I Told You It Was Gonna Be Supermegaawesome.

Dear Family and Friends,

The weather has definitely gotten colder. It was really nice at the beginning of the week, we were getting away with just a cardigan in the afternoon. Now I'm pulling out the thick leggings and winter coat. No snow yet, but it's supposed to come this week. Brr..  My winter boots are torn apart, is there any way I could get some money for new ones to last me at least two more months?

So this week starts out with English classes, and even though we only had one student it went well. Just like Miss Kate used to say, "It doesn't matter if the audience has 1 or 1000 people. Your show is going to be just as good for that one person as if they were the most important person on earth."

We met with the Bacanu family, and if you don't remember who they are they're a big family of less actives who live too far away to afford to come to church. We made a plan with them to get the mother of the clan a temple recommend and that will help impact the family for the better. Elder Smith told them that the mom is Moses and the daughter who was there is Aaron, and then "Moses" said to "Aaron", "Whatever I say you tell the rest. Go, take the sacrifice up to the top of the mountain." Lol.

For Family Home Evening I told the story of Daniel and the Lion's den and made everyone get up and act it out. It was fun watching a bunch of adults doing that :) But then we sat and discussed it and it turned out great.

Card game for our Family Home Evening activity

Well we went to Bucharest this week for a Zone Conference. We didn't get a sleeper car there, though, so we spent the whole night on seats and got maybe a total of 1 minute of sleep. It was hard to stay awake for the conference but I succeeded somehow. Elder Kearon of the Seventy came and spoke to us. He said a lot of really great things but what I loved the most was, talking about morning routines, "If you drift into the day, you're going to drift right through it."

An actual LDS chapel in Bucharest

I also got to see many old mission friends, that was great. I had to do the musical number. I sang "Jesus, Savior, Pilot me", which it surprised me that pretty much no one had ever heard that song before, let alone knowing it was in the hymnbook lol.  Then we went back to Arad. I never slept so well on a train bed.

We met with the most American member I have ever met with in Romania. Sora Birau is so nice and just like any other sister back home. Like, it felt like a normal visiting teaching appointment in a normal American home with a normal member and normal baby in the corner and delicious normal Romanian cake. It was, how do you say it... kind of a relief. Really nice. Breath of fresh air. Now back to work. Too bad she's only here for the month of November.

Service Project for one of the Sisters in our Branch

We stopped near the Hungarian Border on our way back from our service project

We also met with Alexandra. If you don't remember, she's the one who has been struggling getting back on her feet after a mistake from a long time ago. Well, since I committed her a few weeks ago, she's been reading and praying daily now and you could just see the difference it has made on her. She has been coming to church for a few weeks in a row, too.

We saw Maria. It's been a while, we decided it would be good to give her a "time to miss the spirit" break. Well, that was a really good idea because she's so cheerful to see us and tells us a million amazing things, and the best are the following:

1) She doesn't feel like her son's soul is in turmoil anymore

2) She really missed the spirit and the church

3) She felt really impressed that she needs to come to church every week, no matter how hard

4) She has been able to forgive, forget, and move past the boy that killed her son and his mother who mocks her.

5) She wants to be baptized ASAP.

Well, this week we'll be meeting with her and setting the date and details. She's finally going to be baptized!!!! She was so happy and full of so much light, it was amazing. I can't wait to see her again.

Practicing my song for the Christmas Program

We saw the Seres family and it went well. Re taught the plan of salvation better, and even though I really wanted to talk about baptism and authority and stuff, something kept telling me not to, not this time. So later we'll help them realize how this is the one and true church :)

We saw the Bacanus again to run a pre-temple recommend interview for Aurica the mom. It was amazing, since the time we were there before, everything was super cleaned up, even her appearance and I wonder if it's just the thought of getting a recommend that she's changing the lifestyle. It was awesome.

Anyway, I've run out of time but I love you all and I will write again next week with more good things to come!!!

Sora Nicole Smith