The Best Two Years: Elder Alex Ditto: JOY in Romania... and some Dancing!

Hello everyone!!!

Well, today I parted ways with Elder Bontempo and said "hello" to Elder Jacobson. Elder Bontempo and I were together for three transfers- 4.5 months! I was just thinking how long that is... but crazy to think how fast time went by. Elder Bontempo got the assignment to open up a new companionship in Timisoara, I am really pumped for him. Man, we did a lot together and I learned a heap from him and as we served together. I can truly call Elder Bontempo one of my brothers!

Helped this little old baba wack her carpet... she had the technique down!

=Elder Bonditto

To be honest, I don't really know what to write about this week. I have literally ten minutes to write and the only thing that is coming to mind is the activities that we had in Bucharest this week. Our branch planned a combined activity with the other branch to celebrate fall -"Daruriile Toamnei" or Gifts of Fall. I haven't really been to too many branch parties on my mission, but I will be honest I was not expecting too much!

George and I... love this guy!

As I walked in to the chapel, the music was blasting, balloons everywhere, and a huge table full of food (Romanian treats to be exact).

Blury pic but this party was LIT!

Musical Chairs

I felt like I was fourteen again going to a stake dance! That afternoon not a single person didn't smile... we all had a ball dancing, eating, talking, making and developing friendships, and me trying to learn the Romanian traditional dance... the members got a kick outta my high kicks and crazy foot movements.-I was just glad that I got a tad bit of mom's dancing genes!

Elder Giron is headed to Timisoara!

We also had an incredible institute evening afterword's... we had many investigators come to both the branch activity and the institute evening. For institute we talked about the power of The Book of Mormon and then had a raw vegetarian cook-off. I had several friends come up to me and say how cool it is that our church does these kinds of things. One even said that he is so impressed with this church because people don't fear God- everyone is smiling, laughing, and dancing in the church. In Orthodox culture, you don't laugh or even smile when you are in a church. Common practice is to go and listen to the priest sing his songs and kiss the statues of Jesus on the cross. Many people, especially to the younger generation, this appears very intimidating and weird.

I was thinking about the contrast between Orthodoxy and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints... Both religions give great respect to Jesus Christ, God the Father, and the Holy Ghost, but there is a great difference in how we do this. What comes to mind is the simple fact that God is our loving Heavenly Father... President Nelson once said that we are here to have JOY. Joy is obtained by keeping the commandments that the Lord has given us, and by doing so, we are promised this great blessing. We are to go through LIFE with JOY, not with sadness. That is why God sent us His son, and if we follow His example, we will have this JOY.

Headed to Institute and found a sweet sculpture!

A giant mound of varza... cabbage

The ever growing sticker collection

How grateful I am that the restored church of Jesus Christ allows us to experience this joy as we work together with our brothers and sisters to help each other in times of need, to mourn with those that mourn, and stand as witnesses that Jesus is the Christ! And sometimes you just gotta dance!

I know that Christ lives, that he is my Savior. What a blessing it is to be on His errand doing His work!

See ya next week, have fun in Mexico ma and pa!

Love,

Alex