Aa! Voi fi foarte aproape de Ungaria!

Hello mindenkinek!
Yes, for many of you that was your first glimpse of Hungarian.  And for those of you wondering why I'm writing something in Hungarian, it's because I'm going to Oradea!  Transfers are this week and I'll be going to Bucharest to meet Elder A... (my new companion) and then I'll be leaving on a 12 hour train ride to Oradea, the closest city we have in the mission to Hungary.  It's literally right on the border.  And I heard quite a few people there are Hungarian and speak Hungarian, so maybe I'll get to hear/learn some!  Oradea is a super cool city from what I've heard.  I'm pretty sure it's the center of its own district, and includes branches from Arad, Deva, Cluj, etc.  Arad might be the center, though.  I'm not quite sure.  I'll be there with Elder T... and Elder S... as my district leader and his companion.  It'll be sad leaving Pitești.  I've been here for a long time.  But it's also awesome that I get to go back to the western part of Romania and I'm hoping to get so see some members from Deva at district conference if I'm there when it happens.

 This week was a pretty good week.  We had a lot of success with the smoking program and got one new investigator out of it, L....  He's pretty cool but I can't keep you updated on him because I won't be here, haha sorry.  We also got to go visit a member's grandma and do some service at her house.  We repaired part of one of the walls on her house by recementing it, and then we split wood for her and cut some grass with scythes!  It was cool to get to use one of those too!
Pretty much besides that we just spent our time visiting with members for one last time before I leave.  Also we saw a big parade with a few thousand people who want to get rid of the current Romanian president.  There was a big vote yesterday for it.  It's kinda like the riots that happened in the winter but no violence and during the day.
But yeah I'm super excited to go to Oradea and I'll talk to you all next week!  Love you all!
Love, Elder Michael Abbott
Magyar néz ki, mint egy nagyon nehéz nyelv.

 A parade/protest to get people to get rid of the Romanian President

 Elder E... with a 3 legged cat

 The countryside

 cement reparations

 Scythes!

 Me with a chicken.

 us on a cool bridge

 Me and some members with Elder L...

 Cake we made for breakfast when we ran out of cereal.

 Me and V...

 Me and I... and her family

Elder L..., M..., me and C...

Aceasta propozitie are sens

To whom it may concern,
This was a great week!  I had tons of fun.  I could really just end my letter there couldn't I?  No.
I went on two exchanges this week!  I went with Elder J... which was super fun because we were companions in the MTC a year ago!  We had our exchange on the 18th, exactly a year after we left the MTC.  We planned that. :)  Also I had an exchange with Elder B..., one of our zone leaders.  We had a ton of fun and got to try a new contacting method which was to put up posters advertising our non-smoking program that we have.  It helps people quit smoking.  And it's super effective.  For example, just now while I was typing this a lady called me wanting to know how us missionaries can help her quit smoking!  So yeah it's awesome.  Also on our exchange we had giant pizza.  We found a place which sells and delivers 2.5 kg pizzas for 45 lei.  So we got 2 pizzas for 90 lei and split it among us 6 missionaries that were here for the day in Pitești.  It was good and cheap and we had leftovers.
Basically it was a really fun week and it went by super fast too.  I hope all of you had a great week too and I'll let you know next Monday what's happening at transfers!  I love you all!
Love, Elder Michael Abbott
Fumatul dăunează grav sănătății.

 a gate...to nowhere

 Really big pizza

 posters

 close up

 dirty car

 dirty window

Really good Drumstick-like ice-cream that costs 1 leu!

Baptism!

Hello World!
I'm glad to tell all of you that this was a very good week!  Mostly because AN... GOT BAPTIZED!!!!  It was great.  I got to baptize her and it was cool because she was the first person I've actually baptized on my mission.  It was a super good experience and she bore her testimony afterward and it was great.  She's been an investigator for a long time and it was super cool to see her take this step.  Also a cool thing about it was that she took the Bac exam (Romanian version of the ACT or SAT) Romanian section a few weeks ago and had gotten her results and didn't like them so she contested them and was supposed to get her rescore Friday morning.  But, it didn't come.  After waiting at school all day for her results she finally just came to the baptism, and went back afterward to find out that she had received a rescore of 9.7/10, which is a super super super high score and which allows her to go to the college she wants to this fall.  It was super cool.
Also this week we drew the massivest plan of salvation ever with the leftover chalk from our huge American flag (which, by the way, is still visible in the park).  It was fun and we talked to some really cool people about it.  We left scripture references and everything on it.  We also met a few cool potential investigators at other times this week.  Lately that's a lot of what we've been getting.  Potential, potential, potential, we're hoping to have someone start investigating soon.  We have a referral from a member that might go somewhere.  We'll see.
Also this week, we filmed the first part of a video we're making.  We're going to make a video for the Romanian Mormon.org website (mormonii.ro) which will be like one of the I'm a Mormon videos they have on the real site.  A different city already did this and we started filming just this week.  We got excited about a cool feature we found on my camera that takes super fast videos and we had fun with it.  I'll send a video or two.  Actually no sorry the videos won't attach.  Sorry!  Other than that not much happened this week.  I hope you all are doing great!  Love you all!
Love, Elder Michael Abbott
Uniți-vă, o, voi oameni, și veți fi rupți în bucățele; și voi toți din țările îndepărtate, ascultați; încingeți-vă și veți fi rupți în bucățele; da, încingeți-vă și veți fi sfărâmați în bucățele. -2 Nefi 18:9

 A giant castle house in Pitesti

 Elder Abbott, An... and Elder E at An...'s baptism

A giant hole we cut in a single piece of paper for a spiritual thought at our English class.

Our ginormous Plan of Salvation

It Just Snowed!

Haha gotcha!  It didn't really snow.  It's actually super hot right now.
This was a fun week!  We started the week with P-day in Bucharest and we went gokarting and laser tagging and got mail and packages.  It was super fun.  The Go Karts were a lot faster than any I've ever driven and it was intense.  Then later in the week of course we had the FOURTH OF JULY!!!! Which was super fun.  We had a very American lunch (Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Root Beer, Pringles, and watermelon), followed by a very fun time drawing the biggest American flag ever drawn with chalk EVER!  For real, we should submit this to Guinness World Records or something.  The flag was 9 feet 2 inches tall and 18 feet 4 inches wide.  I don't know if that's exactly how it's supposed to be but it was pretty big and close enough to correct proportions I think.  After that we had a barbecue with our branch and taught them how to play American Football!  It's the first time I've played since I got to Romania and it was really fun.
Other than the 4th of July and P-Day we also had An...'s baptismal interview happen this week.  She passed easily (she's definitely one of the most prepared people I have ever seen) and she'll be baptized this Friday!  We also got a few good potential investigators that we're hoping to be able to work with.  Other than that... we also got a visit this week from President Heninger and his wife (he's the second counselor in the mission presidency) and we found out that two of the senior couple missionaries who are serving in Romania and Moldova right now used to be partiarchs and that thanks to a request President Hill made to his good friend Elder Boyd K. Packer, they have permission to give patriarchal blessings to Romanians and Moldovans who are fluent in English.  This is a huge blessing for all of the Romanians and Moldovans, because even if not all of them can get patriarchal blessings yet, some of them can.  The only other way to get blessings before was to go to Ukraine or Germany and to get a blessing in Ukranian, Russian, German, or English.  Not all of the members can do that obviously so it's awesome that they'll finally be able to get those blessings!  I'm super excited for them.
Anyway, other that that we had an exchange this week which was fun.  I was with Elder L... and we're super good friends so I had a super fun time.  I hope all of you had a great 4th of July and that you're all doing well!  I love you all!
Love, Elder Michael Abbott
"Când credinţa înlocuieşte îndoiala, când slujirea altruistă elimină strădania egoistă, puterea lui Dumnezeu face să se îndeplinească scopurile Sale." -Președintele Thomas S. Monson

 Elder Abbott ready to go!

 Laser tag

 A (less) official license plate

 Mac n cheese

 Us with our flag

Our flag 4 days after drawing it

Give Me Liberty!

Fourscore and seven seconds ago I started writing an email that will be very patriotic because I'm SUPER EXCITED FOR THE FOURTH OF JULY!  I know I'm in Romania and that they don't celebrate it here, but we convinced our branch that we should have an activity on Wednesday so I'm really looking forward to it.  I'm sure this picture of my planner for this Wednesday explains it all.
This was a pretty good week.  We did a lot of contacting and we got a few potential investigators out of it.  Nothing to huge, but it's progress.  An... is still going strong and should be getting baptized on the 13th still.  Also the other elders in our district have a baptismal date now too which is awesome!  Their investigator's name is A... and she was one of our English students who liked the gospel so they taught her.  She's super cool too.
Mostly this week was cool because of studies.  I'm reading the Old Testament cover to cover right now and this week I read the story of Job and some other stuff that was really cool.  It was just cool reading about all the things that Job went through and how he got through it.  Also it was cool reading about Nehemiah and Ezra and the rebuilding of Jerusalem that happened during their time.  I honestly really like the Old Testament which is surprising but also awesome.  Pretty much up until now I had always thought of the Old Testament as only boring descriptions of the law of Moses but there's a lot of stuff in their that is really cool and I've found a lot of cool things in there that have helped me understand the other scriptures and life better.  It's been really good.
I'm really looking forward to this week and I hope all of you are doing great!  Have a great 4th of July!  I love you all!
Love, Elder Michael Abbott
"Prin răbdarea voastră vă veţi câştiga sufletele voastre"
Luca 21:19

 Every missionary's dream

A car...in case the license plate didn't give it away!

 read above for explanation

Elder Abbot, M... and Elder Lah... making a Romanian flag with their wristbands