Dear family,

This past week was a blast, and I'm going to tell you only a few of the miracles that made it so fun because unfortunately, I don't have time to write all of them, that and I figure that I need to save some things to share with you when I get home. But man, this week was just full of cool things that the Lord made possible for us.

So we decided that we were not being passionate about our goals and that we were just setting goals that were realistic according to what we have already here in Sibiu, and we decided that was really stupid. Just like that quote from Zone Conference said, we need to get emotionally involved in our goals, and then go forth and do all you can to fulfill those goals. So we are officially done setting realistic goals, and instead we are going to set what we want and allow the Lord to work miracles, because nothing is impossible for Him to do.

We witnessed this in this past week when we found 11 people who were willing to listen to our message and have a desire to continue to learn. We have already seen to a small amount the effect these things will have as we went to work with this attitude starting Friday, and I am so excited to continue to go forth and see what the Lord has in store, not just seeing if we can meet midway goals.

This week was really fun to the extent of literally running up the stairs of a bloc one night (we started at the bottom that night to find the first person who would let us in because we had 20 minutes to have a lesson, and someone did let us in - they didn't become new investigators, but the lady said she knew that God sent us to her so that she could feed us (she fed us deep fried pig fat with apples...yummy?) and take care of us because she doesn't have any kids and she was taught to always accept and take care of the servants of the Lord, and she was just sooo happy to serve us. Even though she and her husband weren't willing to listen to the message of the fullness of the Restored Gospel, I saw it as a tender mercy from the Lord and an answer to our prayers to be let in and still make the bus(which we did) and also that woman's prayers to be a service to the Lord's servants. It was so cool.

Another night we had planned to go and find a former investigator for whom we only have an address and so we went off, but you have to cross the street at a certain point or follow the curve of the road, and we didn't cross the street which took us all the way down to a point where if we would have climbed the stairs to our left of the cross walk we would have been right back where we started. Because of this, I kind of teased Sora Staley, talking about how we were walking around in circles and it was silly, but neither of us felt bad about doing it. So we kept walking in the general direction of the former investigators, and then Sora Staley got the thought that we should vila knock right there in the middle of the street. To me it just looked like she was pacing in front of a vila until she said, "maybe we should knock this vila" ...ok, but it didn't have a door bell on the fence. So we went in and knocked on the first vila (inside this fence is a group of 4 vilas) but the first lady didn't want to listen.

We started walking out, but again Sora Staley got the thought that we weren't done. Then we noticed a lady hanging up her laundry in the cold and we went to talk to her. She said she didn't have time right then, but set up a time for us to come back. We asked if we could have her phone number. She said yes, but had to go inside to get it. She invited us in out of the cold, and then we gave her a pliant (pamphlet) to read and she asked what it was about...20 seconds into the explanation she said, "Oh, I have 10 minutes, sit down and we'll talk."

So we sat down with her and talked. It was so cool. She opened up a ton and started crying saying that she knows God loves her but doesn't know why because she smokes and sins and doesn't go to church. Also because she feels like everyone else know all the prayers and what to do, and she doesn't. She felt it would be shameful for her to go in to a church not knowing how to "properly" do everything. She wanted to know how we could have such conviction about our message. We told her it was through prayer, and taught her how to pray. She had a hard time believing that God would answer her prayers until the end.

In the middle of this, her 21 year old daughter came in and loved what we were saying. Towards the end they both said that they would pray about our message and if God really does want them to have a Prophet on earth, and if He loves them.

Mariana (the mom) told Adina (the daughter) "you know, I didn't even want to talk to these girls, and then something happened and I thought, well, why not, so I let them in and now they're telling me they can help me stop smoking and that I can pray to God to know about Him" and her daughter smiled and said "you need it mom, do what they say" and they were just so grateful and awesome. It was definitely a miracle to prove that the Lord does know where His children are, and that He will lead us to them if we are doing all we can to heed the promptings of the Spirit.

-It just brings you so much joy to share that truth. And the neatest thing is that it is not just me and Sora Staley that have been having successes like this. About 3 weeks ago, Elder Tilbey found 12 new investigators because of a guy they talked to on the street, and he told the Elders that he goes to a Bible study class every week, and Elder Tilbey said "oh, that would be fun, can we come too?" the guy said that would be fine, so they went, it turned into a discussion about the Restoration, and Elder Tilbey and his boboc companion (boboc = brand spankin new in the field) taught them all there and 12 of them set up again to meet. The following week, Elder Harvey and Elder Shwartz called a number from someone they met on the street, but it was a wrong number (happens very often) but they decided to invite the person on the other line to learn about their message. Set up, met with the family, got 8 new investigators from that family with 5 people in that group that set up baptismal dates.

This week, as in the week in which Sora Staley and I found 11 new investigators, the Elders in my district found 4 new investigators, there were probably lots of others with high numbers, but no one beat Elder McBride and Elder Brian who found 18 new investigators. They found a family who referred them to another family who referred them to another family and all three families are now learning about the restored gospel and how they can have their families for eternity. So cool!!! A side note that makes it better, Elder McBride completes his service as a missionary in 1 1/2 weeks, so that's just crazy, and he is just sprinting to the end.

The work of the Lord is going forth and we are having a blast doing it. The only thing that is kinda yucky right now is that it turned cold REALLY fast, and it is freezing. There is apparently a cold front over all of Europe and the highs in Romania are around 8-12 degrees Celcius. I don't know what that equals in farenheit, I just know that I have to wear around 4-5 layers when I go out so I don't freeze.

Funny story. The first day it got cold it was 14 degrees Celcius here in Sibiu, but all I saw out the window is that it was sprinkling lightly, so I didn't put much on under my coat and I had a light scarf and my umbrela. Well, we went out, it was soooooo cold, and it started POURING rain (in Romanian they say "raining buckets" instead of cats and dogs) and it was, my umbrella broke in the middle of it, and me and Sora Staley were numb from just above the knees down plus our ears, hands, nose, and we were sopping wet. So we went to the church after lunch to get warm, and the heaters were broken there, so we turned on and lit the four burners on the gas stove and huddled around the stove for warmth...and realizing the fact that our clothes were soaked through, we started holding up different articles of clothing over the stove to dry...our coats, scarves, socks/nylons, shoes, and I finally took off my skirt and held it up to dry after wringing it out over the sink because it was dripping wet from mid-thigh down. It was so funny...I took pictures. Anyways, it was a fun day, and we were still wet for a lot of it, but that's ok. I learned and wore a lot of clothing for the rest of the week. I have been comfortable for the majority of it. lol!

Anyways, I think that's about it for this week, and I know that that is really long, but I hope you enjoyed it. I sure did! And I hope that everything is going well back home, that you are having fun getting ready for Halloween. They don't really celebrate it here, so we already have Christmas decorations in the stores because they are lacking both Halloween and Thanksgiving, and it's weird to see Christmas being put out in October. But that's ok.

Anyways, I love you all to pieces, and I'll ttyl!

Love you!!!!!!!!!

Always, --Sora Karina

ps. I hope that you have a great week, Shaley and Jenna and Tam good luck in your meets and other things, Cherisse and Alley, keep having fun.
Grandma Coy I love you and hope you are well.
Grandma and Grandpa Curtis, I love you lots and lots, and everyone else too!!!