Many are called, but few are Frozen

(I have to give credit to the subject title of this email to Elder Danielson, one of the Russian elders in Orhei. It was far too witty not to use :D)

 

Many are called, but few are frozen

IASI

So last week, we went to Iasi again. We got to go visit the wonderful Soras Kelly and Hovey. Sora Kelly and I got to catch up a bit and it was just so much fun! I love Iasi. I went on the exchange with Sora Hovey who is only in her second transfer but totally rocking it! It was pretty funny, because she really wanted to work on Survey contacting and being able to do the whole thing by herself. So I was like, great! Go contact that guy, and just to warn you, I won't say anything. She did wonderfully, contacting the man, starting it, asking him the survey questions and then he said something and she panicked and looked at me, as promised I just stayed silent and smiled, and she totally rocked it! She testified to him and spoke wonderful Romanian! :D I love being a sister training leader just for moments like that! :D

English Classes

They started... and yaaaaaaaaaaaay we got tons of people! We've already started having gospel lessons with a few students too, and so have the elders, so that's been a real booster especially during the cold weather

BLIZZARD!

Sooooo, a huge massive blizzard hit Romania. I've never seen so much snow in all my life and it just wouldn't stop snowing! All day Friday, Saturday and Sunday it just snowed and snowed!. Our lovely boboc, Elder Daland from southern California was kinda freaking out haha.

on exchanges with Sora Bischoff in Orhei, Moldova

SUNDAY 

...was the craziest day, so as I said it was snowing like crazy, but we had stuff to do at the church early, so we trudged through the storm leaving at 8am and we arrived after about an hour at the chapel. The elders were already, hopelessly trying to shovel the car park. Slujba started at 10 went until 1pm, when we had a lesson with a new investigator (which went super well btw). Then we met with Elena to help her with her English school work, then we were running late for our interviews with President and the assistants, so despite having still not packed to leave to Moldova we ran across the city to the office for interviews, but because of the snow it took forever and we were suuuper late. We ran in, had a really quick interview, then the office elders drove us to our apartment so we could pack and get to the gara to catch our train. On the way home I warned Elder Phelps that our road was blocked with snow so just to wait for us on the main road... but no, his ego made him think he could get the little car through... so of course it got stuck. They then spent the next 30 minutes digging the car out of the snow while we packed and grabbed food for the trip. In the end we got to the gara and made our train. 

Suuuper cute old lady in our branch, Sora Simonescu, she reminds me of grandma, I just love her! :D - 

MOLDOVA

On the Sleeper train to Moldova

Sadly because of the snow, the typical 14 hour journey to Moldova was made even longer: 18 hours later we arrived in Chisinau, with barely enough time to shower, change and eat before we caught a maxi taxi to Orhei for our exchange up there. Which by the way was a very unpleasant maxi taxi. It was jam packed. Luckily I had a seat but unfortunately the guy whose butt was in my face had eaten to many brussel sprouts or something, so I was tortured with awful smells for the following 45 minutes ugh. 

ORHEI was great! Sora Caruso and Sora Bischoff are rocking that cute little city! Their DL Elder Danielson, taught me how to bare a short testimony in Russian, so I'm super pumped about that! And Sora Bischoff and I had fun block knocking and talking about life! 

CHISINAU was also wonderful. The day after orhei we went back to Chisinau on a better smelling maxi taxi. I went on exchanged with Sora Case and Sora went with Sora Bynum. Sora Case and I went to visit one of the members. It was super cool because her first language was actually Russian instead of Romanian. Ah, I just love Moldova, and Russian, and the Romanian/Russian combination everywhere :) I'm so glad I got to go visit again.

in the elevator, about to brave the blizzard!

JOURNEY BACK TO BUCHAREST

The journey back to Bucharest was only 16 hours this time. We left Wednesday afternoon and got back late this morning. However, about 5 minutes away from pulling into the gara the train got stuck because of the snow. We sat there for 45 minutes... Sora and I were going crazy! Then this guy is like, you can either wait or if you want you can climb out here and walk. We were the second people off the train! We jumped down into the snow, which was now reaching our thighs and got a great workout as we attempted to walk through the snow to the gara. In the end we made it back safe and sound!

Yaay! So that was my crazy week. It was great! And we're excited to head to Craiova next week. And maybe if we're in Buch for longer than 3 days we'll be able to actually meet with these new people from English :) 

Love you all, keep the faith!

Sora Rivera

сестра pивера

p.s. I saw frozen again :D (it was a treat from President since Romania and Moldova are frozen haha)

Oo de lally, Oo de lally golly what a week!

Guitar contacting

I feel like we English contacted nonstop... which we did. We tried every different form of English contacting that we could possibly think of, including guitar, chalk, flyers, posters, bloc knocking... everything! We've been getting lots of phone calls so hopefully we'll have a ton of new people at English tomorrow and we'll be able to find some people who are also interested in the gospel. 

We met with Elena on Saturday which was wonderful. I just love that girl. We're going to start doing language study with her every Saturday like we used to in Constanta! :D yaaay

Casa Poporului

Okay... so the real story of the week was on Saturday....

We were putting up English posters, walking down a street we've walked many many times. Sora was holding the posters and I was tapping. As we walked, I noticed a man following us. I had an uneasy feeling and said to Sora that we should keep walking, instead of stopping to put up a poster. Just as we turned away from the guy, he suddenly broke out into a full sprint and started yelling and screaming at the top of his lungs. We immediately grabbed onto one another and we both had the feeling just to stay calm, ignore him and keep walking. He ran all the way down the street until he was just behind us. He yelled and screamed at the top of his lungs, asking why we looked at him, why we wouldn't talk to him, and something about people and boys and I have no idea. Naturally we were terrified. He was inches from us, screaming and waving his arms! For some reason I felt that we should pretend to not understand him. I told him in English that we don't speak Romanian. He backed off a little, long enough for me to grab the phone. I called the Zone Leaders. Elder Hokkanen answered. All the meanwhile the guy followed and shouted and screamed! 

Our conversation went something like this:

Elder H: Alo, Elder Hokkanen pe telefon

Me: There's a crazy guy following us!

Elder H: wait what?

Me: There's a crazy man following us

At this point the man jumped right in front of us, waved his arms and screamed in our faces!

Elder H: What's that yelling?

Me: The crazy guy!!!!

Elder H: Oh, like there's a legit crazy guy following you?

Me: YES!!!

Elder H: o crap (finally understanding)... where are you?! Is he threatening you?!

Me: Eroilor (the area), and Yes, he's screaming in our faces so yes, we feel threatened!!

Elder H: we're 10 minutes away, Do you have pepper spray?!

Sora was way ahead of him and was already searching in her bag. She pulled out the pepper spray. Seeing that she had something in her hand, the crazy man backed off a little, yelling continually, as we continued to walk as fast as possible toward the nearest bus stop. We saw a few people up ahead. We ran up next to this old woman. The crazy man decided that since we now had the protection the people at the bus stop he'd continue to yell at us from the street, as cars whizzed past, honking at him.

The bus came and we escaped...safe and sound! yay

So that was our crazy story for the week! Weird huh... but we were protected by the Lord! 

This week, should be great, we're going to Iasi, and then next week we're going to Moldova for 4 days so we won't be emailing until Thursday.

Thanks for your prayers, I know they're keeping me safe! Keep the faith,

Sora Rivera

Sun With Teeth

With Sora Fletcher

First off, I just need to do a little shout out to Sora Fletcher. She's so awesome :D What a trooper too. Her first lesson here in Panduri was the drop lesson with our only investigator...rough... but she's always so positive. We are just loving life :) We also got a new investigator yesterday...yay

MLC - We had mission leadership Council on Thursday. It was really long, but absolutely wonderful. We have such inspiring missionaries in this mission at the moment, and President and Sora Hill, are beyond amazing!

The sun has come out! Yay! I duno what's happening to Romania's winter, but lately its been gorgeous. The fog has lifted and the sun has come out. Sora and I have been making the best of it, going to the parks and staying outside as much as possible. It's still a little chilly but the sun makes it bearable. Romanians have an expression "soare cu dinti" it means sun with teeth, for when it's sunny but a little cold.

With Smiley

We had this cool experience on Friday. We were chalk contacting in the park with two of the Elders and the Aviatiei sisters. Well there was this smecher guy, about our age who kept riding his bike across our plan of salvation. I told the others if he did it one more time I'd say something, and of course he did. So I yelled "Hei, ce faci?!" and he turned around and was all sheepish like "O, n-am voie?" and I was like NO! You're riding all over God's plan. Then we laughed and I asked him if he believed in God, and we were totally able to turn the contact into a great discussion about prayer and how we can ask God our questions. We ended up calling the elders over and having them get his number to meet with him. It was super cool.

Chalk contacting in the park

 We Nashed! Nasa means Godmother in Romanian, ie. we hosted the brand new missionaries their first night. So these are my two god daughters. They're so cute!

Well... that's about it, sorry there's not much excitement this week. Just normal stuffs...

Keep the Faith!

Love Sora Rivera

Let It Go!

Revelionul cu Elena si Andreea 

New Years

La multi ani everyone!!! A few people have asked if Romania has any special new years traditions. Nope. Not that I'm aware of, just normal fireworks. President gave us permission to be out until midnight and to go to centru to see fireworks. We went with a bunch of the YSA in front of Casa Poporului (the huge parliament building)  to watch fireworks. It was so fun! I got to spend new years with Elena and Andreea! Loved it :D Gaah, little scarey though because I only have 3 months left :/ 

Frozen

All right, I gotta throw a shout out to Frozen. It's amazing! We went to see it for one of our Christmas movies with a ton of the elders and one of the Senior Couples. I loved it. Sora and I have been singing all the songs nonstop. Super funny. I even translated one of them for language study. :D

Transfers

I'm staying in Bucuresti as a Sister Training Leader and my new companion is Sora Fletcher! She's amaaazing and I'm sooo excited. Also, we've been talking to the other STLs and it looks like we'll get to go visit Moldova this transfer :D I'm so pumped! This transfer is going to be amazing.

Testimony Meeting

Graffiti Contacting (on Official Graffiti allowed boards)

Okay, so I know I've explained before that Romania's church meetings are the funniest and most awesome church experience ever. Yesterday's was truly spectacular. One of our investigators, who we've been trying to drop for a while due to her lack of desire and slightly crazy nature, got up to bear her testimony... So she gets up and starts with, "I've got three things to say. First, the behaviour of some members here is terrible!" She then starts listing off all the things members have done to offend her. "next," she continues, "the Book od Mormon has been horribly translated". She then went on to demand that the branch president organize and re-translation. "Finally, I just want to say this church is full of discrimination..." Before being asked to sit down, she managed to list off many ways that nonmembers are discriminated against, such as not being allowed to teach Sunday school... Well, normal, it was super awkward and random, and after she sat down everyone was kinda looking around to see if the testimony meeting would rebuke her or ignore her. But, thank goodness, Roxana, a beautiful, angel young girl got up. She is 12 years old. Just her and her Dad are members. She innocently went to the front and filled the room with the Spirit as she bore a perfect and simple testimony. I loved it! I was so proud of her. Wonderful sacrament meeting!

Also I've restarted the Book of Mormon, planning to finish in the next three months. The power of that book is incredible. Read it!

Love you all. Keep the Faith!

Sora Rivera