February 18, 2013

Okay so first of all, I know where I am going to be for next transfer!!!! Sadly I'm moving out of Constanta :( I'm kinda sad because I love this branch so much and it's going to be crazy not being here. But Guess where I'm going (Drum Roll Please!!!!) 

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I'M GOING TO CHISINAU!!!!! (pronounce it Key-She-Know) Yup I'm super excited because I'm going to MOLDOVA!!!!!! So my second city that I'm going to be serving in is in another country!! Yup I'm super stoked!!! I'm super happy because not a whole lot of missionaries get a chance to serve in Moldova, so I'm really excited to say that I have served in Romania and Moldova. My companion is going to be Elder Hollist. He is from my MTC group.  Oh and another thing about Chisinau (and Alex is really gonna love this), I heard from someone church in Chisinau is RUSSIAN!!! Yup lots of people speak Russian over in Chisinau (in fact we have some Elders in the mission who are called to be Russian speakers and then just stay in Moldova). So I might be picking up on a little bit of Russian while I am there :)

 from Constanta, Romania to Chisinau, Moldova

Okay so quick story, We were at the church on Saturday after English classes. And there was a branch meeting so a lot of the branch members were there. One of the families that was there was the Olteanu family. This is the family that has Alex. Alex is the 8 year old kid who got baptized not too long ago if you guys remember. Anyway, Alex's parents were in the meeting so I was just talking with Alex for a little bit. I told him that I was going to be leaving Constanta this next week to Chisinau, and then he got this sad look on his face. Then he told me to wait for a second while he went into one of the rooms in the church. After a little bit he pulled me into the room and showed me a little note that he wrote on the whiteboard for me. At first he was like "go on read it!" . . . but his little 8 year old handwriting wasn't that great and I couldn't read it ha ha so then he just told me what it said. I took a picture of it and then later tried to decipher what it said. I got most of what it said. He wrote something like this: "I will miss you Barney. You were a good friend of the soul. I will still be here in the Constanta branch. I love you from me - Alex <3" . . . Gosh I'm pretty sure I started tearing up! Yeah basically it was the coolest thing ever!! I'm going to go over to their house like on Tuesday or something to say goodbye to their family!! I really got close to their family seeing as how I was over there a lot to teach Alex the lessons before he got baptized. 

Well I love you all so so much!!! I'm glad to hear that things are going good!!! I miss you all so dang much!!! :) I will talk to you all soon :)

Love,

Elder Josh Barney :) 

Monday, February 11, 2013

I talked in Church this past Sunday!! It was pretty good actually. I talked about the Liahona magazine and Dieter F. Uchtdorf's talk in conference. "Of Regrets and Resolutions". I actually wrote out my talk the night before just so that I could have something to read if I completely forgot all of my romanian when I got up their. But it actually turned out pretty good. I hardly used my paper at all!!

Well to be honest, these past couple of weeks have been pretty hard. Due to the fact that we would set up lessons with people and then wait for them at the church and then they wouldn't show up. That's basically how it has been for the past two weeks, but then on Saturday there was a guy who actually came!! I was super excited . . . mostly due to the fact that for the past two weeks we hadn't had any lessons at all. So we taught him about the restoration and gave him a book of mormon. We invited him to come to church the next day, but he didn't show up. We are going to try and meet with him later so we will see how that goes. 

So we were on exchanges this past week and I was actually on an exchange with an elder named Elder Jones. He is one of our zone leaders. So when I was on an exchange with him I went block knocking for the first time! It actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I've heard some pretty crazy stories about block knocking. 

So the English classes are still going good!! We only have English 2 more times before we have transfers. We find out this week what's going to happen this next transfer. And to be honest, I have this feeling inside me saying that I'm going to be out of Constanta for this next transfer. I don't know why but I just feel like I will be going to another city this next transfer. And I'm not quite sure whether I would be happy to leave or sad to leave. So I guess we will see what happens!