Waffles, lessons, interviews

This week was another wonderful and beautiful week in Arad. It started out last p-day. After internet we headed to G's house. Remember G? The spy, the secret service guy who knows everything, the one with whom we were caroling until after midnight on Christmas eve... yeah him... so anyway we went to his house for Waffles! He has a nice waffle iron and he decided to make waffles for the missionaries. He also had just come back from Paris and brought each of us Eiffel Tower key rings. He then walked us to the grocery store because he was "meeting someone" ...whatever that means. He managed to terrify both Sora Cook and me. G apparently thinks it's super funny to just slip into the background unnoticed and jump out and scare us when we least expect it. Probably something he learnt on the job ;)

Me and Sora Krista and Fratele Krista from our branch

Investigators... So Ramona cancelled on us this week :( Called us from a blocked number and said she'd let us know when she was free. Sora Cook and I, both rolled our eyes... typical... heard that one before, probably never see her again, BUT Ramona called us the day before yesterday and actually set up an appointment for us to come over this week! Yay!! Just goes to show, that we need to have more faith, because clearly Heavenly Father knows what He's doing! Tina is just wonderful! We had 4 lessons with her last week! She's completely ready to be baptised. She asked for a blessing this week to stop smoking. When the sister missionaries originally met with her 3 years ago she was smoking a pack a day but since then has been cutting down. For the past number of months she'd only been smoking 2 cigarettes a day, but she really wanted to stop and told her husband not to leave her any money for cigarettes anymore. The Elders came with us on Wednesday morning and gave her a blessing. It was a super spiritual and beautiful experience. And... she hasn't smoked since! She said she hasn't even had the desire to smoke. She knows that the Lord has really been helping her. She also said something really cool the other day that I keep forgetting to say. She told us that she feels as though she knows me. There’s a familiarity about me and the moment she met me she felt love in her heart. Amazing! Since her husband is still so against her baptism we've moved to the end of March and we're continually praying that his heart will be softened. We have a new investigator. He's an amazing old man, Ioan. 72 years old! He comes to English classes and last week came to church for the first time. He's been learning English for just 1 year so that he can go visit his daughter and granddaughter in England. We had an amazing lesson with him about prayer and how to recognize answers from our prayers. It was so beautiful, he told us that he feels as though he's never received an answer from a prayer and then he asked us how we know if we've received an answer. We were able to speak to him about our experiences, and share our testimonies with him, that we know that Heavenly Father will answer his prayers. 

We had interviews this week with President Hill, Sora Hill and the assistants. One sad thing we found out though, was that it's almost certain that Sora Cook will be leaving Arad :( I do not want her to leave at all! But at the same time I did kinda see it coming. She's been in Arad her whole mission.. 8 months! That's a crazy long time. Most of the Sisters seem to stay in one area 3-4 transfers. So yeah, we're almost certain that she's leaving so we've had a bit of a pity party and eaten a few too many chocolate bars.

This Saturday we have a branch Valentines Day activity. Sadly, there's no activities committee in our branch so the missionaries and Edy (our branch mission leader) end up running the activity. But we have some fun games planned, and we'll be making valentines cards and decorating cookies so it should be fun. And we're hoping to have a few investigators there, and also a few of the mai-putin active members. Fingers crossed, it should be fun.

I've been studying a lot about consecration this past week or so, the talk "Consecrate Thy Performance" by Elder Neal A. Maxwell, really helped me to understand not just the principle of consecration but also how we can apply it in our lives. Consecration isn't just about material things, it’s about humility and entirely submitting yourself to the lord. Amazing!

Anyway, that's about it for this week. Keep the Faith!

Sora Rivera