Week 3

BUNA!!!!!!! :D Isn't my Romanian improving? :P So the amazing and wonderful district left on Monday at 5am to fly to Romania. I miss them soooo much!! I completely fell in love with that district. They have some amazing gifts and every single one of them taught me something different and brought me to Christ. Most of all I miss Sora Macdonald who was a gift from God!! I love her sooo much and I totally cried saying goodbye to her, we hope to serve together later in our missions but chances are we'll be training all the new missionaries. Apparently within the first two weeks after conference the amount of missionary applications per week increased by 471% They are expecting to have to open about 30 new missions next year!! How insane is that?!!! It's so exciting to be involved, right now as the Lord is hastening His work!! :D and I can truly testify that it is His work, His glory. I watched a fantastic video of a Devotional Elder Holland gave to the MTC a few years ago. It was a pounding pulpit vigorous talk, about how this is His work. He was also really funny and said how his wife's Avon lady is more persistent then some missionaries, and she’s just selling makeup. You'd think people teaching of salvation and eternal happiness could be a little more persistent than an Avon lady ha-ha. Funny image but so true! We have the best message of all, and that's why we’re bothering to leave our families for 18-24 months. If this gospel weren’t true, if I didn't know without any doubt that this is the one true church... well honestly I wouldn't have bothered coming. But I do know... so I'm here, and I'm loving it!

So since Sora left I had to have a new companion, so I was technically assigned to be with the girls in my room. They’re all going to visitors centers. Sister Stobbe is from uuummm somewhere in UT I think, I don’t remember and Sister Coplan is from Arizona. They’re both really nice. They’re my official on paper companions but that will change in a couple days because we have such different schedules starting next week because they start their visitor center training, The Swedish girls have the same schedule as me so they’ve been my adopted companions. Sister Kirsa Merril, from UT, going to Sweden... is so awesome! We’ve been friends for years and she went to Romania on the BYU internship so its great to hang out with her a lot, and her companion is Sister Robbins who is also from Utah and going to Sweden and she's really great too. Since we have class in the same building and we live just down the hall from one another they’ve been dropping me off at class and taking me to meals. It's nice not to be completely alone but I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss Sora like crazy, or my amazing district.

Elder Criscenti and I are doing well. We committed Gheorghe to a baptismal date. It was super exciting and our Romanian is improving and our teaching skills are improving. And although they’re not real investigators, they’re just our teachers pretending to be investigators it still feels real, we pray for them we plan for them we study the scriptures to find answers to their questions. We love them so much and they are real people, our teachers pretend to be investigators that they themselves taught when they were in Romania, so it'll be cool to meet these people when we get there, and see how accurate our teachers were ha-ha.

Elder C and I have a funny way of communicating, now that our Romanian is getting better we pretty much speak Romanian 100% of the time, in most classes according to our teachers they have parts of the lesson in English, just general study of the gospel, but they cant do that with us so it's cool to be progressing so well. But yeah its funny because I understand Elder C really well, now, even our teacher sometimes are like WHAT?? and have no idea what he’s saying cos they cant tell if he’s trying to speak rom, Italian or English, (usually its a mix) but I usually translate, and I've learnt to pick up on a few Italian phrases that he always says ha-ha.

My teachers are so amazing!! I could never survive the MTC without them. Especially since Sora left on Monday it was really hard but I had Sora Whiting that afternoon and then I've now started teaching a new investigator with one of the teachers Sora Wilson as my companion. Since the other district left, and the new district doesn’t come for another 3 weeks, these next 3 weeks, we get all 7 teachers!!! :D So Sora Wilson and I teach together some afternoons and Fratele Frandsen teaches with Elder C. The one problem with having a teacher as your companion is pretty much that  I end up teaching the whole lesson and she just bares her testimony at the end, or jumps in if I get into trouble. Like the other day I was teaching a guy to pray (the guy was Fratele Frandsen) and I taught him about the importance, bore my testimony and asked him to try. But apparently I'd forgotten to tell him to pray out loud because we knelt down and I just sat there hearing nothing until I looked up and he goes "Amin!" and smiled and in Romanian said "did I do okay???!" with a big smile on his face. Ha-ha but I hadn’t yet learnt the phrase "speak out loud" so I just starred horrified at Sora Wilson who came to my rescue. hahaha Fratele Frandsen did it on purpose cos he knew that I hadn't learnt it, but apparently that'll happen all the time in Romania unless I specify "Cu glas tare"  haha. ooops!

Also I was teaching Fratele Vizante (who is a real Romanian...yes that’s right straight from Romania!!) and I always get nervous teaching him because he speaks super super fast and uses grammar I've never heard haha, and I was teaching him to pray. I had said my testimony and showed him how and done everything right then I asked him if he'd try and he said No thanks, I don't want to" and he told me afterwards that apparently I looked like a deer in the headlights I was so shocked and surprised. Hahaha, but I talked him into it eventually and he gave a beautiful prayer haha, he just likes to make fun of me for being so scared haha. Oh interesting fact about Fratele Vizante... he served his mission in London South! He served in East Grinstead actually. He'll sometimes tell me stuff he misses about England.. mostly being Malteasers hahahah :D

Anyway I'm out of time, but I love you all and I promise I'm slowly working on replies to letters. Thanks you for your love and support and your prayers. One wonderful thing about the MTC is that you pray constantly, I haven’t even been able to count the number of times I pray... all day everyday pretty much, and all in Romanian haha :) but I pray for you :)

Oh I have a scripture you all need to look up Alma 26:11-12 :D I want to be a missionary like Ammon.

Keep the faith!! va iubesc

Sora Rivera