MOLDOVA & HOMELESS (Almost)

Our time in Romania lasted a whole 3 days before our flight into Moldova. We flew with President Ivory, Sora Ivory, Ellis and Matt Mathias (from Europe Area office). Our check-in took an hour. That probably wouldn't have been so bad, but the five of us were the only ones in line. Because our large suit cases were overweight the clerk had to hand write a receipt for the amount we were overweight and how much we had to pay. It was unbelievable. We went down to our gate and there taking our tickets was the same young man who had checked us in. Off we go to board and guess who is there to help us up the ramp and put our luggage in YEP your right, our FRIEND. I was leery when I looked in the cabin expecting him to be sitting in the captain's chair, but to my relief he was not there.Thank goodness I had enough to worry about with the two propellers spinning away. Why do they still use these planes?

Luggage and all, we finally settled into the Leogrand Hotel in Chisinau, the capitol of Moldova. This was a unique experience. The five star hotel had a fantastic lobby and breakfast,

 but the rooms were tiny and old. Just to make sure we felt at home we had an earthquake our first night! We were there for three nights and during the day had meetings with various people about a large MEDIA blitz the church is planning for Moldova and plans for a Self Reliance Center. Joining us were three people from Germany Sora Sirtl, Elder and Sora Kagel all from the public relations department. Also joining us was dynamic young member of the Mission Presidency, Alin Constantinescu, from Romania.  It probably looked like a delegation from the U.N.

It was very interesting to watch Sora Sirtl explain to the ad agency people what was expected and how the church needed a plan for everything that was to happen. She was amazing and knew exactly how to express the expectations of the church in a way that was well accepted. This is going to be a three year media project and how this turns out could be an example for other countries to follow. Our little country of Moldova will be the first in the Europe Area to do it on this scale.  President Ivory established this as our calling for now and the self reliance work is just fitting into the gaps of our schedule and anything else he needs us to do.

Lee has also been busy trying to help the branch president staff and organize after the split. He was called into the branch presidency the afternoon we arrived. They split the branch into a Russian and a Romanian speaking branches the next day The other two couples in Moldova with us are in the Russian branch and we are assigned in the Romanian branch.  About half the people here speak Russian and the others speak Romanian, even though Romanian is the official language of Moldova.

We had the opportunity to be there for the branch split and it was also a celebration of the church coming to Moldova. We have brother Virlan who was one of the first 5 persons  to be baptized in the country of Moldova. He gave a beautiful testimony and a brief history of the churches beginning in Moldova. (thank goodness for the sisters and their ability to translate)

Wednesday everyone left and so our adventure began. First off we decided to save some money, so Thursday we moved to a new hotel and a new experience.  I wish we had known what was awaiting us.

Thursday the CES couple (Flanders) picked us up and helped cart all our luggage over to the Jolly Alon Hotel. We then went hunting for an apartment to live in. We spent most of the day looking for our place to live for the next 18 months. The Flanders took us home and fed us a nice lunch and we headed back out to look at apartments. It was very difficult when we can't speak or understand the language. So we had Catcha (local member) with us who speaks Russian, English and Romanian. She also handles the church and missionary issues here. The second day of apartment hunting was about the same, long and tiring.

Our arrival back at the Jolly Alon wasn't until about 6:30 pm. We went directly to our room, but the key was not working so we went down to the desk and found that we had the room for only one night and we must leave for another hotel. We found that there was a big concert and activities that night because the government elections were that weekend. Everyone had come to town. Lee spent some time on the computer and finally found a hotel, THE MANHATTAN-thank goodness for Expedia!

We had a taxi come pick up Lee and most of the luggage while Sister Flanders picked me up with the remaining pieces of the luggage. We couldn't get all our luggage in one taxi. We arrived at the hotel and I went in to the room. This wasn't a room, but was more like a loft. The stairs ascending to the room were half the width of a regular stair case and went straight up.  Yep, we got the last hotel room in Chisinau!