BUNA!!!!!!! :D Isn't my
Romanian improving? :P So the amazing and wonderful district left on Monday at
5am to fly to Romania. I miss them soooo much!! I completely fell in love with
that district. They have some amazing gifts and every single one of them taught
me something different and brought me to Christ. Most of all I miss Sora
Macdonald who was a gift from God!! I love her sooo much and I totally cried
saying goodbye to her, we hope to serve together later in our missions but
chances are we'll be training all the new missionaries. Apparently within the
first two weeks after conference the amount of missionary applications per week
increased by 471% They are expecting to have to open about 30 new missions next
year!! How insane is that?!!! It's so exciting to be involved, right now as the
Lord is hastening His work!! :D and I can truly testify that it is His work,
His glory. I watched a fantastic video of a Devotional Elder Holland gave to
the MTC a few years ago. It was a pounding pulpit vigorous talk, about how this
is His work. He was also really funny and said how his wife's Avon lady is more
persistent then some missionaries, and she’s just selling makeup. You'd think
people teaching of salvation and eternal happiness could be a little more persistent
than an Avon lady ha-ha. Funny image but so true! We have the best message of
all, and that's why we’re bothering to leave our families for 18-24 months. If
this gospel weren’t true, if I didn't know without any doubt that this is the
one true church... well honestly I wouldn't have bothered coming. But I do
know... so I'm here, and I'm loving it!
So since Sora left I
had to have a new companion, so I was technically assigned to be with the girls
in my room. They’re all going to visitors centers. Sister Stobbe is from uuummm
somewhere in UT I think, I don’t remember and Sister Coplan is from Arizona. They’re
both really nice. They’re my official on paper companions but that will change
in a couple days because we have such different schedules starting next week
because they start their visitor center training, The Swedish girls have the
same schedule as me so they’ve been my adopted companions. Sister Kirsa Merril,
from UT, going to Sweden... is so awesome! We’ve been friends for years and she
went to Romania on the BYU internship so its great to hang out with her a lot,
and her companion is Sister Robbins who is also from Utah and going to Sweden
and she's really great too. Since we have class in the same building and we
live just down the hall from one another they’ve been dropping me off at class
and taking me to meals. It's nice not to be completely alone but I'd be lying
if I said I didn't miss Sora like crazy, or my amazing district.
Elder Criscenti and I
are doing well. We committed Gheorghe to a baptismal date. It was super
exciting and our Romanian is improving and our teaching skills are improving.
And although they’re not real investigators, they’re just our teachers
pretending to be investigators it still feels real, we pray for them we plan
for them we study the scriptures to find answers to their questions. We love
them so much and they are real people, our teachers pretend to be investigators
that they themselves taught when they were in Romania, so it'll be cool to meet
these people when we get there, and see how accurate our teachers were ha-ha.
Elder C and I have a
funny way of communicating, now that our Romanian is getting better we pretty
much speak Romanian 100% of the time, in most classes according to our teachers
they have parts of the lesson in English, just general study of the
gospel, but they cant do that with us so it's cool to be progressing so well. But
yeah its funny because I understand Elder C really well, now, even our teacher
sometimes are like WHAT?? and have no idea what he’s saying cos they cant tell
if he’s trying to speak rom, Italian or English, (usually its a mix) but I
usually translate, and I've learnt to pick up on a few Italian phrases that he
always says ha-ha.
My teachers are so
amazing!! I could never survive the MTC without them. Especially since Sora
left on Monday it was really hard but I had Sora Whiting that afternoon and
then I've now started teaching a new investigator with one of the teachers Sora
Wilson as my companion. Since the other district left, and the new district doesn’t
come for another 3 weeks, these next 3 weeks, we get all 7 teachers!!! :D So
Sora Wilson and I teach together some afternoons and Fratele Frandsen teaches
with Elder C. The one problem with having a teacher as your companion is pretty
much that I end up teaching the whole lesson and she just bares her
testimony at the end, or jumps in if I get into trouble. Like the other day I
was teaching a guy to pray (the guy was Fratele Frandsen) and I taught him
about the importance, bore my testimony and asked him to try. But apparently
I'd forgotten to tell him to pray out loud because we knelt down and I just sat
there hearing nothing until I looked up and he goes "Amin!" and
smiled and in Romanian said "did I do okay???!" with a big smile on
his face. Ha-ha but I hadn’t yet learnt the phrase "speak out loud"
so I just starred horrified at Sora Wilson who came to my rescue. hahaha
Fratele Frandsen did it on purpose cos he knew that I hadn't learnt it, but
apparently that'll happen all the time in Romania unless I specify "Cu
glas tare" haha. ooops!
Also I was teaching
Fratele Vizante (who is a real Romanian...yes that’s right straight from Romania!!)
and I always get nervous teaching him because he speaks super super fast and
uses grammar I've never heard haha, and I was teaching him to pray. I had said
my testimony and showed him how and done everything right then I asked him if
he'd try and he said No thanks, I don't want to" and he told me afterwards
that apparently I looked like a deer in the headlights I was so shocked and surprised.
Hahaha, but I talked him into it eventually and he gave a beautiful prayer
haha, he just likes to make fun of me for being so scared haha. Oh interesting
fact about Fratele Vizante... he served his mission in London South! He served
in East Grinstead actually. He'll sometimes tell me stuff he misses about England..
mostly being Malteasers hahahah :D
Anyway I'm out of time,
but I love you all and I promise I'm slowly working on replies to letters.
Thanks you for your love and support and your prayers. One wonderful thing
about the MTC is that you pray constantly, I haven’t even been able to count
the number of times I pray... all day everyday pretty much, and all in Romanian
haha :) but I pray for you :)
Oh I have a scripture
you all need to look up Alma 26:11-12 :D I want to be a missionary like Ammon.
Keep the faith!! va
iubesc
Sora Rivera
