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)