Blessings Blessings Blessings!

On the scale of 1 to freakin' awesome... how is Constanta? Well I'd have to put it up there with the freakin' awesome :D. I just love it so much here! We've been so blessed here and the blessings are continuing to pour in! As I told you all last week, we go running every morning along the beach. The weather is starting to get very hot, so even by 6.30 a.m. as we start our run it's usually very warm. Some days we get extra lucky and there is a sea breeze to cool us off.

For the past two weeks we've been English contacting like crazy!! Every opportunity we had, we were talking to people, inviting them and committing them to come to English. And it really paid off! The Lord blessed us so much! There were 33 people at our first English class! So many people that we had to split them into 3 separate classes. A lot of people become acquainted with the church through the English program. So it was amazing to have so many new people in the church building. We even had a few of the families, which we'd met in the park come. On Saturday, the numbers for English dropped a little but we still had a good size. Sora Caruso and I are teaching the Medium class. There was this family in the medium class. A mum, dad and little 8 year old boy named Andre. Andre was just the cutest thing! We were teaching them about Auxiliaries and how to make a question in any tense. And he really understood it well and by the end was doing it perfect. We're hoping that we'll be able to set up a gospel lesson with them next week.

We love puppies

Our beautiful investigator Andreea is doing fantastic as usual. We'd asked her to pray about a baptismal date and she did. She's decided that she wants to wait until after the summer, in September. She told us she will definitely be baptised but she wants to wait. Now, normally this would send red warning flags of doubt through my mind, but knowing Andreea and how determined she is I really believe that she will be baptised then. She has a job this summer and isn't sure how often she'll be able to come to church because she might be working on Sundays, and she told us that she doesn't want to be baptised and then have to break the Sabbath day. As she explained this to us, I had a really good feeling. We had the lesson at Mariana's house. Mariana is the branch president's wife and basically the coolest person I've ever met! Andreea really loves and looks up to her. Andreea and her sister Elena, who is a recent convert, spend a lot of time with Mariana and she is constantly teaching and strengthening them. We always have to be super creative with our lessons with Andreea because she seriously knows all of the material perfectly, since she's been attending institute twice a week and church every week for the past several months. She's a really committed person and is really coming to know the Saviour. I'm so grateful that I have this opportunity to witness her conversion process. Sora and I were joking around though, that Andreea is really Mariana's investigator instead of ours. Which, is the way it should be! The members need to fellowship and love people because they're the ones who'll stay, the missionaries will sadly leave in just a few short months. I am hoping though, that I'll get to stay in Constanta until September to witness her baptism.

Yet another blessing this past week was to have a lesson with another 19 year old girl, Alina. We do 30 minutes of English lesson with her and then 30 minutes of Gospel lesson. She is unbelievabley sharp! She understood everything in both lessons instantly. We talked to her about what the restoration of the gospel means and what it means if the Book of Mormon really is the word of God, and she understood it perfectly. I wondered if it was one of my MTC teachers just pretending to be the investigator. She understood everything and agreed to read a chapter of the Book of Mormon and pray about it. She also agreed to a soft baptismal commitment. She is a lot like Andreea in many ways. Very smart, kind and determined. Elena will be coming to our next lesson with Alina too. I can see Elena, Andreea and Alina all being really good friends. I love working with the YSA in this branch. It's amazing!

RANDOM moment of the week... Remember that one time I gave my companion a black eye. Haha... okay joke, we don't really know if it was me. But last Friday we were playing ultimate Frisbee and Sora and I accidentally collided really hard and now she has a black eye. She also ran into some other people too and the branch president Alin is super competitive and plays pretty rough so it's possible that it wasn't me. It's not bad at all really just a little bruised, but still kinda random.

Okay well that's all for now. I love you all! Thanks for your prayers and support and loves and stuffs.

va pup

Sora Rivera