ROAD TRIP!

life is good:):):) 

this week was another crazy one, but when has any week not been??

-we had so many member visits this week!! on tuesday, we went over to the Mușats house for lunch and it was a good time. We maybe kind of invited ourselves over, but we had a good time. They are a very fun family, and have 2 daughters who are the exact same age as my sisters, Ellison and Charlotte. Sora Șimon, had us over well!! She is an ORIGINAL member of the branch and one of the first and remaining members of the church! She fed us a 5-course meal (which consisted of some very good, but also very skeptical dishes). Lastly we headed over to Fratele Baluțăs house on the outskirts of town. He pulled out some very old photos of him and took us through his whole life story as we drank the orange Fanta (a Romanian classic) that he provided for us. 

-alex is getting baptized this saturday!!! We met with him 2x this week, of course coming prepared to his lessons with some sort of game or object lesson to keep his 9 year old attention span focused on what we were teaching. Our repentance object lesson that we did with him as we were teaching the gospel of jesus christ epically failed, and left us kind of floundering, but we were still able to get him to understand repentance.

 (note- test object lesson/experiments beforehand to make sure they actually work)

-Mission Conference!!! As i am sure i have explained before, as a mission we all get together once a transfer over Zoom to do a mission conference with some trainings, get counsel from President Rucker and his wife, and some other activities. As social media leaders now, sora anderson and I had the privlege of giving a training with the other social media sisters in Hungary. We had a very good presentation planned out, until we all had a very strong feeling to change it the day before. All of us were kind of scrambling with our last-second 180 on our presentation, but we pulled it together pretty well, and it was excatly what we needed to speak on.

 It definitely was an inspired switch!!

-ROAD TRIP! Ok not actually, but kind of. A couple weeks ago a couple elders and I recorded a song for our facebook page. On saturday, we all got together to film the "music video" and put the whole thing together. The place we decided to film was quite a ways away from all of us, and took some travel time, but it was GORGEOUS. Like i actually don't know if I have ever been to a prettier place. 

-our friend Florea is praying about baptism!! He came to church this sunday and last Sunday and is slowly but surely progressing! Little request to keep him, Alex, and Diana (my friend from my last area who is still on date there for the 20th of august) in your prayers!

We pass fields upon fields of sunflowers when we are traveling in trains, and I love looking out the window and seeing them. As you all probably know, they always are facing the sun, that is where they turn. Now what if we were also facing the Son of God?!  Always turning towards him, the light and life of the world! Life is so much better as we turn ourselves towards christ and focus on him. How you can center yourselves more on christ this week? 

Castle and a Talent Show

Bună bună bună. 

Can't believe I am writing yet another email. The weeks are seriously flying by so so fast. Some great little memories from this week:

-on p-day we went to a castle. An actual princess castle and I seriously felt like I was in one of the Princess Diary movies. It was a very good time, and a p-day very well spent.

-our 9 year old friend Alex is still so excited to be baptized and we love our lessons with him. We played a very riveting board game about the plan of salvation with him and his family in our last lesson and it was quite fun.

-a random lady reached out to me on facebook asking if someone named Ryan Tobler was my uncle. He had served in on of the US military bases here in Romania with his family and had apparently made a very good impression on this one lady. And while I can confidently tell you that I don't have any uncles named Ryan Tobler, through him I have started talking to this cute little Romanian lady! 

-since my new calling as media leader, we are in lots of meetings. And this past week we met with someone in salt lake who was giving us a nice rundown on some of our media stats. We have received over 3,000 referrals through just some of the stuff we have been posting on Facebook and instagram the past couple of months and we are one of the leading missions! The work just keeps moving forward.

-we had a fun district activity this week at an assisted living home. We put on a cute little music talent show for them and it was actually kind of the best. They started singing and clapping, and some of them even started crying and it was so sweet. They also served us a great big Romanian lunch afterwards and it was a good day. 

-went to bucuresti for an exchange and to also to record a song!! Two other Elders and I have a music project in the works and it is some pretty exciting stuff. 

One of my favorite questions that I have been asking myself lately is, "what would I do if I had more faith?" 

It has totally changed how I have been going about every day, and how I have been doing the work. I have seen MIRACLES as I exercise more faith in everything I do. 

Ask yourself this question this week and see how much more you can do as you exercise faith and have more faith! 

Vă iubim!!

Sora Tobler 

quick trip to Germany

Wow, what a week. I went to the temple in Germany!

To start from the beginning of the week, this past p-day we went on a beautiful hike in Romania that was seriously the prettiest thing I have ever seen.

Wednesday we headed out on a train to Bucharest to meet with all the missionaries that were heading to Germany. There was 6 of us missionaries total from Romania. We took a flight to Frankfurt and not gonna lie,  it was weird to be at an airport again, but not to be going home.  After a long day of traveling, we finally got to the Frankfurt temple late Wednesday night. The Temple Presidency gave us a special tour and they were seriously the coolest. Also mega miracle, one of the sisters lost her passport the day we were supposed to leave, and she wasn't able to come with us, butttt the next day she was able to get an emergency passport in a matter of 2 hours and fly to Germany by herself and still go through the temple!!

Thursday was the day we finally got to go through the temple!!! It was such a good day and we were all so happy that after a YEAR of being out on my mission, we finally were able to go to the temple with our Mission President & his wife.

We also did baptisms later that day and it was overall just a great day and experience! All the German church members from the surrounding area also cooked us tons of amazing food for every single one of our meals there. 

On Friday we were able to go through the temple one more time, and then we headed out to do some sightseeing in Frankfurt before we had to catch our flight back to Romania. 

Overall it was an amazing week and I am so grateful for the beautiful opportunity that we had to finally go.:)

"And we ask thee, Holy Father, that thy servants may go forth from this House armed with Thy power, and that Thy name may be upon them, and Thy glory be round about them, and Thine angels have charge over them;"

--Doctrine & Covenants Section 109:22 

Hope everyone has a great week:))

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