WEEK 2 IN BUC

 Bună Seara!

Hope everyone is doing well:)

Week 2 in București was a good one! We were super busy and I felt like the week seriously just flew by. This week I want to talk about some of the cool people I've met here:)

Sister Oros: On Tuesday we went to Sister Oros' apartment to help her order some things online since the website was all in English and she doesn't speak English. After we helped her, she insisted we stay so that she could order us the BEST pizza in all of Europe and eat lunch with us. We said ok and asked her where she was ordering us the best pizza from and she said Pizza Hut! 

Who knew Pizza Hut had the best pizza in all of Europe?!?!  I love Sister Oros and she is seriously the funniest and I am so glad we were able to serve her this week.

Cristian: Crisitan lives in the same apartment complex as us and has been meeting with missionaries for awhile now. This week though, he came to our church bbq and agreed to play the guitar for me while I sing a special musical number or something, so stay tuned for that. 

Miheala: Miheala is kinda eclectic, but has the SWEETEST soul, she is a single mom and her son is kind of crazy, but she is so so patient and I aspire to be as patient as her one day. She also brought her bunny to church on sunday which was fun. 

President Drăgoi: Our branch president is the coolest and we are so lucky to have him in our branch, because most of the other branches in romania have elder missionaries as branch presidents. 

We helped President Drăgoi with his family history this week which was a good time.

God is our Heavenly Father, and he loves ALL his children!!

No matter where we are or what our circumstances, He loves us! 

He knows each of us by name. He knows our struggles and our strengths. 

This week try to see people as God sees them-- His beloved sons and daughters!!

Sora Tobler

Roasted

Oh man where to begin??!

First off, I already love it here. I am serving in the Capitol Bucharest and it is amazing. Bucharest is a massive city and is always busy with people walking and something is always going on. We take the Metro system to get around and it's pretty much exactly like the subway system in New York. Except for the metro stations here smell like fresh baked bakery stuff since there is like a bakery every 5 feet haha.

Bucharest is kinda this weird mix between a western european cute city and like a russian communist city. It's a whack mix, but kinda cool.

My companion Sora Bauco is so cool, and I serisously couldn't be happier with having her as my companion. It's nice, she really likes running, so we go running practically every morning and night.

We are pretty busy here, and most days I feel like we don't have enough hours in the day to do everything we need to do.

We still do a lot of FB finding and let me tell you, people can be soo rude haha and so weird. If only you knew some of the whack messages i've gotten. 

I still don't understand squat when people are speaking in romanian, sooooo that's kinda stressful, but I have faith that I'll be able to get it eventually, but until then... I kind of just ask people to repeat what they say like 10 times until they eventually just speak to me in english haha. It's hard because most people speak english here and just want to practice their english with us, and I want to practice my romanian with them lol

We had church yesterday, and It was the first time i've been to church since March!! It was so nice, and besides the fact that I had to give the opening prayer, I quite enjoyed it. 

Anyways, I hope everyone has a great week:))))

I just want everyone to know that Jesus Christ wants us to come unto Him!! His arms are open and extended to us! :)))

Sora Caroline 

Sunt in ROMANIA

 Well, this week was an eventful one let me tell you... so sorry if this long lol

Friday, we finally got out of quarantine (thank goodness) and we were able to GO OUTSIDE. After living in Budapest for almost 3 weeks, I actually got to see where i've been living, kinda crazy. President and Sister Rucker took us all to this really cool restaurant for lunch and it was probs some of the best food i've ever had (or maybe my standards were just very low, because the quarantine food we were eating was not all that great haha). After that, we all went to the mission home/office and found out about the "mission impossible" expedition that had been concocted to get us to Romania on Monday (burner phones, official documents, and important instructions included lol). I also found out that once I got to Romania, I'll be serving Bucharest, the capital, with Sister Bauco! 

very excited about that.

Saturday, was our p-day and we got to see the city some more and ate sushi for dinner (so that was great). We also went on a run Saturday morning and saw the SWEETEST THING: 

At like 6:45 in the morning, we saw this teenage boy walking along the river by himself, placing burgers by the all homeless people that were sleeping there. It made my heart very happy.

Monday, we woke up at 5:00 am to get to the train station, and catch our 18-hr train ride at 7:10am. The border crossings on both the Hungary and Romanian side were smoother than we all expected which was nice. 

About 7 hrs in to what was supposed to be a direct train ride to Bucharest, the train conductor guy came around to tell us that the line was actually ending in like 10 mins and that to get to Bucharest, we needed to hop off, catch a bus, ride it for 30 mins to another train station, and then catch a new train to Bucharest... between his broken english and our pretty nonexistant romanian we were all very confused and stressed. Luckily, this really nice guy who spoke English (who we ended up giving a book of mormon to) and the train conductor guy, helped us out and helped us carry all our luggage off the train and direct us to the bus that we barely caught haha. After the bus ride in the middle of nowhere, we finally got to the second train station and with the help of a couple really sweet romanian grandpas and the English speaking guy, we got onto our second train lol. 

While we were passing this really pretty lake, the old man sitting next to me started going off about how on the other side of the lake was Serbia, and how the lake was formed by one of Romania's communist dictators, and how life was during communism haha ngl my vocabulary about communist history is pretty minimal so....at least I think that is what he was talking about.

We finally pulled into the Bucharest train station at 2:00 am in the morning and met some of the missionaries serving here! It was a long day, but there were so many miracles along the way, and I know the only reason we got here is with the Lord's help:)

Vă iubim!!!!!

Sora Tobler

(pic 3 is of an old man on the train explaining to me Romanian History hahaha)

A Real Page Turner

 Buna ziua toata lumea!

Hmm let's see... still quarantined in an apartment in Hungary! It's ok though, because we are able to go outside of friday!! I miss the sun very much haha and I can't wait to actually feel it again at the end of this week:))) I am so so excited to get back to doing actual missionary work after this weird 2 week little vacation.

We watched one of the branches hold their testimony over zoom yesterday and it was actually the sweetest thing. I was able to understand most of it (kinda) and it was really neat to see how pure the peoples testimonies are here. It just reminded me of how simple the Gospel of Jesus Christ really is.

We have been helping to teach lessons with other companionships in Romania over zoom once a day. One of the days, we taught a 15 yr old girl named Patricia. There was tons of noise and distractions  for a majority of the lesson, but right when we got all started bearing our testimonies of Joseph Smith, everything was silent and the spirit was so so strong. Just a little miracle from God right there, if I do say so myself.

Sister Rucker and her family dropped us off Burgers and Fries for dinner Saturday night! It was a nice little treat!

We had a mission wide fast on Sunday for the Romanian borders to open up and that us 9 missionaries here in Hungary will get to go to Romania soon, so that was really cool.

I was reading in 1 Nephi this week and came across this verse in chapter 21: 

"But, behold, Zion hath said: The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me—but he will show that he hath not."

It has been hard for me sometimes not to feel like the Lord has forgotten about me, as I have been stuck in this tiny apartment in Budapest, trying to learn Romanian. And although it is sometimes hard for me to see, I know that God has actually never left me and has been by my side the whole time:)) I invite you all to look a little harder for the hand of God in your lives this week!!!

Sora Tobler