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