This is my companion, Sora Staley and I - she is amazing I love her so much. She's acutally taller than I am, but it was cold on the top of the "mountain" which is like a hill to us, but it took a good hike, and it was so pretty.
The one of the baptism is Casia with her dad who baptized her and her mom...the dad is the branch president here. we have about 8-15 members who come to church depending on the week, and the leadership is shaky, but it's getting better. Ps. I love this family they are so amazing.
Hi family and all the people I love so much! How are you? I'm doing great.
This week was good, but everything that happened was only possible because of things Heavenly Father did. And He made sure that we knew it was only possible through Him. We actually had 17 lessons set up for this past week (not all from contacts, but still a decent amount) we had 8 lessons total, but only 4 of them were from the original 17 and only 3 of the 4 were non-members. It was amazing.
Some other amazing miracles - we had planned to take the bus to the church, and we have a copy of the schedule, but when we got to the stop, the bus didn't come. With the bus it takes 10 minutes to get to the church, without it, it takes usually 45 minutes to walk. We had 20 minutes to get to church on time once we realized that the bus wasn't coming and the next bus wouldn't get there for 25 more minutes, so we started walking as fast as we could. We got to the church exactly in 20 minutes. I know it's good to be early, and we were sad that we couldn't be, but it was amazing that we took the same amount of paces as usual, but with 25 minutes less time than it has alway taken before, and it was definitely something to be grateful for. One of the many tender mercies from the Lord.
Another tender mercy is that we found 3 new investigators this week, and they are all really amazing people, really willing to learn, understanding what we say, and the Spirit has been so strong lately. I am blown away at the way that the Lord can put His hand in our actions and change everything - someone who looks annoyed when we first talk to them leaves after telling us to call them in 2 days so that we can meet. After a day full of bungs and nothing working out, everything falling through. But just because we won't go home early, the Lord places someone in our path, or leads us to a block where the door is open so that we can go and find someone who was just about to leave to go somewhere and now all of a sudden they want to talk. Or with Maria, we were talking to her at her door, and you could tell that she didn't know why she was letting us in, but she did and was confused by it that she tried to give it purpose by giving us a mini tour around her house and showing us things. Then we taught her the restoration, and she was excited for us to come back (we're going there tonight) and it truly is by small and simple things that we can see the miracles in the larger scope of God's eternal perspective in this work. It was really fun.
So that was my week. Everything is going really well. A crazy person story...we talked to a lady at a bus stop, and after trying to testify, we ended up just listening to her talk about how it's a sin to wear makeup, its a sin to use product in your hair, it's a sin to wear pants (which she was wearing and used her pants as an example of that sin) and said that she wishes she could be muslim because they are the ones who please God. We tried saying that we are all God's children and He is pleased with us when we keep His commandments and such, but she would not listen, saying "no no, I'm a sinner...see these pants? and you are sinners too. Please don't get mad, but I have to tell you you are sinning. Just look at your face. That stuff on it is not pleasing to God." We finally just looked at each other, left, and laughed the whole way home. Later that night Sora Staley washed her face and came up to me and said "look sora! I'm not sinning anymore!" and we laughed some more.
Another funny story, Elder Bernier (an elder from my MTC group that i'm serving with right now in Sibiu) his mom googled his name and she found my blog because of it! Funny.
But other than that we are working hard, we are having fun - we actually had one sister stay for Relief Society this past sunday, so that's progress right there! The Lord is helping us in this work, and it is His work, and I am so happy that I can be a part of it here in Romania.
Well, I love you all so so very very much, and I'll write next week! Love always, --Sora Karina
ps. Assistants acum sunt Elder Anderson si Elder Collier - te iubesc mult si ai o zi buna!!!
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