Wow! What a week!
Everything has completely turned upside down and changed. The week started with
a wonderful lesson with our investigator, Tina. Sora Cook and I both felt
strongly prompted to speak to her about Temples. Then when we get there and
start the lesson she goes, "I have a question, my parents died, before
they ever had a chance to be baptised, and they never really read the
scriptures much and they didn't know about the Book of Mormon, what's gona
happen to them?" We then had a beautiful lesson about temples and Eternal
Families. It was incredible to watch the tears well up in her eyes and the
smile spread across her face as we testified of the blessings that come from
the Temple. It was awesome!
 |
| Bye bye Sora Cook :( |
That night, I helped Sora Cook pack, and
I'll be honest, we were up late just sobbing and crying. I can't believe we've
only known each other since the start of December. I love her with my whole
heart. She's taught me more than I can possibly explain. The next day we had
lunch at out favourite pizza place before heading to Buch. Paula, our amazing
member from the branch, (the one I told you all about last week), she came with
us and was quite entertaining. For example, Elder Groberg has never lost a staring
contest. And Him and Paula went at it! Glaring into one another's eyes. Elder
Groberg started to tear up and his eyes were twitching, and yet, Paula, almost
by some incredible, super power, was even flinching. Sadly, Paula ended up
losing after about 4 or 5 minutes because we tried to take a picture of the
contest and the flash made her blink. Paula then walked us to the Gara to see
us off on our train. She particularly had a hard time saying good-bye to
"the blonde one" aka Elder Benson. Then our 11 hour train ride to
Bucharest began. Gosh... I'll be honest it was AWFUL! We'd bough 4 tickets... 4
seats obviously, but of course the Romanian train had no room for luggage so we
piled the suitcases onto two of the seats. We then took turns sitting on our remaining
two seats while the other two people sat of the dusty floor in the leg space.
We then played Monopoly deal and the card version of Settlers. What a strange
site we must've been! Four "Americans" squished into two tiny seats,
attempting to play card games on top of the tiny metal flip out trash can.
After 11 VERY long hours we arrived in Bucharest. The assistants met us at the
Gara and took Sora Cook and I too the one of the sisters apartments where we
got a couple hours sleep before getting up in the morning for Mission
Conference.
Thursday, Mission conference day, I finally met my new companion! Her name is Sora Drotar. She is from
Arizona, but her parents are from Romania! She kinda has a similar story to my
bestest friend, Ana. She is the youngest child in her family, the only one who
was born in the states. She was raised speaking Romanian at home. She was also
raised in a Pentecostal Romanian church, and has even been to some of the
Romanian Pentecostal Youth conferences in Sacrament CA. Cool huh?! Her brother
joined the church when she was about 17 years old and he went on a mission. His
mission made her curious about the church. Why did he need to leave? etc. One
of her sisters joined the church whilst her brother was gone, then just a year
and a half ago, she too joined the church! So yeah, she's a convert! And she's
incredible! She has an amazing testimony and it's soooo awesome to hear what
things helped her to receive a testimony. She also speaks amazing Romanian,
which is yet another thing she is teaching me. I just love her! She's got so
much courage and hope and a beautiful burning testimony and she just loves to
share it! I'm sooo blessed! I didn't really get a chance to get to know the
other new sisters, but I can't imagine them being better than my wonderful new
companion. I lucked out! Haha. I don't feel like I have much to teach her, I
think Heavenly Father just knew that I had a lot to learn from this gorgeous
girl! We went "Camera Contacting" the other day. Where we stood in
front of the Primarie, and as people walked past we'd stop them and ask them to
take a picture of us, which most of them would. We'd then say thank you and
tell them we're not from here, which always leads them to ask where we're from
and what on earth we are doing here in Romania?! Haha! Sneaky us! "Well,
we are missionaries!" Its hard because if we just try and stop people to
tell them about the church they just keep walking or yell at us, but usually
people are nice enough to take a picture for the cute little foreign girls,
which then gives us the perfect opportunity to talk to them! YAY! We found a
couple of potential investigators on Saturday through this method.
The actual mission conference was good. Elder Kent F. Richards of the 70 came and spoke to us. I definitely
felt the spirit teaching me some ways in which I can improve my missionary
work. It was really cool. Also, random cool thing, Elder Richards wanted to
interview a few missionaries in the mission, and President Hill chose me as one
of them! So I got to have an interview with him. So that was cool. I told him a
bit about my experience. I also told him what I've been learning about humility
and intentions in learning the language. So he kept going on and on and on about
how the language isn’t the most important thing, and I was like yeah I agree
it's not the most important thing, but I think it's all about your
intentions behind learning the language. I think that you need to be humble and
be willing to submit to yourself to the Lord, and desire the language simply
because it will help you to become a better servant in the hands of the Lord.
So I said that it's just something I've learnt and I'm striving for.
The last couple days are sort of a blur. Sora Drotar and I came back from Buch on a sleeper train so we got
some rest. We've been doing lots of contacting and also planning. She got to
meet Paula who took a little while to warm up to her but now thinks she's
amazing. The branch, yesterday, of course fell in love with her. The Arad
branch is completely incredible, I could never imagine them not liking a
missionary. I can't possibly express the joy I feel every Sunday as I walk in
and see Sora Mogos. She's the Relief Society president, and I can honestly say
I've never met anyone more Christ-like. Her heart is so full of love for the
people around her. When she hugs me every week, it's as though my Grandma is
giving me a big hug, as though I'm the only person in the world who matters.
She many trials in life, a lot of persecution from her family members, and yet
she continues in faith!
I'm running out of time, not really that
many funny things happened this week. Sorry to say. I saw a man walking around
carrying a bunch of pigeons... but that's not really that strange for Romania.
I love you all! Thanks for your support,
love, letters and most importantly, your prayers.
This gospel is sooo true! Keep the Faith
Sora Rivera
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