buna buna buna

buna buna buna 

A solid good week here in Transylvania Town. 

Nothing super big and exciting happened this week but just a lot of small things and miracles that made this week so so good! 

-We had zone conference this week which is always a really good time.

-Had an amazing lesson with our friend Alexandra about faith and we read from the children's book of Mormon about faith in Alma 32. It was so good and the spirit was so strong and she really liked it. Also she came to church yesterday 

-Gave a fire talk about prophets and general conference in church! So so excited about general conference this weekend and you should be too!

-our friend Ade dropped us, (but after she did that i asked her if she knew anyone else who would be interested and she gave us 3 of her friends to teach and reach out them). 

-One of the friends we are teaching, Ioana, is a nail lady and today for p day she did our nails and we gave her a Book of Mormon hard copy and she was so excited about it

-Tried our hand at cooking a traditional Romanian dish, Arde umpluti, it was not my favorite, but sora Sorensen seemed to like it.

-A missionary currently serving in England reached out to us about his sister who is not a member and currently living in Sibiu. We have been talking with her recently and she is GOLDEN. And already ready to be baptized practically. We are going to start having lessons with her and her brother and his companion and she keeps talking to us about how her brother is gonna baptize her when he gets home from mission in April! Yay! 

-ran 8.5 miles on Saturday. Not gonna lie I'm pretty proud of myself and we ended up doing it relatively fast!

I'm so excited for general conference this week!!! If you're not... then you're missing out:)

I invite you all to watch it, and watch it with specific questions. I can promise you that they will be answered in one way or another:) 

also I hope everyone has a great Easter week focused on CHRIST.

Love Sora T

halfway?!?!?

 Wow wow we are half way there? How have I already been a missionary for 9 months? 

As a quick update:

We are in quarantine again because one of our friends was sick.

Had an exchange this week.

Our friend Ade is still doing pretty well! We had to set some standards with her the other day we we told her that we couldn't babysit her 1 year old daughter, but other than that she is doing well.

For 9 months here are 9 things I have learned so far-

1. You never have 2 really bad days in a row. The past 9 months have been been full of their fair share of some rough days, but I can confidently say that the day following is also a bit better than the previous. 

2. I actually like running ! Waking up at 6:30 is still hard lol but I actually quite enjoy a morning run

3. The lord hears our prayers! The power of prayer is so so true and I cant even count the number of times that I have witnessed the power of prayer at work here in my mission.

4. I'm convinced that romania has the best bakeries and pastries hands down. Chocolate covrigs from a shop called luca are the best snack/desert ever. No one can convince me otherwise.

5. We are all Gods children. Doesnt matter if your from Romania, Arizona, or under a rock. God loves us all

6. The lord works Miracles every day all around us. Big/small. Just got to open our eyes 

7. I really took my car for granted. Public transportation is great and allllll....... butttt.... I kind miss my car ngl

8. The gift of tongues! Exists!!! If you told me 9 months ago I would be able to understand and be able to speak (decent) romania I would have laughed.

9. The work of the lord rolls forward despite a global pandemic or anything for that matter. So grateful that I can play a small part in his great plan. 

I could keep going, but for the length of this email and for the asthetic of it being 9 things for 9 months I will stop there.

Love you all. See you in 9 months ;))

Sora Tobler 

Toast Tragedy

Not gonna lie, I dont have anything super exciting to share this week and this week was kind of long, but I guess some weeks are just a bit longer than others! 

We had a birthday party for our member friend eugene at the church on Tuesday which was fun. We're still not really allowed to meet inside the church for gatherings other than church on sunday, so we dragged a table outside and sat out there to play some games with him and eat cake. He was very persistent that we make a pokemon cake, so that's exactly what we did. I would say it turned out alot better than I thought.

Lesson learned- serrated knives are very sharp and are not my best friend. I almost sliced the top of my finger off cutting some bread for lunch the other day. What's a girl gotta do for some avocado toast 

Our friend Ade came to church face to face this week and she liked it lots! She told us she is going to bring her kids next week and we are so excited. I also translated for our one friend that just speaks english and not Romanian. I have translated church before, but it's been a while, and ngl translating real time Romanian to english for the duration of church is kind a brain drainer 🤪🥴 and afterwards I'm a little fried. I'd say I'm getting better though

Also I'll be exactly halfway done with my mission this next week 🤯

Don't stop trying, don't stop growing, don't stop moving forward. Life is about change, and growth, and continuing to endure even if things are hard! Christianity isn't comfortable!

Also happy birthday shout-out to the best dad ever @Marc tobler. Anyone who knows my dad knows that he is actually the coolest. I love you and happy birthday!! 🥳

love you all,

Sora Tobler

Spring, I hope

 Buna! Abia astept primavara, sunt foarte gata cu iarna! 

- Tuesday: my last day with Sister Anderson! Was a sad day because we are seriously the best of friends, but I know the change will be good. We ended the transfer at our favorite local shwarma shop as our last meal 

- Wendesday: all the missionaries usually meet in bucurest for transfers, so we had to catch a very early train to buchurest in the morning (we had to run to the train station because someone -definitely not me- thought we had enough time to make a bowl of oatmeal in the morning, when in reality we did not) 

Said good byes in buchurest :,( and took a train back to sibiu the same day! Also Had a nice conversation with a cute little old orthodox lady at the station 

- Thursday: after running to the church a bit late for a lesson and finally arriving at the church, I realized the sora anderson had accidentally taken the keys to the church with her to her new city! 🥴 

still figuring out how we are going to fix that minor problem

- Friday: we found a family to teach!!!! A real answer to our prayers! We went to their house and met with the mom and her daughter! I am so excited for them and have so much hope! On our way home I figured I would practice my Romanian with some people waiting at the bus station and started talking to this one lady. She promptly walked away and I was like, "hm wow that really did not work this kind of stinks" and not 2 seconds after, a lady walked up and started a conversation with me!  And another girl started a conversation with us on the bus.

- Sunday: I found out that my friend Gaby who I had been teaching in buchurest and that was baptized at the end of Decemeber when I was there is thinking about serving a mission!!!

This week went by so fast and was filled with lots of mini-miracles and I definitely saw the hand of the lord in my life this week. 

6 Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.

Sometimes I think I have to be seeing massive results or doing something super big to make a difference, butttt the lord works through small and simple things and what I am doing matters! What you are doing matters! 

Love u all

Sora t 

train game

A week for the books.

We had a little movie family night with the 2 youth in our ward and our branch president last Monday night:) and while maria and cosmin, the youth, really weren't into the church movie that we watched(that had really bad Romanian subtitles lol) it was still a fun time and we ordered and ate pizza 

Had an exchange with sora rytting. She has only been here for about 4 weeks and all I can say is I forgot how hard it was to be brand new in the country and not know how to speak in Romanian at all! It was cool to see how far I've come and how far I'll still hopefully improve in the next 9 months. 

Highlight of the week- our district activity. Since we have not been allowed to get together with our districts practically at all since I arrived, President Rucker (who is actually the best) has given us permission to take a day in every transfer for the rest of the year to travel and get together and do something fun all together so we can build some mission unity haha. So this week on friday night the sister here in sibiu headed out to meet the rest of our district in cluj (which is another city a couple hours north of us) we left our apartment at 11:00 on friday night, and got to cluj at 5.00 in the morning on saturday! We had to change trains in the middle of the night, wait at a a train station in the middle of nowhere for a couple of hours, but we made it safely to cluj and the elders had breakfast waiting for us at the church. We did some service, filmed a video, and walked around the city and it was one a overall really good day!

As expected, sora anderson is getting transferred and I am kind of sad about it because we are literally the bestest of friends and had a great time together!!:,( but I'm excited for my new comp sora sorenson.

I finished the Book of Mormon again this week and all I can say is that I KNOW that is is true and the word of God! Every time I read it I receive a feeling that it is true!! So grateful for the Book of Mormon in my life and if you haven't read it, you should! Make reading scriptures a priority in your life! I know you will be blessed! 

Love you all 

Sora Tobler