Sora Nicole Smith Mission Blog: S-a găsit-o: misionară pierdută în România

Dear Family and Friends,

Please let Emily know that I am praying for her.

I've noticed that everyone has a different mission experience, even in the same mission. Some missionaries go through training new missionaries, some experience this or that. It's weird, you never know what to expect. At first I was the "open cities" missionary but I guess I'm getting a break from that :) I do know for sure I'm training next transfer, though. Nine new sisters are coming in, meaning every sister that is older than the transfer behind me is going to be training. That will be exciting.

Beautiful Sunset in Timisoara

Oh yeah, you asked about my apartment. All of the Elders joke around about our Timi apartment, saying "How are things going in your mansion of an apartment?" They only say that because we have two levels and stairs, ha, ha. But after we've worked out a while, we're not liking the stairs. What they're jealous about, I don't know. It's really nice, and unlike the Craiova apartment, the couch isn't falling apart! Haha, I like it because it's clean and it's easy to keep clean. I'll... send pictures later. However, we have our own bathrooms. I'm a plumber! My toilet broke, so I got my hands dirty and fixed it. And I done fixed er good.

There are trams and busses in Timi, but we're only a 20 minute walk from the church so we're not spending the 100 lei or whatever for a pass. We get everywhere by foot, which really isn't bad, until it snows.

I am staying healthy and I'm surprised! I've really been feeling great for a really long time. Getting little cold symptoms here and there but it's all good.

It finally snowed in Romania! Adica, (in other words), it's kind of like someone took a giant shovel of snow and dropped it on top of everything, overnight. It's a little crazy how fast it went from 0 to blankets. It's cold! And a month late, which is a month less of snow so that's a good thing.

This week we had exchanges with the sister training leaders. Sora Peterson and I had a lot to do on Tuesday. We had a lesson with a 10 year old girl Delia and her same-age cousins, a half English, half gospel lesson. We talked about the plan of salvation and I brought out little cutouts of the plan, the girls really liked that until they went off topic and asked me if I believed in extra terrestrials... ha, ha. Delia's father was there, like he usually is for these lessons, but he doesn't typically pay attention. We gave Delia her own BOM, though, so we'll see where this goes.

I also taught seminary in Romanian. I mean, there's only one student, so it's not like that's a big deal, but hey, it was in Romanian AND I was talking about Isaiah, so I'm pretty proud of myself. And, because we're on exchanges and I'm really bad with directions, we got lost, in Timi. It wasn't so bad, I mean, we made it to the church. Eventually. And it hadn't had snowed yet. Lol.

Oh, yeah, and so I've been trying to dye my hair back to a light brown color, but it's not been lightening up at all, so I decided to get a super light dye so it would settle in the middle, right? And now I'm blonde.

ANYWAY, so this Friday was my six month mark, and Sora Newell and Elder Brundage (who are BOTH in Craiova having fun WITHOUT me) called and we chatted for a good thirty minutes about all our adventures. I miss them so much. Someday my whole MTC district will be serving together again in... Buch or something.

Writing email home

So that's pretty much my week. The BOM is true. If you're not reading it currently, start it. There's a reason 1st Nephi is in the front of the book, it needs to be read the most. Lol.

Okay, the elders are telling me to hurry up to play cards with them, so I'd better go.

I'll write you next week!

Sora Smith

P.S. I forgot to tell you something else we did (besides getting lost in Timi... again...)

There's this one family who lives in the countryside who I got to meet for the first time. Very humble family who are in the process of building their home, and so sweet and they love hearing what we have to say and having us over. Apparently they usually have fed missionaries nightmare food, like livers and hearts and brains. I got lucky, they gave us sarmale hahaha. Their family name is Familia Crap. It's funny talking about them, "We're going to the Crap's today!"

But they are really sweet people. You ask the father, "Can we share a verse from the BOM?"and he says, "have I EVER said no?" So cute. Unfortunately, their oldest son who is also their money maker cut his arm, so they're struggling and really stressed lately. He is okay, but things are hard for them right now. I hope to go to the Crap's again soon.