Easter in Constanta

Hristos a inviat! Adevarat a inviat! Because of the Orthodox Christian calendar, Easter, was celebrated this past weekend in Romania. This is the greeting said here for 40 days after Easter. It means "Christ has risen! Indeed he has risen!" Beautiful right? I love it. So anyway, because of Easter I wasn’t able to email on Monday because everything was shut including the library and the internet cafe. So I got permission and am emailing now.

So I'm in Constanta!!! Pronounced (con-stahn-zah). As I described last week, it is in the far south east of Romania right on the black sea. Our apartment here is beautiful! It's about 5 times the size of our little dinky mold-filled apartment in Arad. It's a beachfront apartment. The windows look out eastward across the black sea. Every morning we are awakened to the beautiful sunrise streaming in through the windows. This computer can't send photos but I promise next week to send a few. It's breath-takingly beautiful. Every morning I'm more and more amazed at how blessed I am to be a missionary here in Romania, especially here in Con

stanta. Also, Sora and I have been running along the beach every single morning! What an amazing way to work out?!

Sora Anna Caruso, from North Carolina, is my new companion. This is her third transfer, so she's been out in the country a little under 3months. She's suuuuper cool! I completely adore her. She's a real go-getter! Super passionate about missionary work and we have a similar work ethic so immediately we clicked. She's far better at Romanian than she gives herself credit. She's completely amazing at everything she does! I'll make her wave hello when I Skype you guys this weekend.

Sora DeRuvo and I went to Buch last week and I was very pleased to receive a huge ton of mail from my birthday! Thank you sooo much to everyone who has written! I will write back as soon as I can. Thank you for the packages from family and also the one from my friends! You're all amazing!!! You should also know that the "Magic 8 ball" in the birthday package from my BYU friends, kept about 30 missionaries thoroughly entertained for about 45 minutes. WIN! Wednesday night Sora Caruso and I and our elders went back to Constanta. The Elders are Elder Cobabe from Sacramento Area California (yes we know loads of the same people, in fact Debbie Werden was his Seminary teacher), and Elder Collison, a brand new missionary fresh from MTC, from Michigan. In our district we also have a senior couple. The Powells from Utah. This is their second mission. They first served in Mongolia, and then their second mission call was to Brazil. They then spent 8 months learning Portuguese as they waited for visas, which never came. Then one Saturday they get a phone call from Salt Lake informing them that they are leaving for Romania in 3 days time; their mission call had been changed. So They arrived in Romania about a month ago without knowing a single word of Romanian. They're super awesome though and thankfully a few of the members in the branch speak English and have been helping them out. Sora Caruso and I have also started making them note cards of useful words and phrases and how to pronounce them.

The branch here in Constanta is so legit! The branch President, Alin, and his wife, Mariana, are some of the most incredible people I've ever met. They both speak perfect English, in fact, Alin served his mission in Manchester, England. Mariana actually speaks 5 languages perfectly and Alin works as a translator for the church, and they have an adorable 2 year old girl Eva. Constanta is also amazing because they have a YSA. There is the recent convert, Elena, who is 19 and one of the most beautiful people I've ever met. She has a light in her eyes and she is completely bursting with love for others. Her sister, Andreea, is 18, she's our only progressing investigator right now. She too, is absolutely amazing. She wants to get baptised but is worried that her summer job will stop her from coming to church. We're praying that she'll be able to get sundays off, or find another job. She's also a little worried that her mother would kick her out of the house, but the good thing is that even though the mother wasn't super keen on Elena's baptism, it didn't really cause any problems either. So Andreea is amazing, coming to church, reading the Book of Mormon etc. There’s also Anca, and Gabi, and Mihai in the YSA. We have sports night every friday where we all meet at the park and usually play ultimate frisbee or something like that. It's super fun to have such a strong YSA presence. We're really blessed.

Our English classes start next week so we've been contacting like crazy! We're really hoping to get a big class. Sora and I will be teaching the advanced this time round. I've never taught advanced so I'm hoping it'll go okay.

Easter in Romania is a big deal! I'm talking banks close, families gather, massive amounts of food. It's bigger than Christmas. On Saturday night we all had permission to go to an orthodox midnight mass. So at 11.30pm the whole district we to one of the orthodox churches. Everyone waits outside holding candles until midnight when the Priest who has a candle with fire "from Jerusalem" begins lighting candles. Everyone then lights one another’s' candles and then the priests sing verses from the Bible about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was a very beautiful experience. I was definitely able to admire the faith that these people have in the light that they've been given. My heart was also filled with love for them as I so wished I could help them come to know Christ truly and fully through the restored Gospel. Sunday during the day we feasted on Sarmale at a member's house and then spent the afternoon contacting in the park. Most people didn't really want to talk to us, but that's okay! Sora and I still managed to have fun! Yet another thing I love about our companionship, we can get rejected all day and still smile and laugh and love it here!

Almost everyday either Sora or I will turn to the other and say "Sora! Can you believe it?! We're missionaries... in Romania! ...in Constanta! ...Look at our name tags! How amazing?!" And it really is... Amazing!

Keep the Faith!

Sora Rivera