how much wood could a woodchuck chuck?

many miracles and good things these past 2 weeks:)))

-baptism in brasov!!! A cute little girl in sora taylor's old area got baptized and we were able to go!

-I am in a trio now! The trio life has been quite an adjustment, but I am learning a lot and we are getting along.

-the miracle of the lost laptop! We lost our laptop on the train and it was MIRACOUSLY WAITING FOR US at the train station an hour after we left it. 

-baptism in pitesti! There was a baptism in my old area pitesti, and it was the cutest!  Alexandra had the sweetest testimony and the spirt was so strong there! 

-delegation! As the media leaders, we have LOTS to do and with our new trio situation we absorbed a whole new area, and now we are even more busy. Which is amazing, but we are struggling to stay on top of it all, so we came up with a nice delegation plan of media to help ourselves out a bit and give other missionaries some responsibilities! 

-wood chopping! I'd call my self a lumberjack now. We had a district activity where we were able to help a member out by chopping A LOT of wood at his house to help him prepare for winter.

-our new friend Andreea! We actually just had a lesson with her today, and she is GOLDEN and the sweetest! She is a mom with three kids and we are so excited to keep teaching her!

-it is sunny and the weather has been quite perfect this past week! 

I have been thinking a lot lately about this quote from Brad Wilcox's talk from this most recent conference, "God loves us as we are, but He also loves us too much to leave us this way."

Life is about change. This gospel is about change. Repentance is about change. I am so grateful for the changes I have experienced in my time so far as a missionary. I am grateful for the love God has for me, that he helps me through experiences and challenges to change and become more like Him. I am excited keep growing and progressing and changing for the rest of my life. 

What is one thing you can change this week?

Sora Tobler:)

a good week

This week was quite another good one if I do say so myself:)

-tuesday: as media leaders in the mission we have a meeting with our Mission President and his wife every week! It has been so amazing working and counseling about the direction of the mission and trouble shooting everything together. The Ruckers are so inspired when it comes to leading the mission, and because of their diligence and faith, we have seen so much success as a mission! We are still currently one of the leading missions worldwide for generating media referrals, and Sora Anderson and I now have the privilege of working with a professional from Salt Lake in further developing our ads and media! It has been a little hard adjusting to being more of a "behind the scenes" person in this new media calling, as we mediate things for the whole mission, and don't have a lot of time to have our own teaching pool, but i have came to love it. 

The miracles that I have been able to see through the work we are doing makes it all worth it!!

- Sora Anderson and I were quite bored with our "sister missionary outfits" and decided to try and put together outfits that matched for the whole week just to change things up. Of course this meant we had to take pictures of every outfit. One day while taking our daily self-timer picture (which we had set up at a tram station), Sora Anderson was quite literally almost hit by the tram. Good thing we captured part of the incident on picture! We are glad Sora Anderson is still with us today.

- friday: for our district activity this transfer, the Elders from Craiova and Pitesti traveled over to us sisters in Ploiesti so that we could have district council in person and bake some goodies, and then deliver them to some of our members. It was fun to meet our district members IN PERSON for the first time this transfer, and we had a good time baking batches upon batches of brownies and then delivering them. 

- Our old member, Mihai, showed up to the church one day with a bunch of old photos of him and his family and it was quite fascinating to hear about his story (apparently he was quite a Heartbreaker), and more about the history of Romania, it was quite a good time. 

- Florea is looking to be baptized at the end of this month maybe!!! 

We are aiming to set a solid date with him this week! 

- Got up and gave a good Lil testimony about general conference and the prophet and his apostles in testimony meeting yesterday! I still get a bit nervous speaking in church in Romanian, but it went well! I am thankful for a living prophet, and the fact that Jesus Christ directs his church in these days!! Is that not the coolest??!

I challenge you all to prepare for general conference this next up coming month! 

Take time to prepare with questions, an open mind, and a prayer in your heart, and I can promise you that you will be able to find answers to your questions!

Love you all:)

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 🤍🤍🤍

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