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

 

Up!

Bună ziuă dragi frați si surori! Greetings from the great land of Piteşti.

I'm going to be straight and just say that this week was kind of HARD. I thought it would be unfair to you all and even be a slight disservice if I pretended that my mission was an always happy super amazing 18-month experience, and left out the harder details. Don't get me wrong, I love being a missionary and love serving the people here in Romania, but I would be lying if I said that everyday I jumped out of bed.

Pitesti has been a hard area and Sora Berrett and I have seen very little progress come from our past 6 weeks here, and this week we started another transfer together here. While the past couple of days have been a little more challenging, that's not to say that they have been without their miracles!!

⭐ we were in Buchurest for some visa work and it was raining BUCKETS. We were sorely unprepared for the bad weather and didnt have anywhere to go in between our appointments, but we went to the closest McDonalds to take shelter and it was so crowded inside with no empty tables and I thought it was a lost cause, but after doing a couple rounds we found a tiny empty unoccupied table in the corner!

⭐ on our train ride back from Bucuresti a man noticed that we were studying Romanian. Without even talking to him first, he struck up a conversation with us and was WAY interested. We gave him a Book of Mormon and exchanged numbers before he got off at his stop

⭐we were eating lunch at a park one day, and this lady with her daughter just walked up to us after noticing our name tags. She asked us if we had any books about our religion that we could give her. I pulled out a Book of Mormon (that I had last second slipped into my bag before we headed to lunch)!

⭐my showers had warm water this week 

I have seen myself stretched so much in these past couple of weeks. I have really had to place my trust in the Lord and in the fact that this is His work, and I am simply just an instrument in forwarding it. I know that after times of tribulation come times of great blessings. 

We have to have humbling and hard times to be able to learn and grow, and despite being in a time of tribulation or trial, we can still see miracles, big or small, in everyday life. 

Love you all

Sora Tobler

Dracula's Castle

A couple quick things from this week:)

1. We totally (accidentally) made someone crash their bike in a massive puddle, but dont worry he was really nice about it concerning the situation and we felt really bad 

2. President Rucker and the APs came and visited! After 2 weeks of quarantine by himself here in romania, president Rucker is able to tour the country and cities. He and the APs stopped by on Saturday. we had interviews, all went to lunch, talked with some members, and it was an all-around good time.

3. Took a little field trip to Bucuresti to get sister berrett's retainer fixed. I miss bucharest a bit. 

4. I am growing to love pitesti more and more everyday. Not gonna lie, it was not a first love type of situation, when I first got here, but I'd say I grow to love it more here everyday (thank you heavenly father for helping me out in that department) 

5. Still trying to find some people to teach, but we are not getting discouraged! Just keeping going with faith.

6. Member highlight- Robert. Seriously one of the funniest guys I have ever met, he has super long curly hair and he is an actor. His most recent gig is in Rapunzel. He is a recent convert, has one of the strongest testimonies, and is just the life of the party over here in pitesti. 

7. Hope you all remember my invitation last week and are still working on a spiritual gift! I've been working on how to hear the holy Ghost a bit better in my life. Let me know how it is going. 

8. I wish you could tell you more about our p day adventure today (Dracula's Castle), but sadly I don't have time to write about it, but stay tuned for next week. 

Love you all:)