bananas- unbelievable appetite for them. Marin Iachimov organized the event and we were able to watch some of the teaching and activities. We had 2 youth from here go to Bucharest and we were able to drive them home. It was amazing to see the difference between Moldova and Romania- Romania is beginning to thrive, roads are better, building look better, prices are higher. They have a growth of over 4% a year, not bad at all. Parts of Bucharest are fantastic, but there are almost 3 million  people, 5th biggest city in Europe. Yes, we are not city people. Brother Iachimov says traffic here is controlled chaos and one needs to feel the traffic. I was very afraid of feeling the traffic, we were that close at times. Ah, we are alive. We met new people there as well, wonderful Saints. Many of them knew my cousin, Dan Heninger and his wife Deb, who are still fondly remembered. We met the branch president , Pres. Doru and his family, Carmen Fotea and her family, I think Claudia Fotea, her handicapped son Daniel and many other nice people. Radu Simon, Catalina Vitel and many others. Catalina was a workhorse, kept the food organized and was every where behind the scenes. The building there is fantastic, with 3 working levels. A long tiring drive, but we were happy to go and meet people there. Pictures follow.

The Panduri Branch building. Constructed in 2006, a different design that we are used to. See all that green grass, I was just coveting a lawn mower to get on it with. First nice lawn we have seen here.

Just a street in Bucharest. Hundreds of the block type buildings.

The Marriott, just around the corner from the Church. I would love to tell you we stayed here, but not so. Expensive rooms here, from 200 euros a night. So we stayed 2 blocks down at the Ibis, maybe a 3 star place.

Basement of the Church, Alin in the foreground with youth all over the place.

Elder and Sister Majeran from Rocky Mountain House, originally from Moose Jaw. Now the only office couple and completely unflappable. Nice to talk to fellow Canucks. 

Sister Ivory on the left, President Ivory on the Right. They did a face to face with the YSA, very well done.

Marin Iachimov on the left, Tibi ( Tiberius ) on the right. He is a tremendous young man. On crutches, but always with a smile and a heart of gold. He does translating for the Church.

Parliament Palace, second largest building complex in Europe. We did not even get close to it.

Outside our window in the Ibis. This is very early, as you can see road , usually traffic is bumper to bumper.
So we were glad to see Bucharest, but glad to get back to a slightly smaller place of 3/4 million. Imagine that, getting back to a small city and feeling comfortable. Where oh where has my little town gone?

Spring and such

April 8. It is a beautiful spring morning and we are just about to set out for București, at least a 7 hour drive in our Opel. There is a missionary prep course that we will take part in , also one of our young sisters is involved. We have been very busy this week trying to develop some English courses for our young missionaries to help them as they teach English, and maybe to help us if we start teaching as well. We have also done some work with the Billiongraves project, figuring out which devices work and which do not. The trees here are all blooming with lots of flowers, and leaves are starting to come. More importantly, people are beginning to smile which is a sure sign of spring. We learned this week that the poverty level is under $1 a day, wow. sometimes it is hard to smile. Last night the Pathways program finished their first semester and we taught an Institute class. As it was the inaugural class of this type in Moldova, President Ivory was here as well as the Mills, a couple from Utah who are in Germany archiving the history of the Church in Moldova. So our entire class was filmed for Church Archives. With the mission president and filming, talk about pressure in a lesson. It actually went very well, as usual with the wonderful participation we have. So as we are about to travel, just a couple of pictures today.

This is just outside our apartment, and it seemed so symbolic. It felt like it represented our Church here in Moldova, a beautiful blooming living organism in a often bleak landscape. It was an amazing sight. 

We ate after Pathways and Institute last night. From left to right, Eugene Culciu, Cris Bezede, Inesa Bezede, Sevghi Savran and Sora Edwards. Inesa is the lady who also tutors me in Romanian. Cris is already planning a fishing trip in 2017. Dont know how he found out I fish.

Other side of the table from the far end, Sergiu Covali, Mariana Covali, and Sister and Elder Cooley. President Covali is the 2nd councillor in the mission presidency. Their children-3- are almost as bright as our grandkids. Anyway, a very nice group of people. 2 were missing, Doina and Ruslan Stepanenco, who got called away for work.

Just food

April 2 2016 We just got back from the Grill House, ( that is the name) and it had quite good food. all the senior couples went out as Cooleys are gone in 3 weeks. We all ate steak and stuff for about 150 dollars, lots for here but really not bad at all. I will enclose a few pictures of the food , I had steak that was  quite tender , most here is not tender at all. So this week the second Cooleys and us have been working on the English lessons as some are quite good and prepared and some are not. We are trying to get some consistency to them and so we have been doing a lot of work on that. I also found I did not properly save a power point prenatal presentation, so there was also a few more hours of work to be repeated. There have been some blessings to give this week and also all our usual teaching. We have seen some bad accidents but are still surviving thanks to family prayers, I am sure. Our Family home evening had about 25 people there, we played a progressive charades and Pictionary, it was a hoot. Again in 3 languages. We have also been getting our Billiongraves project up and running. We found what worked, what did not work and are finding the cemeteries fascinating. We have got many funny looks but many friendly are there. Every one loves Canada, whenever we mention Canada, people smile and are happy to see us. Flowers are for sale even more and daffodils are abundant. Most are from Holland we have found out. This population is just flower crazy.

This has nothing to do with food, but is out in front of the Moldovan government house. It is one of many trees pruned multiple times so they are just knobby. Like the many stops and starts of Moldovan politics.

2 people ordered shrimp, and they got the whole shrimp, feelers and all.

Called torta de ciocolata, Delicious.

Timasaru, an absolutely delicious dessert.

Blackberry sherbet or șerbet. Also delicious, had apple sauce to go on same.

Well , since we are talking of food, 2 highlights this week. First, Deb saw one of the Russian elders eating a chocolate pudding. She almost tackled him, but it was in Russian, so we got the container and found some. On our way to buy that, we found chocolate chips and even marshmellows. but no rice Krispies. So life is good, Deb has no chocolate milk, but has delicious chocolate pudding. We thought we had a quiet day and spent the whole day running, computer here for a class, paper there and then even a few pics in the cemetery.