Guess where I am

Hello everyone!

First of all, thank you for the emails, the recipe, and for forwarding all of those things for me...I really really appreciate it!

So, now I bet you're all wondering where I am at now, so I'll tell you. We had a good time in Bucuresti for transfer meeting, and a lot changed in transfer meeting. And I am now in Brasov with Sora Jones! Brasov (said brashove) is in the middle of the country in the middle of the mountains, and it is so beautiful here.

Sora Jones is actually my sister, meaning that Sora Thompson was also her trainer, and I have two other sisters - Sora Staley and Sora Gibbons and they are serving together in Iasi (said yash) and so our whole family are working together right now, and it's really fun. Sora Jones has been here for 3 transfers, and this will be her 4th, so she'll have served here a total of 6 months by the end of this transfer which is a long long time here. But we're already having fun.

One of our investigators here, Alexandra, is getting baptized on the 18th, so that's exciting, and another investigator, Alina, is like a mini version of Shaley. She is 14 but acts a lot like Shaley except she talks in Romanian, but she is so cute and it's fun to be with her a lot. Her parents currently won't let her get baptized, so we are working with her just to keep her progressing until either her parents soften up and say it's ok, or until she turns 18. But it's hard to help someone progress when they can't take the necessary steps according to the knowledge they've already received.

Anyways, we have a lot of work to do here. President Lundberg has asked that we make a goal of getting 5 new investigators a week. Difficult, but doable, and so we're trying to do that.

It rains pretty much every day here in the mountains, but again, it's beautiful, so we're just trying to learn how to adjust missionary work to rainy weather.

Also, my back is doing pretty ok - it's been starting to hurt about half way through the day until the end, so I'm going to get a different type of bag to hold everything to see if that helps, but it's not too bad, and I'm doing all right.

I'm so excited that the Bunkers are taking the lessons! It's so exciting when people are willing to do the things that will allow God to bless them in their lives. He wants to bless us, but we have to do what we can in order to give Him the opportunity.

And Brittany got sealed! that is also exciting. I'm glad to hear that everything is going well at home. Congrats to Shaley and Jenna on having a successful girl's camp, I'm so glad that you had fun!

Oh, and if you didn't know that Michael Jackson died, I did. All I've heard for the past couple days is about him - people we're contacting on the streets when they find out we're from the USA they say "oh, yeah. Michael died, did you know?" Yes, we know, and we don't care. We have a more important message than that...but it's funny. And pretty much every restaurant and bus has been playing all of his music for the past 2 or 3 days. It's funny.

Anyways, today we are going to sapte scari (the 7 stairs) which is kinda like stairway to heaven except it's 7 sets of ladders on a big mountain with waterfalls the whole way up, so I'll tell you about that next week.

I love you all so so very much, and I hope that all continues to go well with all that you are doing at home. Tell everyone at Maudie's wedding that I love them very much and I think about them often!

Have fun, and I'll write again next week!

Love always, --Sora Karina