Dan

(Last week's email)
Yay, I got my travel plans!

The weather has been weird here, too. It's been rainy and sunny, and if it were only just a little warmer it would be Spring. All the snow has melted, and in fact today we played basketball comfortably in shorts. It was nice. But weird.

I never got to see my Christmas package :( Well I hope I will at least get to look at it before I board my plane :)

Speaking of jobs, I am going to try to apply to teach Romanian at the MTC. That would be awesome and I definitely don't want to forget the language after all the hard work of learning it.

A Glance Back at My MTC District

 
Sooooo.... this week went as follows:

We met with Florita and Dan a ton this week to prepare him for his baptism. She made us food every time, she refuses to let anyone out of her house without eating something. Which is funny, because we couldn't come for a lesson on Thursday so we asked the Elders to go for us. Apparently Florita made the three of them a big plate of food, but left Dan at home to pick up something before they arrived. By the time the Elders got there, the plate was bare. Dan is as skinny as a pole so I don't know where he put it all. :)

We also met with Maria to continue the recent convert lessons. She is so sad that I'm leaving.. I'm a little sad, too.

We've also been meeting with Mariana, and we brought Sora Piper to the lesson. She loves Sora Piper, it went really well and Sora Piper testified like a boss.

We told the Elders that we left for an exchange on Wednesday. Little did they know our exchange was actually on Thursday. We showed up at their door in the morning with a surprise cake for Elder Robinson's birthday! We even had little confetti poppers that were defective and just made a papery mess on the floor (I guess that's what confetti is, anyway). I'm glad Elder Chatterton and Elder McArthur didn't say anything about how blue the frosting was on that cake. That sure put the "P" in "SURPRISE" if you catch my drift :) If you didn't get that one here's another hint: We made it a HA-PEE BLUE-THDAY.

Two for two. Moving on.

Sora Birau makes amazing pasta. Every time.

We left for exchanges on Thursday to Oradea and I was with Sora
Bastidas in her... I think 7th transfer? She's killed off (sent home) three missionaries and so she helped a lot with the pre-going-home anxiety. We also met with a less active who I met with while I was serving there, and she remembered me and was so happy to see me! Her name is Sora Tudor and we had a really powerful lesson about making the commitment to make the change to become a saint.

Sora Bastidas

Sora Tudor said that the last time she felt good was long in the past when she and her whole family were active and reading the scriptures and praying, and now that doesn't happen anymore. She said the difference was like heaven and earth. What we told her is that it's hard to make all the changes immediately, and that it's not necessary. You can make the tiny steps, and a little way down the road some day you'll look back and see just how far those little steps took you. When you look back, the difference will be heaven and earth. "...by small and simple things are great things brought to pass..." (Alma 37:6) The spirit was really strong.

Back to Arad. We met with a few less actives, had a few meetings, did normal missionary stuff, and then closed the week with a BAPTISM.

It was a great baptism. Everyone was holding their breath when Dan, who is very very tall, almost hit his head on the rail of the font. But he made it in and out of the water okay, and was grinning ear to ear after he emerged.

Ghiti, the Elder's long-term investigator, was talking to President Banatean about the temple trip this month. President Banatean told him if he and his wife want to go, they'd have to be baptized. So Ghiti said "Okay! We'll be baptized!" and his wife, our investigator Mariana, was rolling her eyes and shaking her head 'no'. After the excitement of the conversation settled a bit, I asked Mariana how she feels about all of this, "...it is very beautiful," she said softly, and she put her head down to hide the fact she started to cry. "I like it all so much."
"Me too," I told her.

No promises, but I think the two of them may be baptized soon.

Well, Sunday was nice, and one member came back to Arad to visit for a month. She really wants to help with missionary work/visits so that's a plus! And Relief Society went well, thankfully.

It was awesome to play basketball today.
I started packing because this week is going to be very busy. It was weird.


Well, here's to the last days,
Soon to not be Sora Smith

P.S. I don't know if I'll have a chance to email next week because we'll be going to Bucuresti Monday evening. So, this may be my last email, it may not. In any case, I will see you all so soon!