PITESTI

Hello everyone:)) this week was full of LOTS of change, but has overall been a good week.

Last monday, I left Sibiu and took a 6 hr train ride to buchurest where I stayed the night with some of the sisters there. On Tuesday morning we went back to the train station bright and early to meet the new missionaries! I met my newbie comp sora Berrett and she is seriously the sweetest and I am so lucky!

We left bucharest and took another train towards our new area, Pitesti. 

MIRACLE OF THE WEEK- traveling with all your luggage for 18 months over trains in romania, is kind of not the easiest, especially when you and your companion have 6 suitcases in total and you dont know your new area or where your apartment even is.. so I was pretty stressed out about how that was going to work out. However, the APs, the only missionaries with a car in the whole mission, offered to drive our luggage over in their car and drop it off at our apartment, so we didn't have to travel with any of it. 

I know it sounds super small, but it was a major blessing and I was so grateful for them and that help.

I would say the city of Pitesti is like Bucharest's younger brother. We haven't seen too much of the city yet (yay quarantine again, because Sora Berrett just got into the country) but from what I have seen it is actually really big and just a smaller bucharest. It's definitely not as picturesque as Sibiu, and is a little bit rougher around the edges, but I have heard that the members here are amazing and we are so excited to meet them. 

Since we are "whitewashing", we have spent the whole week just trying to find people to teach and kind of get our bearings a bit on everything here.

The lord qualifies who he calls! We have got a lot of work to do here in Pitesti and this past week I have been wondering alot about why the lord has trusted me to train a newbie, come to this new city as the only missionaries here, and go about doing His work. And not gonna lie I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed, but I do know the Lord is magnifying my efforts and he magnifies all of our efforts. Sora Berrett and I are offering our humble 5 loaves and 2 fishes and he is taking what we are offering and hopefully helping it feed thousands. 

Love you lots 

Sora Tobler 

a bbq without a BBQ

still in sibiu:)))).... but I am headed on a train to buchurest this afternoon to meet with my little new trainee and we'll be headed out to pitesti. 

I'm slightly nervous about whitewashing a new area with a newbie, but it'll definitely be a good learning experience.

But let's get down to what happened in my last week in the prettiest city in Romania-

-last time meeting with our 14 year old member maria and making pizza and crepes with her. We talked to her about kicking up her instagram a bit, she has been reposting good uplifting content ever since we talked with her about it. Let's use our platforms to spread light!!

-did another service project at a 200 year old house. We are helping with the renovations and still have a loooonng way to go. One of our members came to help us out and it was fun to get to talk to her for a bit.

-Alexandra is praying about a baptism date!!! I'm sad that I wont be here, to finish up the rest of lessons with her, but I'm so excited to see how she progresses from afar. 

-had a ward BBQ (kind of). We planned a ward get together earlier this week and our branch president bought us all the Romanian bbq essentials (meat, a loaf of bread, chips, and pepsi) and then told us that he and his wife actually wouldn't be able to make. The elders (who were going to grill the meat at the bbq) got put into quarantine right before the event, so we were left without anyone to actually bbq at the bbq. I'm sure we would have done a stellar job, but sora sorensen and I made the executive decision to forgo that aspect. 2 people ended up showing up and it was a decently good time as we ate the bread and chips that we had. 

GOD LOVES US AND ALWAYS WILL LOVE US. we come as we are, but we shouldn't expect to leave as we are. He is proud of us and all that we have accomplished thus far in our lives, but he is not satisfied yet. We still have lots of work to do!! Let's keep refining and changing ourselves everyday to be more like our savior Jesus Christ. 

What's something small that you can change this week?:)

Talk to you next week!

Sora Tobler 

two simple girls who love god

Yay for a good week! Wow time flies. 

I've just been living up my last 2 weeks in sibiu. (My new trainee has to quarantine in hungary for these next 2 weeks, so I wont be leaving sora Sorensen and sibiu until she gets here).

We had a major snow storm earlier this week and ngl I was kinda done with the weather, but the real answer to my prayers was that all the snow basically ended up melting the next day.

Friends update: 

Finally met with Cosmina face to face at the church. We gave her a church tour which went pretty well. She offered to give us a tour of her church down the street after we finished (we didn't even know she was going to another church, so that was kind of a surprise). 

Alexandra is still the cutest and we have 2-3 lessons with her every week. She is progressing so well!! The only problem is she lives about 3 hours outside of sibiu, and we are the closest branch to her (our area is kind of massive) we're just going to cross that bridge when we come to it.

DENISA. GOLDEN. literally already a member with the strongest testimony. She also lives with her husband and 2 daughters a little outside of town, and it is sometimes hard for them to get to church, but I played the "I got transferred and am leaving soon card" to make sure they came to church this week. I was kinda disappointed when they didn't show up until the last 2 minutes when they rolled in! Yay we talked for about an hour afterwards. 

We also had a service project this week which was way fun. Us and the Elders worked in this 200 year old abandoned house, that they are working to renovate and make a museum. We shoveled a caved-in floor and scraped off paint from the walls, and it was overall a good time. 

One of my favorite talks at conference this past week was presidents Nelson's talk about faith. He talked about some members in the Pacific Islands who were preparing for a large event outside, and the weather was horrible and wouldn't stop raining. Members fasted and prayed so that the rain would stop and in some of the islands It did, they had to have faith that the rain would stop. One of the islands the rain did not stop. They had to have faith to endure the rain even when it wasnt stopping. Sometimes we dont also get what we want and have to have faith to endure our trials until the blessings come.

Have faith and hope you have a great week! 

Sora Tobler

 

the easter bunny came

happy Easter and conference weekend:)

Romania actually doesn't celebrate Easter until May, but it just means that I'll be able to celebrate it twice. 

We got transfer calls this week, and I am sad to say that I am leaving Sibiu this next transfer:(  I'm going to be opening up a brand new area for sisters and training a newbie! not gonna lie, I'm kind of stressed about it, but it should be an adventure. Luckily I still have 2 final weeks left in Sibiu, because the new missionaries need to quarantine for 2 weeks in Hungary before arriving in Romania. 

Our girls cosmin and alexandra are THRIVING. we had great lessons with both of them this week and they are both praying about baptism. I'm kind of sad that I won't be here for the baptisms, but it's all good. 

General Conference was SO GOOD. after talking to lots of people this week about conference and our prophet and hearing a bunch of different opinions, I am just so thankful for a living prophet and apostles that speak to us!!

Love you all:)

Sora Tobler

 

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

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 

an egg vending machine

 Buna 

There is a egg vending machine near one of our friends apartments. Last time we went and visited her a couple of weeks ago, and passed by this egg vending machine and thought it was way cool. Sadly tho we did not have enough money on us to buy some eggs. Ever since then we have been thinking of how an egg vending machine works?! I mean once you buy the eggs they will fall down in the machine and they will just break! We went to visit her this week and were sure that we brought enough money to try it out. I dont know how to explain, but the eggs did not break and we ended up making some nice breakfast burritos for dinner. 

Sorry for that long story, there is just not much else to fill you in on this week. Just another week in the life! 

Transfers are next week and sora anderson are pretty sure we are going to get split, because sora anderson has been here is sibiu for almost 6 months. 

But we are so sad about, because we have the best of times and I seriously love her so much! But I'll keep you posted...

I was reading in come follow me this week in D&C 15:6 where it says:

6 And now, behold, I say unto you, that the thing which will be of the most worth unto you will be to declare repentance unto this people, that you may bring souls unto me, that you may rest with them in the kingdom of my Father. Amen.

I know that the most important thing that I could be doing with my life right now is being a missionary! There is nothing of greater worth for me right now than to be sharing the gospel:)) I love being a missionary

Sora Tobler 

happy valentine's day

Happy Valentine's Day week, or as we like to say over here in Romania, ziua Indragostitilor fericita:)

Lots of small miracles this week!

Our friend Virocia's phone broke at the start of this week, and we seriously had not been able to get ahold of her the whole week, which was kind of a problem. With a broken phone, and not having spoken to her the whole week, she miraculously appeared on zoom at church!

While we didn't have very many established lessons this week, we have been having lots of really good conversations on facebook and instagram.

I posted about the Book of Mormon on my story about 2 weeks ago, and we were able to find 2 new people in sibiu who were curious and wanted to learn more!

Met our cute friend Ava on Instagram and then visited her at work later this week. She works at a cute cafe library place and she gave us some hot chocolate for free when we visited her. She's the cutest, and I have lots of hope for her:)

We had media training from someone from the europe area presidency, and he showed us some cool stats and numbers, and all I can say that Media Missionary Work WORKS. The pandemic is not slowing down the Lord's work here, in fac,t I would say it's actually speeding up!!

A quick little classic valentine's scripture for your monday:

34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

I love LOVE. Its kinda the best! And I think the world could use a little bit more love! I have truly grown to love the people here in Romania, and try every day to love like our savior Jesus Christ loved (which ngl is sometimes easier said then done).

Let's have more love, more kindness, more unity!

Go tell someone you love them right now!

Love you all

Sora Tobler