Week 2!

Hey Everyone!!!!

Romania folks! That's where we are headed

Soooooo Week 2!!!! :D Yaaaaaaaay! It's so much better than week 1!!!! Thank you so much to everyone who has written me/dear elder me, I'm working on replies if I haven’t already sent them. Getting a letter in the MTC is like Harry Potter getting his letter from Hogwarts :D It's AMAZING! And also..."no post on Sundays" hahha ;) Colin dearelder’d me a lot last week because I have the best brother EVER! and sometimes Dear Elder duplicates letters, so on Thursday last week I received 14 Dear Elders !!!!!!!!! :D I broke the district record hahaha... all of them were from Colin cos he sent me this amazing talk from Jeffrey R. Holland and the Dear Elder duplicated some parts of it so it was hilarious all the elders couldn’t believe it hahahah :D YAY me :D

Sora MacDonald & I

My Sora and the amazing district of elders are all leaving on Monday at 5am :( I'm sooooo sad!! It's just gonna be me and Elder Criscenti left, so the Swedish sisters are gonna be adopting me and the Elders learning Italian are adopting Elder C. until the new Romanian district arrives in 4 weeks time :( So yeah we're gonna be a little lost and homeless for a while. But I don't think I could make it without my amazing MTC teachers :) I have three.... Fratele Sandberg, Fratele Frandsen, and Sora Whiting. Sora Whiting provides me with the much much needed female love and support. She's just amazing! She is so sweet and supporting and the other day I totally cried (I'm fine it was just stress and emotions and sucking at the language but all is well) and Sora Whiting just hugged me and cried with me and gave me amazing scriptures to read DC123:17 :D READ IT!!! Fratele Frandsen is the nicest person in the whole world! He's always telling me "Poti! Poti" (pronounced liked pots)  meaning ‘You can! You can!!’ Whenever I get scared and I'm not sure how to say sometime. Fratele Sandberg is also amazing!!! He's really laid back and we laugh sooo much in his lessons. It brings the much needed relaxed environment and I find myself speaking Romanian pretty well in his lessons just cos he brings no pressure. But then its the perfect balance because the Fratele Frandsen tends to give me the needed pressure the push myself harder. And Sora Whiting is the best of both worlds and a girl... so she can hug meeee :D I love hugs... I miss hugs... I hate not being able to hug the Elders/any male... some of them I admit though... like this sweet but super weird elder I met during devotional the other day... I fully admit I'm glad he cant hug me :P

All worn out!

Language - well.... it's going much better this week. I've really been trying to push myself to learn new vocab and review grammar. Fratele Frandsen helped me make a language study plan so I have set goals to work on each day, different things to focus on, it has helped me feel less over whelmed :) But I'm really really enjoying it, especially as I realize I can translate some of my favourite quotes/ funny things into Romanian. For example yesterday we were all playing volleyball and it was super super fun!! Well of course I'm still pretty bad and I "turtled" a couple times, (the California friends will no exactly what I mean by that, and you all can imagine me dropping to the floor and covering my head if the ball cam near me) however I actually didn’t do tooooo terrible yesterday. Well anyway, a couple times I won a few points for my team and I decided to trash talk by saying "Ce acum fiu?!" which means What now son?! hahhahaa it was hilarious! ;)

I'm learning so so much! My time is almost up but I love you all and I promise my testimony is growing like crazy amounts!!! I just want to share the gospel with the whole wordl!!! Even if I suck at the Romanian language I just wanna get out there and tell people how happy they could be!!! They could be like CRAAAAAAAZZZY happy!!! I love love love this gospel. I know that I belong to the only true church on this earth! I know it! I know it because I've read the Book of Mormon, the Lord has confirmed in my heart that it is the word of God! If it wasn’t true then I wouldn’t put myself through such crap... I wouldn’t bother killing my brain everyday to learn a new language, I would bother to leave my family and friends for 18 months... but it is true! So here I am... doing the Lord's work, working my butt of here so that I can work my butt off in Romania.

Thank you for your love and support

Love Sora Rivera

PS... Dear Elders win...

PPS But seriously.... Dear Elder/write to me :)

Mission Week 1!!!

Hello everybody...

Sora Rivera! and so it begins

Henceforth I shall be known as Sora... so I get to the MTC and find out that I'm a Solo sister, which is sorta weird because I do have a companion... Sora Macdonald from Salt Lake City Utah. We're the only 2 sisters going to Romania in the whole MTC (missionary training center). So we’re the only 'Soras.’ She's also going to Romania but she's been at the MTC for 7 weeks, so in just under two weeks she'll be leaving and I have no idea what’ll happen in terms of having a companion. Being a solo also means that I either have to be with my companion, a group of Elders, or my teacher and whoever else. So yeah that's just super weird because being a Solo doesn't mean oh good I get to have some alone time... oh no... it's the opposite, I'm constantly supervised and surrounded by huge groups of people and you know just how much I love huge groups of people.

My class consists of one Elder and me! Just one!... it's super awkward. We have to be supervised by a teacher, or we join in with the other class. And oh did I mention.... that ONE elder... is Italian and doesn't speak English. So basically we've been communicating with broken Romanian, Italian, remnants of high school Spanish, and a whole lot of pointing and charades. So yeah it's been very interesting. His name is Elder Criscenti (prounounced Kri-shen-tee)

Sora MacDonald & I

Apparently at the beginning of this year they changed the way they teach at the MTC. We start teaching an investigator, who's really just one of our teachers pretending to be an investigator on the 3rd day. So getting help from our teachers we plan a lesson in complete Romanian and we have to go teach. Our "investigator" is called Lacov and we've taught him everyday this week. It's been so hard especially since it's just me and Elder C as teaching companions so we can't really communicate properly but the teachers say we're doing an awesome job and progressing super fast. They keep calling us an advanced class because of my previous Romanian knowledge and the closeness of Italian to Romanian so I guess that's kinda cool but I still feel like I'm smacking my head against a brick wall every day. Romanian is okay, I realized that I understand a ton, but I really can’t speak very well. I'm praying for help, (in Romanian) and I’ve learnt a ton in just this past week so I have hope that in the next few weeks I can improve a lot. COLIN - thanks a ton for your dear elders and the one about how you learnt Spanish it was really uplifting :). Oh while I remember ANA - I'm writing you a giant long wonderful letter today :D and I'm also writing Grandad and Grandma :)

Wasn't General Conference amazing? If you didn't see it or don't know what it is check it out here at lds.org it's soooooooooo amazing the announcement about missionary work. Elder Bednar came and spoke to us at the MTC fireside this week... isn’t that amazing??? And anyway he told us it's basically because the Lord just needs to hasten is work and now is the time he's chosen to hasten it! AHH it's just awesome!! And we missionaries are a part of that hastening!! :) I love love love the apostles and the prophet and just everything! I loved GC, especially Elder Holland's talk. Elder Bednar was awesome at the fireside he was sooo down to earth and really funny... he calls it his Apostolic Humour. Ha-ha! I also loved the take from Elder Nelson "ASK THE MISSIONARIES!" We all just had huge smiles on our faces, although in the back of my mind I was think oh poop I need to learn how to respond to all of that in Romanian hahaha!!!

Lacov, our "investigator" told us yesterday that he wants to be baptized and he believes that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ really appeared to JS. YAAAAY!! :D Hahah even though it's pretend we take it very seriously and it's amazing because the spirit really does guide me. For example I was in TALL lab on Monday, which is a computer system program thingy that helps you learn your language, and I decided to learn the word for Trial. Little did I know that I was being guided by the spirit because the next day Lacov asked us about Trials and Elder C just looked at me completely bewildered and I was like wait I UNDERSTAND :D haha it was awesome and in terrible Romanian we were able to speak with Lacov YAY Happy day for us...

The District - me & the missionaries off to Romania soon

The first few days here were kinda awful. I wanted to cry and scream and run away! haha I felt like a small child wandering around lost on a big campus. But the Lord has really blessed me because Sora M loves me sooo much and she constantly tells me that so it's reallly uplifting and my teacher are just wonderful and I completely ADORE all of our elders. They’re technically the Elders in Sora's class but they’ve adopted me and Elder C too. They’re just so funny and wonderful. They let me mother them sometimes and they act like brothers and take care of me and Sora. Btw we had this amazing experience after the fireside this week when we have fireside review which is kinda a testimony meeting about what we learnt in the fireside, and every single elder including this one Elder Hollist cried. Now you have to understand... Elder Hollist was in the Marines, he's the big tall man who grew up an army brat and all he knows is Army Army Army. Everything he does he does with determination! It’s hilarious :) Sora and I laugh about it sometimes and Elder H laughs too because he just cant help it. Like the other day he was eating a salad and kept stabbing the lettuce as though it was going to run away. He also refers to our schedule as the agenda and the MTC campus as the premises :). Ha-ha his Marine-ness makes us lol. I wish I had time to tell you about every single Elder, it’s funny because they’re all so young, the oldest one is a month younger than me, yet so often they’re Men in my eyes and they’re so respectful and kind... then they’ll say or do something completely stupid and 12-year-old boy like and you remember how dumb and young they are haha but we still love them :)

I love this Church and this Gospel!! I really do have a true testimony of this Gospel. Christ's Church, his original church is upon the earth today, We have a living prophet, and his name is Thomas S. Monson! Joseph Smith really did see Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father. The priesthood authority was restored to the earth! The Lord has a plan for us, he knows us, and he loves us! If I didn't have my testimony... I'd be nothing! I couldn't have survived this week, I'd have taken the next flight home. I love you all, I pray for you constantly. Love the Lord with all you Heart Mind and Strength! "Keep the Faith". As Sister Hinckley once said “The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache." Well I've done a whole lot of laughing this week, but as Carl B. Cook said in his talk in April 2012 it's better to look up. 

Va iubesc ;)

Keep the Faith!! All my love and prayers

Sora Rivera

Emotions of Preparing for a Mission

This post needed illustrations...enjoy :)


Preparing for a mission is an emotional roller coaster ...whirlwind ...you just name the emotional cliche and that'll sum up the experience. So for those who've never had the pleasure, or have forgotten what it's like, I've broken it down into 7 phases... I'm currently in phase 5 so I had a little help for knowing phases 6 and 7.

PHASE 1 - The Papers

Filling out your papers is so exciting and slightly nerve-racking! 

PHASE 2 - The Waiting

Checking the mail EVERY second! Also phase 2 is full of excitement and wonder, you can imagine yourself in any and every mission...

PHASE 3 - The Call

SaaaAaaAhhh Excitaaaaaaaaahd

PHASE 4 - The Waves

Different events bring waves of emotion

PHASE 5 - The Calm

Going on a mission just feels normal. Everyone is making a huge deal out of it, but everything is going well, it's going to be good.

PHASE 6 - The Freak-out

WHHHHYYYYY??? WHY IS I GOING????

PHASE 7 - The End of the Prep

Set apart, excited, sad to leave, peace...

Only a turtle...

Preparing for a mission is daunting to say the least. If you’ve ever seen the Swan Princess, you’ll have seen the part where Speed says, “I’m only a turtle.” Hopefully you know the part I’m talking about. I couldn’t find a clip of it on YouTube, but that’s exactly how I feel. People say stuff like, “Oh you’ll be an excellent missionary!” or “You’re gona be awesome!” and I feel like saying “I’m only a turtle.”

Sometimes I feel super excited, like I did when I first opened my call. It’s amazing!! I’m actually going to my dream mission. I happily ride my small wave of excitement until I’m hit by the tsunami of terror!  There’s so much left to do, and so much to think about! And I don’t even have the stress of a visa like Railee or my other friends. Yet it stresses me out like crazy. The money, the packing, the shopping (puke), the money, the language, the vaccinations, the money, the BYU stuff… everything!

I attempted to read a few lines of my Romanian Book of Mormon compared against my English Book of Mormon. Each word just increased my urge to vomit.

 Scary!!!!!

But I have Faith, and I have hope. I know the Lord is going to bless me and it’ll be awesome when I have time to dedicate myself wholly to learning the language and serving the Lord.

I know that the Lord has been preparing me for years! I love Romanians, Romania, and the language of Romanian. My Romanian Book of Mormon was a gift from Colin for my 19^th birthday.

Here’s his heartfelt message ;) 

I went shopping today for missionary clothing! YAY clothes boooooo shopping! I tried on almost everything in my size at Ross, and found some good stuffs! There’s a particular color of blue that I find irresistible. After today I own about 6 different tops of different styles all in that same blue. It’s a sort of teal/blue. I loves to wear it I do! I also bought some really comfy shoes. I tried them on as a joke because I thought they were something my Grandma might wear, but they turned out to be cute! They’re a coral/orangey colour. I normally wouldn’t allow my shoes to resemble duck’s feet but I just couldn’t resist the comfyness of them! 

It’s gona be awesome! I know it is. I just need to wait out fear and let the faith take over! Maybe my duckie shoes will help me to overcome fear and get all excited abouts it! 

Hopes and Dreams

Despite my lactose intolerance, this post is full of cheese. Apologies! I just feel humbled and overwhelmed and I can’t think of another way to express myself.  My prayers tend to be answered in small ways. I’m not a lightening bolt from heaven type of person. But in the past few weeks, I guess the Lord has felt the need to remind me of his incredible love.

It started with my Mission call. Romania???!! I still can’t really believe it.

When I was only 17 and volunteering there for the first time. I remember picturing myself being a missionary, walking through the streets of Bucharest. I’d stop that lady right there and speak to her in perfect Romanian. I’d ask that young couple if they had heard about Christ’s plan of happiness. I’d be tired in the heat of the Romanian summer and have to sit by the fountains to eat a fresh nectarine from the market. And now…  four years later, I actually got called to that place. What were the chances? As my Mum likes to say, there were three chances “Slim, Fat and None!” And yet no matter how many times I check the letter, just to make sure I wasn’t imagining it, it still reads “Romania/Moldova Mission”.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream come true before. I feel like Anne of Green Gables when she first arrives in Avonlea. She tells Matthew that she has always dreamt of living on Prince Edward Island, and she has always longed to be adopted and loved, and finally, her dreams were coming true. I guess it’s cheesy but I never thought my dreams could come true. From the advice of Rudyard Kipling I dream but I don’t make dreams my master. I am a realist. And yet, the Lord blessed me with this dream.

I just love Anne! 

I’m learning to have more hope in my life. I think that hope is something we sometimes skip over in the Church. We speak of faith, hope and charity yet hope is often pushed to the side as we speak of foundations of Faith… It’s like a mustard seed. Charity is the pure love of Christ. Serve your fellowman in Charity. Don’t get me wrong, these are wonderful topic but I wish we spoke of hope more often.

A few months ago a good friend directed me to the talk by Neal A. Maxwell “Brightness of Hope” (October 1994) I recommend you Read it!. The talk reminds me that I need to have both faith and hope in Christ’s words. I can have faith that His promises will come true, but I also need hope. He loves me and He wants me to have joy and will therefore bless me abundantly. There are two choices ”you can either live in despair or hope”. I am choosing to live in hope. So although being a realist isn’t a bad thing, it certainly keeps me grounded, maybe the Lord has been trying to teach me to be happier and have more hope.

So I have hope that the rest of my dreams and desires will come true. But in the words of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego “But if not…” I will still continue serve the Lord. I will then have faith and hope in His plan and His wisdom.  

Seriously???

Last night I couldn’t sleep. I felt like a giant ape had some how crawled down my throat and was practising his break dance moves on my fundus (upper portion of the stomach for you non anatomy people, but that’s not quite as poetic). Every time I closed my eyes my mind was buzzing and chirping and squealing… what if it comes, what if it doesn’t, what if I’m disappointed? Wait… how dare I be disappointed… NO I must be positive… but seriously what if I can’t help it and I’m disappointed… these were the commentaries keeping me up despite my exhausted body. Eventually after a few chapters of reading I fell asleep.

I woke up nice and early at 6 am and practically jumped out of bed. I decided to go running and got ready. I wore a fluorescent yellow shirt, to symbolize the happy day I would hopefully have. I must have looked like an exploded highlighter. I ran for about half an hour. Oddly enough a couple hours sleep, no food or water, and running isn’t a good combination. After a shower and then watching Downton Abbey, despairing over Mary, swooning over Matthew, and despising Thomas I started my skyping sessions. I skyped with a friend and with my parents and was on and off the phone with Ana until 10.30… THE TIME!!

I hurried to the mail box. My contingency plan was to obtain a copy of Princess and the Goblin and watch it a couple times before work just to improve my mood. Maybe if I could act out Curty’s singing then I might not be so grumpy. But my plans were unnecessary… there it was… the big white envelope of joy :D I immediately called Ana as I walked back to the house, but the silly girl had left her phone in another room. I sent her a message very calmly and sweetly expressing the importance of her presence immediately. Fortunately she was able to detect the pinch of haste in my voice and jumped in her car to speed to my house.

After sorting out skype and phone calls and cameras… it was time.

I had been determined to cover the letter and read it as I got to the line, but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to be first. So as I began… “Sister Rivera…” I shuffled the paper down a little and caught the glimpse of “Romania/Moldova Mission”. Unable to contain myself, of course, I started screaming and had to quickly contain myself long enough to read it to the family haha. Ana was in tears, I was just screaming. I honestly still can hardly believe it.

I prayed and fasted last week that I’d receive a testimony that my call really was from the Lord, sent especially for me. But I don’t think my prayers have ever been answered in such an obvious way. I love the Lord and I can totally see his hand in my life. He had been preparing me for longer than I knew.

For those of you unaware of the significance of Romania in my life… allow me to give you a snapshot. When I was 17 I went on a trip volunteering to Romania working with children with Special Needs. I fell in love with the people, the language, and the country. I returned just a few months later and again the following summer to work with disadvantaged children. I loved everything Romanian.

The following year I went to BYU and then decided to spend the summer in the Sacramento area. Here, I made friends with a girl named Anamaria Costea. Ana, is Romanian, her entire family, church and friends are Romanian. I think my heart has a magnet for Romanians.

Just before opening my call my Brother said to me that the best missionaries are the ones who just love the people. As I prepared myself to learn to love the people of Birmingham, Provo, or Boise, I had no idea that I’d be given the one place on earth where my heart is already full of love. I will work for my heart to swell and overflow with even more love for the Romanian People. As of right now, my heart is overflowing with love for the Lord. He knows me so well it’s unbelievable. He answered my prayers far beyond anything I could’ve imagined.

A few people have said yeah it was obvious, of course you’d go there… but for me I couldn’t believe that the Lord would actually send me to my one dream mission. I’m excited, nervous, shocked, anxious… you name it. But there it is folks… Romania!! 

Patience is a virtue... or so I've heard

I’ve been waiting for so long now, and Bishop said my assignment still hasn’t been made which means that at the earliest, it’ll be made next week and then mailed the following week. 

I feel at this point like it’s never going to come. I guess you could say I’ve distanced myself so much that it feels completely unreal. I'm entirely apathetic towards it, which in my opinion is the worse feeling you can have towards anything. But it’s only because it feels so unreal. It’s like I’m traveling towards the horizon, I know it’s there... I can see it, but at the same time it’s not getting closer and is a completely intangible goal. 

I know my patience is being sorely tested. But the problem is my patience has already dried up. It dried up about a week ago. My frustration has almost entirely evaporated and I just feel empty. Since it’s never going to happen what’s the point in caring right?!

Okay okay, I guess I’m exaggerating. I know it’ll come eventually. It’s just irritated that people with the same availability date as me, who put their papers in at the same time, if not after… have already received their calls. Well that either means I’m going to the Provo UT Mission, or I’ve got to wait so that my mission has perfect timing so that I can best serve the Lord. The latter would be my preference but then again I know that Heavenly Father has a great sense of humor and would probably find it hilarious to send me to Provo, or London… sigh.

This post seriously isn’t a sympathy post or begging for responses with “don’t worry sweetie it’ll come!” or other sentimental crap. I know it’ll come. I’m just ranting. I’m staying busy, working, running errands, hanging out with friends, and I’ve been doing a lot of reading. Everything will be grand and with a pinch of Polyanna I could say that the longer I wait the happier and more excited I’ll be when it finally does come.

So in summary… I’m STILL waiting