1 Year!

Worst winter in 100 years...

Us with the sister training leaders

I first heard it from this slightly eccentric lady at church, but then I heard it from one of the super normal ladies, then I heard it from another person, and our whole English  class confirmed it...everyone is saying this'll be the worst winter in 100 years! People died because of the cold 3 years ago, but they're predicting it'll be even worse. I can believe it too, it's been freezing all week, and I wouldn't be surprised if it started to snow soon :(.  Meeeh I'm praying that everyone is just exaggerating. But just in case.... I wouldn't mind some hand warmers for Christmas? :)

best burgers ever with the sister training leaders

Crazy dog

There's this dog who lives in a house near the church. He only comes up to just below my knees, and he has a limp. His fence is broken so just as you round the corner there's a little gap where he is able to sneak out. Oh did I mention? This dog is the most evil vicious creature I've ever laid eyes upon....So anyway...Sora and I were on our way to a lesson this week, with our investigator, Maria. We'd just finished some street boarding and we were walking towards the church. As we started to come around the corner there was a giant puddle so Sora cleverly avoided it by going around into the street, I decided to avoid it by walking next to the fence.... the broken fence. Sure enough within seconds I realized my mistake as the little gimpy dog pokes his head out to see who dared to enter his territory. The tiny beast bore his teeth and started growling. "RUN!!" I hear Sora scream, and next thing I know I'm being chased down the street by a barking, ferocious, 3 legged dog. In an effort to save me, Sora MacDonald began calling the dog and waving her arms frantically, of course this then resulted in the little monster turning on her and chasing her! In the end we narrowly avoided being bitten and had to walk about 5-10 minutes out of our way in order to avoid being bitten and having to get rabies shots.

Such a missionary

Maybe it's the nametag... but I swear that on my mission I've been asked out then in the past few years. At the end of English on Saturday these two guys attempted to ask us out. They lingered behind and were like, "hey, so what do you two do for fun?" The shorter one smiling at me, and the tall one leaning in towards my companion.

"Oh, we teach about Jesus." We told them.

"Yeah, but in your free time...?"

"We teach about Jesus! All day... everyday!"  We told them, playing completely innocent.

"You don't have a day off?"

"Well Monday we have free time, but we just hang out with the other 4 missionaries"

Poor guys.

Peoples

We have a couple of cool new investigators, we found through English classes. And Maricica is doing well, still won't pay tithing, but otherwise she's doing great. The Iasi branch is super awesome, the people are so loving! I love them! :D

Zone conference is in two days.... Moldova!!! YEAH! I'm soo excited. I'm leaving the country, how cool is that?! We leave for Chisinau Wednesday morning, we have zone conference all afternoon on Wednesday, then Thursday morning we're going shopping in Moldova! :D I wanna buy a Russian doll, a Cyrillic bible, and I'm buying Colin's Christmas present there too, which he won't get until I come home in April but I'm so pumped!

Also it's my 1 year mark this week!! 1 year on the mission! say what?!!

And Happy General Conference week!! We'll be watching it together this Saturday evening and Sunday evening. Sora and I are making caramel popcorn, the elders have promised brownies and apple pie, so it should be a real party!

Loves! Keep the Faith

Sora Rivera





Randoms

Sorry my brain is being stifled by the cigarette smoke, thanks to the guy sitting next to me in this interent cafe and thus my thoughts are all over the place....

Exchange

I got to go on an exchange this week! the lovely sister training leaders, Sora Lund and Sora Polatis came to Iasi on tuesday and wednesday! We had so much fun! I went with Sora Polatis again. It's been 2 whole weeks since we were companions, but we still aren't sick of each other. It was such a fun exchange! We went out in the rain and english contacted all afternoon. I love that girl!

Peoples

Our investigator Maricica is an interesting character. She has blonde hair and bright blue eyes and wears the bright pink romanian lipstick. She's a total hippy and I love her. She has this friend called Maria. A much older woman, who's kinda crazy. Maria is a hunched over old woman, with just a couple of teeth. She uses a cain and always has a suspicious scowl on her face because of her poor eye-sight. Maricica feels sorry for her so invited her to church, how cute? I keep teasing Sora Macdonald that one day she'll be Maricica, and I'll be her crazy friend Maria ;)

Oh my gosh, I'm sitting in an internet cafe with a guy smoking up a storm! I'm dying waaaaaaaah! cough cough cough.... :(

Anyway....

Spiritual Thought for English

At the end of each English class we give spiritual thoughts that are aimed to spark peoples' interest in the church. On saturday, Sora and I were assigned to give the spiritual thoguht. that morning, during studies we both felt prompted to use the questions of the soul and how the book of mormon can answer them. We started by writing on the board 3 of the questions of the soul, 1. What is the Purpose of life? 2. Why does God allow suffering and trials to happen? and 3. Is there life after death? Since, we only had 5 minutes we just answered the first question using the Book of Mormon and invited the class to speak to us if they were interested in knowing more. After we'd finished, a woman, Theodora, came up to Sora and said, "I want to know the answer to that second question!" We set up a lesson to meet with her for this week. Another different woman came up and spoke to me about the questions. It was just soo cool because it was exactly what they needed to hear.

Crumpets!

We had a branch activity on saturday and I made crumpets! It's funny how I've made crumpets more on my mission then in my entire life.


We get to go to Chisinau next week for zone conference!!! :D It's in Moldova!!! That's a whole other country! I'm super pumped :)

Happy Birthday to Mum!! 

:D yaay! Our new investigator, Maria (different Maria then the crazy old lady, this one is normal and very nice), also wishes you health and good fortune! :)

YAY!

The church is true! life is grand! The Lord loves us. Recently my scriptural theme of life has been Philippians 4: 11-13 read it......

Keep the Faith!
loves

Sora Rivera

Botezed

Botezed

(The subject line for this email is really a shout out to Sora Cook.... I'm fully aware that botezed is neither english nor romanian.... I guess it would translate in Romanglish to baptism'd)

Lessons learnt this week:

1. Random strawberry-smelling powder + milk + freezer... does NOT equal ice cream, no matter what the packet says.

2. Turnips make all the difference!

Sora MacDonald was making Bors. A kinda soup stuff with vegetables. She kept wining saying that it didn't taste like Romanian Bors. But, Sora Heim had convinced her to buy a turnip. I somehow had always thought turnips were an imaginary vegetable made up by Beatrix Potter. Turns out, they exist. They kinda resemble a mangled potato, but they're super hard. After trying for about 10 minutes to cut the turnip I finally succeeded. I purposely cut it into defined triangles so that as we ate the soup we'd know exactly which pieces were from the turnip. We threw in the turnip  and finally about about an hour of stewing, Sora MacDonald squealed excitedly that it was tasting Romanian. Maybe it was the 3/4 bottle of sour soup bors stuff she'd also added... but I think not, I reckon that turnip made all the difference!

3. I'm still terrible at football... and all sports

We had a sports night where we played football this week with the YSA. Bineinteles Sora and I were dreadful and kept getting distracted until a ball would fly past our heads. But after about an hour of playing and about 19 attempts by Radu, setting me up for a goal, I finally scored! yay :)

4. Liver is not for eating

I ate a stew.... it had liver. I think the entire liver was in my bowl. It seemed to multiply as I ate it. The texture was somewhere between a sponge and gritty oatmeal.

5. I duno what I learnt by this but it was cool...

As we walked home from sports night we met a really cool lady who was rescuing a cat. There was a tiny little kitten and she was trying to find a home for it. And no... she wasn’t a crazy homeless woman, she was a put-together business woman who just happens to care about animals. She gave us her number and wants to know more! yay :) oh and don't worry, we found a nice lady who has a cat lady for a neighbour, she took the kitten home.

6. This work truly is the Lord's work.

We as missionaries get a front row seat to people's conversion process, but if there's one thing I've learnt from watching Monica's baptism on Saturday, it's that, this had nothing to do with me. 3 days before I got to the city she randomly came to church and told the sisters that she wanted to be baptised. She'd been to EFY (Especially For Youth) this summer and gained a testimony there. We went through all the lessons with her, and she was beautifully accepting of everything. As we moved onto tithing, she said, "oh yeah I know that, it's where you give 50% of everything you earn right?" ... we quickly informed her it was only 10% a very pleasant surprise for her. All day Saturday, and yesterday as she received the Holy Ghost, I felt like Ammon, Alma 26:11-12:
 11 But Ammon said unto him: I do not boast in my own strength, nor in my own wisdom; but behold, my bjoy is full, yea, my heart is brim with cjoy, and I will rejoice in my God.
 12 Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever.


The church is true!!! Loves!

Keep the Faith

A Whole New World...

A Whole New World...

So I'm serving in the North! I'm about 30 minutes from the Moldovan border. Iasi is a very big city, lots of students, lots of people. It's pretty. the accent is Moldovan-ish but I'm getting used to it. the branch is so cute! I'm also loving Sora MacDonald. She's so loving, a great companion!

Saying goodbye

This week was completely crazy! We were shopping for new clothes for me, in cele din urma we found a few things, then Sora Polatis and I had to say goodbye to everyone and pass the investigators to Sora Cook.Our last lesson with Alina was amazing. Alina has seriously changed my life. She is a wonderful girl, with so much spirit! We had a lesson to say goodbye to her on tuesday. She told us how before meeting us she was in a cloud of darkness and from the very first day of meeting us her life changed. I'm so excited to see what the Lord has in store for that girl, she's so awesome!

Transfer Day!

I sent you guys a couple pictures that we took on transfer day. 4 generations, all of Sora Cooks daughters etc. I love transfer day! It's hard to explain. I have no idea how it works in other missions but for us, we all head to Bucharest. Some people leave the night before, some the day of. I think 14 hours is the longest journey, from Constanta it's a 3 hour bus ride. So we all arrive at the Gara (train station) where we gather as a huge swarm of missionaries. then gradually as the day goes on until evening and the trains leave, each new companionship heads back out to their new city. Iasi's train leaves at about 11.30pm so we're one of the last to go.

Train issues

The train to Iasi is a sleeper train. Sora MacDonald and I were heading back to Iasi on Wednesday night with Elder Rose and his new Boboc, fresh from the MTC. Sadly, we could only get 2nd class tickets which means 6 to one cabin, and since the train was packed it left the 4 of us in a cabin with 2 random romanians. Then to make matters worse, once on the train, about an hour in, the conductor guy came in to say that we didn't have the full ticket, we only had the sleeper reservation and not the rest. So long story short, we ended up paying 500 lei extra to avoid being thrown off the train.. I found the whole ordeal rather amusing, especially for the new missionary Elder Sookhoo. First night in the country nearly getting kicked off a train!

Monica

Iasi has quite a lot going on right now. We have a girl who is going to be baptised this saturday! Her name is Monica, she is 17. Her uncle is a member, and she went to efy this year and gained a testimony. And 2 weeks ago told Sora Macdonald that she wanted to be baptised. So we've been meeting with her almost everyday. She's completely ready to be baptised. I'm so excited for her! We also have another investigator Maricica who was supposed to be baptised this saturday too, but she's having a hard time accepting tithing

Talk

I gave a talk yesterday. I get to Iasi, and first thing I hear is that I'm giving a talk. I really enjoyed it! I spoke about the talk from last conference "Being Accepted of the Lord". Can you believe it's nearly conference again? crazy.


Well that's about all I have time for, we didn't really ahve too many funny/crazy things happen but don't worry, it's only been a couple day.

Bye Bye Beach

Well, I did joke around that I was off to the beach for the summer. So now that summer is over, I'm leaving Constanta. I'm going to Iasi this week to be with Sora Macdonald. Sora Polatis will be going back to Mihai Bravu in Bucharest to be Sister Training leader. I've loved every minute of serving with Sora Polatis. She's amazing! 

I didn't leave myself much time this week, to write, but a few quick stories.

Teaching Ritta this week was amazing! We had another Skype lesson all about the Plan of Salvation. Her son died years ago and she'd always wondered what happened to his spirit as he waits for the resurrection, but as we taught her using Alma chapter 40 she was really comforted and understood perfectly! It was an amazing lesson. I'm really going to miss teaching her. 

Alina came to church and brought a huge cake! she found out we were leaving and wanted to say good bye in style! It was sooo sweet of her. I love that girl! The cake was big enough for the whole branch and she happily cutup pieces for everyone. The branch was hugging her and talking to her, asking when her baptism will be. Haha, she's been completely embraced by the wonderful branch of Constanta

We got our names put on Coke cans!! :D It was a random free promotion in the park.

We had lunch at the Constantinescu family's home yesterday. He's the branch president. He's the super competitive one. He even tackled Sora Polatis to the ground the other day during Sports night in an effort to get to Frisbee. Love this family!!! (the family with the little girl, Eva). 

We also went and said goodbye to the Oltianu family! They are so Christlike and amazing. (family with the little boy, 13 year old girl, and pregnant mum :)

Keep the Faith!

Love Sora Rivera

Israel Israel Skype is calling!

This week turned out to be ridiculously busy and super tare!

Address finding

Random mail boxes galore!

Just before leaving, the branch president gave us a long list of addresses to go and search out, to see if any members who had been less active for many many years, were still living there. We started the week out with 8 addresses to scope out in the deep urban jungles of constanta. We got lost many times, were given conflicting directions and couldn't have looked more like tourists with 2 different map out stretched as we wandered around the city. But one by one, each address was found and we ascertained that none of the members were still living in those addresses. We felt kinda like stalkers as we knocked on doors and asked neighbours, but it was also very pleasant because people were very nice to us as we searched and each person we asked for directions, we tried to leave them with at least a pass along card. So who knows? Maybe a few seeds were planted :)

Exchange

I got to go on an exchange with Sora Cook this week! yay! The beautiful sister training leaders, Sora Cook and Sora Kelly, came down to Constanta on Thursday evening and I was able to spend most of the day with Sora Cook on Friday. We had a lesson with Alina set up which we gave to Sora Polatis and Sora Kelly, and Sora Cook and I went to find the last of the addresses given to us by the Branch President. We had really fun time, catching up and reflecting over the past 8 months. It feels like just yesterday and at the same time, it feels like a hundred years ago since we were eating chicken heads and getting locked in taxis together back in Arad. I've learnt so much since then and I hope to continue to grow and change. Sora Cook is a beautiful example to me and I don't think I can ever fully express my gratitude to her or to Heavenly Father for her influence on my mission and on my life.

Skype lessons

We had Skype lessons with Ritta this week!! It was sooo much fun! The connection was fantastic. The first lesson, we sadly weren't able to see Ritta because their camera wasn't working, but they went out and bought a new camera and the next lessons we saw her perfectly. We taugh her the restoration and she was very strong in her testimony of Joseph Smith. Then yesterday we had a lesson with her and her lds husband, Petre, all about the atonement. We felt prompted to read together the account from Luke about the savior in the Garden of Gethsemane. Having just visited the garden a week earlier, Ritta was deeply touched. It was a great lesson. I love her soo much! Ritta and Petre remind me sooo much of Grandma and Grandad, it's easy to be overcome with love for them!

Church

This week with the entire branch up in Kyiv at the temple it meant that we were the only family and friends in town for a girl in the branch who got her mission call (to Toronto Canada, English speaking... she's suuuper excited).
Like I've said in previous weeks, Church here in Constanta couldn't be more entertaining, especially, I've discovered, when the Branch President is out of town. Church yesterday was hilarious. Very uplifting, but also hilarious. Sora Lidia... a 60ish year old woman was giving a talk. She is a tiny little lady, probably comes up to my shoulder. She began... "You all know about my accident..." Sora Polatis and I look at one another... what accident?  She went on to then tell and act out the story of how she was hit by three cars, fainted, and the ambulance was called, her legs were broken but she learnt to walk again. She acted it all out... with limping motions as she demonstrated learning to walk. Then she finished her story by demonstrating, "And now... I can walk, run, and.... DANCE!!!"  She twirled and whirled around next to the podium, her long dress swishing, waving her arms in the air... priceless.

Transfers....

Well, I hope you all have a wonderful week! We find out about transfers this Friday. Since Sora Polatis and I have served together for two transfers , we know that this is our last week together. I'm sad about that, just because of how much I've learnt and grown in this companionship. We've also had sooo much fun! I love Sora Polatis!!! She's amazing!!! I have no idea if I'm staying or leaving but I'm optimistic about this next transfer.

Loves! Keep the Faith!

Sora Rivera

Hugs and Crosses

Update

A Lovely member family 

So remember that guy who yelled at us on the street a couple weeks back? The one who was said we were form the devil.... yeah that one. So guess who we saw on the bus the other day?! The bus pulled up and Sora and I got on the crowded bus. I looked around and I made eye contact with a tall fellow, glasses, white t-shirt. He seemed to recognize us and looked away immediately. I paused for a moment, Sora Polatis smiled at me and glanced towards him. I looked over at him again and noticed those classic "saint" bracelets around his wrists. (They're these little wooden bracelets with tiny pictures of creepy look icons of saints). Aha! It was that same guy. He looked so disappointed to see us on that bus. He glanced over and turned away, quickly crossed himself and muttered a prayer under his breath in order to protect himself from our "evil presence" haha! Bless him... he's just doing his best with the limited knowledge that he has. He genuinely believes that we're from the devil. Silly man.

Church

Everyone is at the temple this week in the Ukraine.  At 9.50am yesterday there were 3 members at church and 6 missionaries. One super super old lady walked in, and in her tiny little squeaky Romanian voice she says, "There are so many of us!" haha It was hilarious. I don't know why but sarcasm is a thousand times funnier in Romanian, especially coming from a tiny old woman. In the end we had 12 members and 6 missionaries. But, I was actually really grateful because for Sunday school we just watched some of general conference. I love love love general conference. Especially in Romanian now that I can understand it. I especially enjoyed Elder Perry and President Monson speaking on Obedience. I'm so grateful for the words of modern-day apostles.

Service at a café

So I forgot to tell you, but we started a new service project. Basically we go to a café and youth aged 10 - 15 come. And we speak to them in English. We play games, teach them skills, make bracelets etc. All in English. And the owner of the café brings us free lemonade. It's awesome! Last week we played Mafia. They're pretty good at English, and are getting better the more they speak with us. It's so fun, it's one of the highlights of my week! And last week, as we were leaving the café a woman came up to us asking for a Book of Mormon. Ce awesome?! :D

Hugs

On Saturday evening we were on our way to centru to search for an address of a less active member given to us by the branch president. We were sitting on the bus and a controller lady came over to check to see if we had tickets. She started reading Sora Polatis'  name tag. "Where are you from??!" she asked us. "England and America, we're missionaries" we answered. Next thing we know she starts hugging and kissing Sora on the cheek. She calls over the other controller ladies to tell them about us. They all though we were beautiful and wonderful. She was sooo happy and funny! We gave her a pass along card. Then the bus stopped and they all hopped off and waved good bye... random. But that's not all.... we were walking home later that evening and this random lady comes running over to us saying, "sisters!!" and she hugs us and kisses us on the cheek. Turns out, she's an old English student, possibly an old investigator. We invited her to church and also to English classes again. These nametags really draw a lot of attention!

Alrighty, well, that's about it for this week. I'm still reading the New Testament, about to finish Corinthians, I should be done in just over a week. yay! It's been a wonderful experience. So far, in love with Romans chapter 12! super cool. I know this church is true! I know that Jesus Christ lives!

Loves! pace voua

Sora Rivera