a surprise baptism

Thanks to all who sent me a picture in response to last week's email:) glad to hear that everyone is doing well.

I hope last week you were able to look for and find the joy in everyday, here are just a few moments from my week.

-country-wide conference: all the missionaries in Romania gathered together in Bucharest for a conference and it was quite the time 

- our sweet old member Sora Savu talked our ear off at her house for about 2 hours and towards the end of our visit whipped out a cute little box to show us all the kidney stones she has ever had and told us the story behind each one!  (she must have forgotten that she already showed me her kidney stones a couple weeks ago at church!) I couldn't help but smile 

- we made Cafe Rio style chicken burritos the other night and they were maybe the best meal I have had all year.

- a reel I made on Instagram is still getting 4 or 5 likes a day and I am able to start conversations with every single one of those people! 

- we have been planning for "light the world" these past couple of weeks and I am excited for it to be December so we can start rolling out some of these new projects 

And to end, the cutest story you will ever hear:

Eni is from Albania (where my dear brother Jackson served) and always saw the missionaries on the street of the city where he was living there, but never had a chance to talk with them/ wasn't really interested. Eni then moved to Romania, where he started going to college and met Maria. Maria and Eni started dating and Maria randomly met the sister missionaries in her area on fb after sets of missionaries Maria started taking the lessons officially and decided she wanted to get baptized. Eni (who used to be an atheist) also started taking the discussions with Maria and started to know of the truthfulness of the restored Gospel. After some time Eni also decided he wanted to get baptized, but wanted it to be a surprise for Maria. They were married officially on Friday and Maria's baptismal day was Saturday! After Maria was done changing into her baptismal clothes and taking some pictures ENI WALKS OUT DRESSED IN WHITE ALSO AND MARIA IS SO SUPRISED. she started crying. it was probably one of the sweetest moments I have seen on my mission so far :,) and I will send you the video so that you can see for yourself!!

GOD is GOOD

Sora Tobler

 

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 🤍🤍🤍

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 

who let the dogs out

 Hope everyone is doing well and had a good week:)))

american pride

After getting out of quarantine this week, Sora Berrett decided that we were going to go out and try to find some of our members. We headed out towards Sora Maria's house, a member who before even meeting us was so excited that we were here in pitesti, that she called us everyday since we arrived! She lives about and hour outside of pitesti so we needed to take a MAXI TAXI out to her little house in the middle of a cute lil village. She was so cute and so so happy to see us. Her house was only about 6×6 feet and only one room, but she was so welcoming and had a little lunch for us. A missionary a couple years ago gave her american flag and she has been obsessed with america ever since. (See attached pics)

who let the dogs out

There are 3 little stray dogs that live right next to our house and follow us around everywere we go. I think it is because we gave them some hot dogs as we were walking home one day and now they are just our best friends.

neighbors

We have seen our neighbors a couple times, but really haven't had a good opportunity to speak with them. We were leaving to go on a run one night, and ran into them as they were going on a walk! They were so sweet and invited us over to dinner and were super interested and curious on why we were here. Little blessings!

paste fericit

Since most romanians are orthodox and follow a different yearly calendar than the one that we have in this United states, easter for everyone here in romania was this past week! Not complaining that I was able to celebrate easter twice and just so grateful for the reason behind easter, whether it is celebrated in april or may. As Paul says in Corinthians 15:22, "22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." I know that christ lives and because He lives we too will be able to live again. I love the doctrine of resurrection and have loved studying it more in depth these past few weeks. Isus a înviat! Adevărat a înviat! 

Hope everyone has a great week:)

sora T