Lasgna is from Mexico

Buna Ziua! It is the most beautiful day here in Arad. About 17 degrees C with a light breeze! Gorgeous! Finally the rain and snow seemed to have moved on! Fingers crossed it'll stay this way. We're hoping to go district contacting this week in the parks. Also people are in a better mood generally and more willing to listen to our message. Sadly, the Romanians think I'm a little crazy because I stopped wearing boots and tights. Visiting and elderly woman in our branch the other day resulted in her yelling at me for not wearing tights and me being forced to put on old granny nylons! They think I'll get sick or something. It's very kind of them. They don't want me to get sick... but I'm good! And how is one supposed to tan my winter white legs whilst wearing old granny nylons... not gonna happen!

Random funny experiences of a Sora in Romania:

"What do we do if we've found a dead guy??" I blurted to Elder Adams this morning on the phone. As we walked to the piata this morning we came across a man slumped on the ground not moving and seemingly not breathing. We didn't know what to do! What if he really was dead?? What if he was just taking a nap in an awkward slumped position? "Get a long stick and poke him!" came the helpful reply. But no worries.... right as I found a long stick we saw him move, and later when we came back he'd woken up and walked away. So no worries! No dead guy! Alive... just hung over guy :)

Also... "Lasgana is from Mexico!" a member, told us yesterday. My Italian companion burst into a fit of giggles and I was speechless. Really??? Lasgna??? Mexican??! Oh my life! Whatever next!

Sometimes as we travel to peoples' homes we can't help but laugh at our sometimes-ridiculous journeys! We think of missionaries in other missions driving to their appointments. What do they need to worry about?? Oh too many red lights?! Hahaha. A family in our branch with whom we've started to work, live in an area of the city without Tramvais. So what we do is take a tramvai to the Train station then walk across the train tracks and up the rocky banks, under the bridge and across the dirt road, then down the street and behind a random church until the maze of blocks where they live. It's very entertaining and we took a few pictures so I'll try to include them! :) Speaking of this family! They're so incredible! They are a part-member family. Just the Mother, Mihaella is a member. They're very poor. Two parents and 3 kids living in a tiny one-room apartment.  I'm completely in love with them! They're so sweet and beautiful and humble. We're going over for Family Home Evening and I can't wait! The kids are just the cutest things! Alexandra is 10, Sebi is 9 and then there's a baby Larissa who is nearly a year old. I can't express how much I adore them! And they adore us. We had a lesson with the 10 year old, Alexandra, yesterday about baptism and what it means to be baptised. She told us she wants to go to church but she doesn't want to be baptised. We told her that it was her decision, nobody would force her, but we just wanted to understand why not? "I'm not ready" she said. "I don't want to repent". What kind of 10 year says they don't want to repent? They're not ready??? I was really shocked and I looked at her little brown eyes. I'd heard the kids teasing her as we arrived "Pocaita! Pocaita!" They teased. It's literally translates to "Repenter!" It's the name they call people who leave the Orthodox church. I asked her if she knew what repentance means and she said "no, but I don't want to do it". She was so cute and innocent, and my heart broke as I realized that it was just because of the teasing, the ignorance of people making "repentance" into something negative instead of beautiful. She still loves us and wants to keep having lessons, and we want to start working with the entire family. We're definitely going to have a lesson as to what repentance really means. I know the Lord has a lot in store for this beautiful family and for that gorgeous little girl. I hope and pray that I can see a part of it.

Anyway, there's not too much else to report! I love you and I'll try and send more pictures soon. Keep the faith!

Sora Rivera

Peoples

Sora DeRuvo and I

I think one of my favourite parts of being a missionary is meeting people and learning from people. This includes companions, other missionaries, members, investigators, people on the street, neighbours. Everyone. There's a quote which Elder Neal A. Maxwell quoted in his talk, 'Brim with Joy' (which I highly recommend by the way), "How much larger would your life be if [you] could become smaller in it... You would begin to be interested in [others]. You would break out of this tiny...theatre in which your own plot is always being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers." I've started to skim the surface of what this means here on my mission. There are people that affect your life, some if large ways such as a companion, or an investigator, some are small ways but still powerful. I love it. I wanted to tell you about some of the "people" of my life, here in Arad. There's piata lady, a tall woman with dyed blonde hair and little glasses. She always gives us an extra apple or a bunch of grapes for free. Her simple acts of generosity are so sweet. I love her. Then there's our bakery lady. She's very pretty and speaks a little English. "Hello Hello!" She exclaims as we walk in, to buy yet another one of her delicious apple cakes. "Try Try!" she says as she pulls out her latest dessert, for us to taste for free. Our neighbour, Alexander, is one of my favourites. He stands outside in the morning smoking a cigarette. He tells us "don't hurry! Don’t hurry!" I guess he's watched us sprint for the Tramvai far too many times, but he's so cute and always watching out for us. Our building's cleaning lady, is another one of my favourites. She's a super old baba with the headscarf wrapped around her white hair that she's dyed bright red. She has thick glasses which exaggerate that she's slightly cross eyed. She always wishes us good morning and health and a good day, and tells us not to work too hard. She also always checks to make sure we're dressed warm enough. It's amazing how I can be so far away from home and family and yet I've found my own little Arad family here. Everywhere I go there are kind people, people willing to listen to this poor little English girl attempt to speak Romanian, Taxi drivers always give us advice to stay away from certain parts of town, and even the cute little street dogs sometimes follow me around and wag their tails as if to say "Yeah! Good job Sora!" I love being a missionary.

Caught in a shower

This week I received my new companion. Yet another "daughter" haha. Technically I think I'm considered her "trainer" but honestly I've never met someone so prepared to be a missionary. Her name is Sora DeRuvo from near Milan, Italy. She is 21 years old, was born and raised in the church. She's so cool! We've been having so much fun together. We laugh about everything. She speaks excellent English and she also speaks Romanian very well. Luckily because Italian and Romanian are similar she has a little bit of an advantage, also because she's already learnt English so she knows good techniques as to how to learn a new language. We have been having a great time, finding people, contacting for English Classes, and teaching. She actually started her mission in the Rome mission so she's already served a bit of a mission, then she went to the MTC and now she's here so it's cool that she has some experience for me to learn from. Funny, random fact, apparently Italians also believe in "current". Let me explain for those of you who don't know. "Current" is when there's a draft of air, when more than one window is open, or a door and a window are open and there's a gust of air flowing through. They believe that this air makes you sick, or will cause pain or will make your teeth fall out. Apparently, Italians have the same thing except they call is a "hit of air". In district meeting the other day we discovered that Sora DeRuvo believe in it! Heeheee. She knows that we don't believe in it and all of us were laughing so hard as she tried to make her case for it and rolled her eyes as we all didn't believe her. Oh I forgot to say... my whole district is now new too. Elder Speth and Elder Groberg left and now we have Elder Adams from Idaho, and Elder Taylor from California. Elder Taylor has served here in Arad before so he's returning, the branch were really happy to see him back.

Transfers were super fun this last week too. Sora Kelly and I had to say good bye which was heartbreaking! I love that girl sooo much and I really hope and pray we can be companions again sometime soon. She's going to kick butt in Bucarest though. I also got to see Sora Cook! YAAAY! It was awesome! I love that girl! She looked all beautiful at 6am as we got into Buch after travelling all night. Of course, after a 14 hour journey she still looked amazing. I also got to spend the morning with Sora Macdonald! Oh I just adore far too many of the missionaries in this mission. Sora Hill always talks about how incredible the missionaries in this mission are. It's so true. Sora DeRuvo having served also in the Rome mission agrees, she can't believe how amazing the people here are. It' incredible to serve with these people and learn from their experiences and amazing personalities.

In other news... Tina came to Church! Yay!! It was super cool to see her there. Sadly she didn't stay for the whole time but it was honestly just incredible that she came at all! YAY! She looked so bright and happy as she sat in sacrament meeting and all the members were super welcoming. We've changed her baptismal date to the 5th of April, so lots of prayers, faith and hope will be needed for it to go through. She's spoken to her husband about the baptism and he didn't say no this time. He said it was her choice. She said he kinda changes his mind day by day, but that's better than the outright NO he used to give, so yaaaaaaaaay! Little miracles are happening and big changes are on the way.

I love you all! thank you for your prayers and support and your letters. I love and appreciate you

Keep the Faith! This work is truly great and marvelous!

va pup

Sora Rivera

One Year Older and Wiser Too

Servus familia mea! Thank you all for the birthday messages! My birthday was a really great day. The night before, Sora and I made a peach and apple crumble. It was going to be just peach crumble but we rand out of peaches so added apple. So then we brought the crumble to District meeting Thursday. The Elders also brought hot chocolate and marshmallows and they'd brought me a cute photo frame for my desk. It was super fun and the crumble was delicious! The primary song says "one year older and wiser too!" I dunno if that's really true. I'm learning so much every day here, but the more I learn the more I realize how much more I have to grow and continue learning. But I'm grateful for the Lord's patience with me. Random side note... I'm really enjoying having an Italian companion, she's not only funny, and beautiful and a great missionary... but an amaaazing cook! YAY! She has a wonderful talent of turning boring food into amazing delicious creations! Nom nom nom...

Update on investigators... Well, very sadly Tina was not baptized this past week. We didn't even meet with her once last week, sadly she kept cancelling. Her husband has said she can come to church but is now being difficult about letting us come over. But we fasted for them yesterday and we have plans to meet with them both this week and hopefully things will go smoother. But on a positive note, we have a new investigator. Her name is Roxi and she is 15 years old. She is a friend of a family in our branch. She's sweet but very shy. We taught her the restoration and she's been reading from the Book of Mormon. It's funny because she's so shy and during the lessons seems a little uninterested, but on Friday we asked her is she wanted to know more and keep learning and immediately she had a big smile and nodded and said "Da!" (yes). So that's good.

Also... more tender mercies. So in some cities the English program is huge, and they have about 80+ people come to English. Sadly, the location of the Arad church makes it very difficult for English to function. It's nowhere near the center of the city and it's actually in a bad part of town. As a result in the past, the most people I've ever seen at English is 6 people. But this past week we had 11 new people at English! 11!! Okay... for some cities that'd be bad, but it's amazing for us. The Elders actually started teaching a couple in the class, and we have lessons set up with 2 more people from English for this coming week! Yay! Tender mercy from the Lord. I actually love teaching English. It's super fun. 

Zone Conference... This past week, Wednesday was Zone Conference. I love love loved it! :) It was super fun to be with a bunch of missionaries and learn from one another. There was an amazing presentation about giving baptismal invitations in the first lesson, and also about how to re-focus ourselves on our purpose. I really feel like I learnt a lot. Sometimes in these training type meetings I stress myself out. I get really overwhelmed and just see the ridiculous number of things I have to work on. I also imagine for myself a "cookie-cutter" style missionary. As though there is a perfect missionary and we should all be striving to become that missionary. But the truth is that the "cookiecutter" missionary doesn't exist. We each have different talents and strengths and personalities. We can all improve but we have different things to work on, and we should never forget the talents and blessings with which the Lord has blessed us. Sometimes, I forget this, it seems simple but it's easy for me to put too much pressure on myself and forget that the Lord has placed me... Jessi Rivera... here in Arad, Romania. If he wanted a "perfect" missionary, he wouldn't have picked me. But I desired to serve Him, so for this time, He is allowing me to grow, and learn and work for Him.

General Conference was wonderful wasn’t it?? I got to watch 2 of the sessions in Romanian. Wow... it made me realize how much I need to work on in terms of my language skills but I was also impressed at how much I got out of it despite not always understanding every word. I really felt the Spirit and I felt the Lord showing to me different ways in which I can improve. I especially loved the prophet’s talk on Obedience. I'm so grateful that we have a living prophet to guide us today. It completely makes sense that the Lord has given us a prophet. The Lord is the same yesterday, today and forever, he's always used prophets, and he continues to use them today.

I love this work! I love this Gospel and I LOVE being a missionary!

Keep the Faith

Sora Rivera

On the Up

As a warning... this email may seem a little all over the place. My brain is currently in that blaaah all over the place mood. It's possible because all I've eaten is 2 bars of chocolate today... but anyhoo...

Tina came to church again! And guess what?? I met her husband! This is a huge break through! The husband didn’t want her to stay for more than just the first hour, so after sacrament meeting Tina met with our branch president so that he could get to know her a bit. And then she hurried outside. Perfect! I thought! Her husband was clomping to pick her up. So I ran outside just in time to see a taxi pull up and a giant man step out of the back. "this is Miki!" Tina said, "And Miki, these are my beautiful girls!" He was very friendly and we shook hands and he had a great big smile on his face as we told him how much we love Tina. It was so cool! We were actually able to meet him. And... Tina has invited us over to have a lesson with the two of them tomorrow where we're going to speak about her baptism and ask for his permission for her to be baptised this weekend! I have prayed long and hard about this. I've poured my soul out to God on behalf of Tina, and I know that the Lord is in control. He knows and loves Tina and He has a plan for her. I sincerely hope and pray that His plan incudes her baptism this Friday, but if not I will have patience and faith in Him and His perfect timing.

Us with a dead cat

English classes... English has started up again. Sora DeRuvo and I went block knocking, contacting and we did just about everything we could possibly think of to raise awareness of the English classes and to invite people. And... we had a nice size class. 8 people came! Okay, I can hear the chuckles, for most cities, 8 people is a terrible turn out for English. Iasi, Cluji and Timi tend to get about 80-100 people... but 8 people for Arad is excellent! Go us! Last time, the most we ever got was 5 people and that only happened once. So 8 is a decent number and it was the Catholic Easter on the weekend and more people have promised to come next week. YAY! English is one of the largest sources of finding people in this mission. It's cool because we start and end each class with a prayer, and then at the end we have a spiritual thought and people are often naturally curious. Half the members in this country were found through English classes. We already have 2 potential investigators through just the first class. Yay! Things are looking up!

Random Baba wandered into the photo

Familia Sofroni... so my favourite family in the branch are this cute family called the Sofronis. Sadly, they want to move to England and Dani, the Dad, has already moved and is looking for work there. But on the bright side they want help learning English so twice a week my companion and I have been going to their house to teach them English. And, even cooler, they invite friends and neighbours over to learn English, and then afterwards we share a spiritual thought. So currently they have a 15 year old girl staying with them. Her name is Roxi, and sadly she's married to Sora Sofroni's 20 year old nephew and she's possibly pregnant.... but anyhoo, every time we've gone over, Roxi has been quite uninterested and quiet. She'll sit through the English lesson, and look around and play with her hair during the Spiritual thought. We gave her, her own book of Mormon, and tried to commit her to read a chapter and pray about it. She did not keep the commitment and still seemed very uninterested. Then on Saturday we had an English lesson and Roxi actually participated quite a bit. Then afterwards we read the chapter she was supposed to have read the Book of Mormon (Alma 32) and we talked about its message of Faith. I then shared my testimony of the power of the Book of Mormon to change lives and to bring us closer to Christ. She listened but still didn’t seem too interested. But I was speaking to Laura, the 9 year old daughter of the family yesterday at Church, and she told me that Roxi actually read 2 chapters of the Book of Mormon by herself on Saturday night after we left! Amazing! Shows how much I know! The Spirit was working the whole time and she's starting to grow in her faith. We're hoping to speak about the First Vision and Joseph Smith next lesson. I love being a missionary and getting to watch the Spirit work in people's lives.

Last week we also had Zone Training meeting, which is at the start of every transfer. Sadly it was snowing super bad and Sora DeRuvo and I had been all the way out at Tina's house. Then because of the snow the Tramvais were late. The meeting started at 12pm and it was 1158 by the time the Tramvai came. We ran to the church and were about 20 minutes late! Ugh! So embarrassing. We ran in dripping wet to see the entire zone of missionaries, and the assistants, sat pleasantly around a big table. So embarrassing. Everyone then teased us since they'd all come from other cities and yet the only two people who were late were the two sisters who actually live in Arad... ugh typical! Silly weather! I'm sick of this snow and rain! Bring on spring and summer!

Anyway I love you all and I love Romania and I love being a missionary. This church is true. Our Lord and Saviour restored his true Church through Joseph Smith. I know God lives and I know he loves us. Happy Catholic Calendar Easter! (It's not Easter here until May 5th, because we go by the Orthodox calendar)

Love Sora Rivera