a whole white onion

Life is good. The mission is good. God is good. And I am happy. 

This week was a blast. I think it only took about a year (I hit 1 year on Thursday🤯), but I can say that I feel like I'm now actually starting to focus 100% on the work and I am seeing a difference because of it. Before I was always slightly tied back to the idea of being at home, at college, or of all the other places I could be or things I could be doing, but there is honestly no place I would rather be that in Pitești, Romania right now as a missionary. 

OUR FRIEND DIANA IS PROGRESSING SOOO MUCH. She came to church again yesterday and we invited her to baptism! She is seriously so prepared and amazing and we love her so much. She is still praying about a date and we hope we can help her work towards a set date this next week. 

It was our neighbor Diana's birthday on Saturday and we baked a cake and ate dinner with her and her daughter. She made us this Romanian stew stuff and apparently the way to eat it is to take a massive bite out of a white onion (like an apple) and then a bite of the stew and then to repeat the process. Sora Berrett started choking a bit when she took a bite, but I honestly didn't think it was that bad. 

Had some good Mexican food at my fav Mexican food place in bucuresti, it was not as good as the real stuff, but good enough for me:) 

I have been trying to get get in contact and build a relationship with this one less active member since I have gotten here. She was not really interested in talking with us at all, but we kept constantly trying and she eventually trusted us enough to just simply ask us to pray for her because she was sick. Because she was sick, I got the idea to drop her and her kids off some dinner and searched their address and searched down their apartment. It ended up being a completely wrong address, but she said she was touched that we were thinking about her and when we asked her what her new address was, she still didn't trust us enough to give it to us haha. But a couple days later she sent us her correct address and told us that she wanted us to visit her and read from the scriptures with her and we were able to finally visit and meet her.

I am thankful for personal revelation and being able to act on the revelation that I receive. God is working in our lives and is ready to give us revelation and guide us as we strive to listen to him, and as we listen and act on what we receive, he will bless us with even more. 

Seek personal revelation this week!

Love Sora Tobler 🤍🤍🤍

one old cellar with 8 missionaries

This week was actually way good over here, and I would say one of my favorite weeks on the mission!

After about 2 transfers here in Pitești an we:

 A) actually have friends and B) they are actually really cool and progressing C) saw miracles left and right this week 

A quick friend update-

-Met with our friend Diana (not our neighboor Diana) in person for the first time this week at the church. She was rapid-fire throwing questions, and not going to lie I did not know the answers to all of them, but the Holy Ghost really pulled us through to help us out. She also came to church yesterday and stayed for the whole time!

-Our neighboor Diana is still as friendly as ever. We always seem to run into her as we are leaving the apartment and her and her daughter are coming home and I am sure it is not a coincidence. We  invited her to church when we saw her outside one day and she intially said no, but later that day she called us back and said she was going to try and make it! She ended up showing up after church had already ended, but she told us that after she knew she wasnt going to make it on time, she still wanted to show up at the end so that she could give us a ride home from the church because it was raining cats and dogs outside.

-Started meeting with this girl Delia, and she is also AMAZING. we do half English lessons with her, and then teach a lesson. We taught her the Restoration and she was super into it. She has 14 siblings, all who go to different churches, and she says she has been searching for the true church her whole life. We have another lesson with her tomorrow and are super excited about it. 

-we had a service project this week as a district and it was fun to see other missionaries face to face. Our district is really spread-out and it took everyone about 2.5 hours by train to come together somewhere in the middle of all our areas for the service project, but it was worth it. We sorted clothes in this cool underground cellar thing for about 4 hours, and while it doesn't sound like the most exciting thing, I can promise you it was a way fun time and I love my district. 

We had a devotional as a Zone on Zoom last night, and we all were able to talk about and share our conversion stories. It was super cool and while preparing what I was going to say, I got thinking about my own conversion story. While I am still being converted to the gospel every single day, and know it will be a continuous lifelong process to become a more converted disciple of Jesus Christ,  I realized that I never had a big "light-bulb" moment where I knew this church was true, I realized that a bunch of smaller powerful spiritual moments have came together to build my undeniable testimony of the gospel. As it says in 2 Nephi 28:30, "For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have." Line upon line, precept upon precept is how I have come to build my testimony and knowledge that this is the true church of Jesus Chirst! I invite you all to think about your "conversion story" this week and how you built and will continue to build your testimony!

Love ya lots,

sora Tobler

summer

wow! A good summery week over here:) some good things to fill ya'll in!

-found a really promising friend on instagram! She is really cute and her name is Diana, she is a college student here and literally has the most golden questions/curiosity. We have had a couple lessons with her this week and have another one set up.

-our other friend diana (our neighbor) is doing well and we are actually going to get our hair cut with her later today

-another lady named diana (diana is a very popular name here if you can't tell) started calling us out of the blue, and im not sure how she got our number, but we pray with her every time she calls and then she hangs up! 

-saw one of the prettiest sunsets that i have maybe ever seen in my life. Grateful for our apartment and its massive balcony, and how it gets dark now at like 9.30 and we can watch the sun set every night 

- church was wild this week. We usually have our original classic crew of 3 people that show up and maybe an occasional friend (getting people to church has been a slight struggle for us here) but this week we had 11 people not including us🤯 --that over doubled our usual number and is a big deal for us. In weekly planning this week, we made a big goal about getting people to church and worked HARD to make it happen. 

The Lord definitely saw our efforts and a miracle happened! Things are looking up for the little Pitești branch;)

The Lord sees our efforts and magnifies them, big and small.

Have a lovely week!

Sora Tobler

 

a good week

buna! 

This week was a good one:)

The highlights:

Maria & ionuț: the cutest little Romanian grandma who takes care of her grandson (who is like a mega ball of energy, and I don't know how she does it) came to Pitesti on Tuesday! They live about an hour outside of the city, so they don't come too often, but they had to do some stuff in the city. We spent the morning with them and helped them with some of the work they needed to get done. 

-Robert: a recent convert here, who is a really awesome guy. He is an actor and his most recent role is Pinocchio. He likes talking our ears off about his acting gigs and it is quite interesting to listen to. We met with him this week and had a post-baptism lesson in town center. He should be getting the priesthood next Sunday and we are way psyched for him

-Rain: it rained about every second of every day this week. You should have seen when we were walking to the church and I was just in the right place at the right time and was drenched by a massive puddle, when a car came speeding down the street. Sora Berrett was in the clear, walking a couple feet behind me, but I was definitely in the splash zone. It was honestly pretty funny, and although I was soaked for the rest of the day, we couldn't stop laughing about it. 

-OUR GOLDEN NEIGHBOOR: we ran into Diana and her daughter Ariana a couple of weeks ago while we were leaving for our night run. We stopped and talked for a while and exchanged Facebooks, but it didn't really go anywhere after that. I had lil prompting to reach out to her again last week and she was so so happy to hear from us and was totally down to meet up. 

We are excited to be friends with her!!

I definitely felt the lord's help this week! I just want to say thank you for all the encouraging emails, texts, and messages this week, they really helped, and thank you for all the prayers!! They were definitely felt all the way over here in romania. It was cool to feel the power of prayer working in my life and I definitely felt angels round about me to bear me up! 

One of my favorite verses from this week, "33 Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great." (D&C 64:33) 

*Cue cliche bummer sticker phrase*:

Don't give up, and keep moving forward! 

Love, Sora Tobler