Nu suntem poligamii!!!!!!!!!!

 Bună Bună!!! 

Highlights:

- You already know we hit up the Mcflurries again on Pday

- Train to București on Wednesday

-Luca for dinner (the best pretzels ever)

-Exchange with Sora Banks on Thursday!! 

We....

   -planned a lesson and had language study in the boiling heat

   -had burritos!! (There really isn't Mexican food here s

o that was lit!!!!!!!)

   -had some random members from the states walk up to us, and just to ask about the church here and stuff, super cool

   -I took a phone call by myself!!! Let's gooooooo!! 

   -got to see some homies from the mtc who were in București for their Zone Conference 

   -visited a member!!! (May have had to eat questionable food, but I didn't barf so thats a win!) 

   -had dinner with all the sisters, and I tried sushi for the first time! (I didn't hate it!)

-ZONE CONFERENCE on Friday!!! 

-we talked about having urgency in the work, and the new mission president coming in (literally this next transfer) 

-senior couple food (Hawaiian haystacks)

-Sora Olsen and I drew/painted a card for the Ruckers and got to give it to them

-final interview with President Rucker before he goes 

- 4 hour train back to Craiova!!!

-Found a friend named Adrian, street contacting Saturday. He asked about the Book of Mormon we were holding, and if he could look at it. We gave it to him and he flipped through and asked if we had another one, we were delighted to tell him he could have that one. We then talked to him for about 20 minutes about the book and our church, and then he asked when he could come! He didn't have a phone and couldn’t figure out our directions so we told him we could come pick him up at the park for church. The next day we went... and he was there!! He came to church and liked it enough, because on his way out he said "see you same time next week!" So that was exciting!!! 

Not-so Highlights:

- traveling, zone conferences and exchanges are super fun, but man do they take it out of you, Sora Olsen and I have just been trying to recover all weekend.

-the language is coming but it is still so hard sometimes, and I only have a couple weeks of training left... so it's just a little stressful

Funny:

-So remember that member I visited on my exchange?? Well when we were leaving to go to her house, we were told to bring scissors... but not told why. So we're at the sisters apartment, she's asking us to get her a watermelon (idk, we couldn't find her one unfortunately), and then asks us if we have the scissors. We're like yeah!! She's like great! I'm ready for my haircut!! Um whatttttttt?!?? Yeah so Sora Banks gave her a haircut during our visit... it was hilarious, I just wish I could've seen my face when she asked us to cut her hair, it probably was pretty good.

-On Saturday after we were finished talking with our friend Adrian, we go to get up and see a small crowd that has formed close to our bench and we were very confused. Adrian leaves and then a few of the people come up to us clearly distressed... they go "Sunteți mormonii?? (Are you mormon?)". Sora Olsen tells them no and says we're from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and asks if they knew of us and they didn't. They then asked if we were with that guy or something, we were like no... and then the crowd just walks away. Weird. But it gets weirder. So, basically that crowd all thought we were POLYGAMISTS, and not only that but that Adrian WAS OUR HUSBAND... nope. nope. nope. Apparently Romanians don't even associate "Mormon" to our church at all, just polygamy, so glad we good at least kind of set that straight?? Idk. But yeah that was hilarious to say the least.

Gând Spiritual:

During our Zone Conference we talked about how we need to have urgency. In missionary work, and in life. It was a good reality check for me. It made me think about all the things I just put off for tomorrow, but why not today? I was really glad to have the reminder and the opportunity to change my habits and behaviors!!!

That's all!!! Hope you all are doing amazing and hopefully enjoying some nice summer weather!!

Vă iubesc foarte mult!!! 

Sora Hansen

Living Life

 Bună Ziua!!

Highlights:

- Pday basketball in the rain. The court was basically a swimming pool, but you know it just adds to the fun!! Plus add Mcflurries and Pizza after and it was a solid day

-We're able to meet with Vlad this week!! We were going to go over the gospel of christ lesson, but he hadn't read the chapter we had asked him to yet. So we decided to read the chapter for our lesson instead. It was 2 Nephi 2 (fire chapter if you wondering). We read it together and the spirit was so strong. We were originally planning on inviting him to be baptized for our lesson, but that would be after we actually talked about baptism with him. I asked Sora Olsen should we still do it? She's like go for it if you think we should! So we invited him to be baptized!! He had a lot of questions haha, understandable. At first of course he was like well I already was when I was a baby. But Sora Olsen came in perfectly with what we read in the Book of Mormon together. The chapter was on agency. We were able to explain to him that shouldn't we have the agency to choose to be baptized? We can't choose for ourselves as babies. We then told him a little bit more of our baptism and why it's necessary. He then was like, yeah I could probably do it in the Summer!! Let's go!! His only worry is getting into the font, we were like dude if you wanna be baptized we'll get you in the font don't worry. 

-English class was lit this week!! The Elders were on an exchange so we had to just teach it ourselves but it went well! We also had this lady just started coming, and she speaks English very well. For one of the activities I was paired up with her and after we finished she started asking questions about why we're here! It was so nice to be able to answer in English haha. She seemed to have more questions and is planning on coming this Tuesday so we're planning on asking her if she wants to take the lessons!!

-Lots of street contacting this week, lots of flyers and pamphlets handed out!! 

-Visited Tibirus family and gave them a lesson on the restoration! They all were interested. We also asked them if they have the desire to be baptized and they said yes, so we're planing to continue to teach them and help them progress.

-We actually had people at games night!!!!! We were so happy about that!! I did get absolutely clapped in Uno, but as long as people were there it's a win.

-Filmmed a bunch of videos for our English page, about our classes and games nights. We were laughing so hard. We found ourselves pretty funny. All the videos will be in my Google photos album if you're interested haha.

- They don't have relief society here, so Sora Olsen and I have been trying to start it. Sunday was our first one and it went so well!! Sora Elena was so excited!! She really enjoyed it. 

No so Highlights:

-We had multiple people that told us they were coming to church today. Some even reached out to us just to clarify details. None of friends came though... but hopefully they will next week!! 

Funny:

Used my first public bathroom this week. It was an experience... like it was the most nice and weird and disgusting bathroom ever. I can't even explain it. Like everything was automated? Idk kind of funny though. 

Gând Spiritual:

"Now, I am not talking about “peace at any price.” I am talking about treating others in ways that are consistent with keeping the covenant you make when you partake of the sacrament. You covenant to always remember the Savior. In situations that are highly charged and filled with contention, I invite you to remember Jesus Christ. Pray to have the courage and wisdom to say or do what He would. As we follow the Prince of Peace, we will become His peacemakers."

-President Nelson (Peacemakers Wanted)

The last few weeks Sora Olsen and I have been watching the Chosen. I love the Chosen so much. I love how it shows that all the stories were real stories, that happened to real people!! I also love how it shows how Jesus acted in all the various situations. I feel like sometimes when we read the Scriptures you hear a lot about these great sermons and miracles he did, and not as much about regular life. In the Chosen it is so powerful to see how Christ acts in every situation. It reminds me of this. As we remember how the Savior would act we can try to be better in all our interactions!

 

Sper că aveți o săptămână bună!! 

Vă iubesc!!

Sora Hansen

Înghețată este cea mai bună!!!

Bună Bună tuturor!! 

I never know how to start these so I'll just get into it...

Highlights:

-Our last P-Day with Elder Spencer!! He wanted to go to a bunch of ice cream shops in the city, so we did that and got then got pizza!! It was soooo good!

-We had new people at our English class!! One of them was very interested in why we are here so maybe there's a lead there!! 

-Talked with a family during street contacting that seem interested!! They also want to come to our English class, so hopefully we'll see them there this week and talk to them more. 

-SHAORMA!!!!!!!!!!

-Had a fire family home evening with the Ions, the other family did not come though (other than one of the little girls) but it was still so good! We just talked about the restoration, had a fun object lesson, and then cookies!! It was a party!! 

-Saturday we weren't even trying to street contact we were just outside studying and then decided to eat lunch there. I started praying and then hear a voice say, "ceva religios??" (Something religious?) I open my eyes and this guys was gesturing to the pamphlets I had. I was like yeah sure, and gave it to him and he walked away... it was pretty hilarious, but hey maybe he'll give us a call sometime!! 

-On Sunday we decided to do a little primary-like lesson. We have one kid who comes to church with his family and has to sit in the adult Sunday school because we don't have anything else. He is always so rambunctious and somewhat disruptive, but I don't blame him!! Adult Sunday school is boring for me sometimes!! Sora Olsen and I can't be alone with him, but we set up a table in the back of the room and did a little mini lesson and gave him a coloring page. He was so excited!! And so proud of his artwork! He walked out showing it to everyone. It was so cute!! We've decided we're going to make it a regular thing. 

- Also on Monday we found our new favorite ice cream shop and went 2 more times haha. 

Some not so highlights:

-Literally every lesson we had this week fell through. I didn't realize how much I've been thriving on having those interactions!! Luckily they all wanted to still meet with us so we have them scheduled for this week!

- Friday was hard. We went street contacting and no one would talk to us. We had our games night, and no one came. So we did 2 hours of social media work and not one person I messaged responded back to me. It was definitely discouraging. But luckily it's not like that everyday!! So we just got to keep on keeping on haha. 

Funny:

-On Thursday at our FHE we were at the Ions house, and we were trying to see if we could get our friends to come, so we called them. Now I had the lovely opportunity to make this call. Here's the problem though, we really needed to make sure we contacted them and got all the information, so I needed to have it on speaker so Sora Olsen could also hear and help me out. So we call and I'm stumbling on what to say back. All of sudden everyone there is trying to tell me what to say and all yelling at me in Romanian... it was not helpful to say the least. The only person I wanted to hear was Sora Olsen, and I couldn't. But somehow we made it through the call!!! Needless to say, I've learned my lesson and will not be taking a call on speaker phone in front of Romanians again...

Gând Spiritual:

"As His followers, we are His peculiar people, called to proclaim His virtues, promoters of the peace so generously offered through Him and His atoning sacrifice. This peace is a gift promised to all who turn their hearts to the Savior and live righteously; such peace gives us the strength to enjoy mortal life and enables us to endure the painful trials of our journey."

- Elder Soares (April 2023) 

I have been continuing to go through all the conference talks again in personal study and I really love this quote I read this week. "This peace" he talks of, is why I'm here. I am so thankful for this gospel and I know the role it has taken in my life. I thank Heavenly Father everyday for the opportunity I have to know, and have a testimony of it. I want others to have the opportunity I've had, and to help them find the peace that comes with it! 

Vă Iubesc!! 

Sora Hansen

Getting flamed în fiecare zi 🔥🔥🔥

Bună!!! 

Hope you all are doing good!!! Here's my week!

Tuesday:

- Had my first conversation completely by myself!!! I was able to invite this lady on the tramvai to our English class and give her a pamphlet without Sora Olsen!! Wahoo!

Wednesday:

- District Activity in Pitești!!! 

- took my first maxi taxi, it was not an experience I'm excited to repeat... I did however share the book of mormon with the lady sitting next to me and she seemed genuinely happy to hear it! 

- for our service we went to this member's farm to help there. Romanians definitely have different views on a lot of things than we do, one of these being the type of work that females can do... so Sora Olsen and I were helping "break sticks" for 2 hours... yeah idk. We also helped prepare more mushrooms with sour cream (🤢) but despite the Elders best attempts I did not have to eat them this time. We had to catch our bus and take our food with us, so let's just say God is real and miracles do still happen. 

- we also had some fun on the train ride home... let's just say I don't think that pottermores patronus quiz is legit, it gave me a borzoi???? Just look it up. I got done so dirty. But it was hilarious.

Thursday: 

- another lesson with Vlad!! We taught him the plan of salvation and he took it really well!! We're excited to meet with him next week! 

Friday:

-I got to go on an exchange with Sora Nunez!! She was so much fun!! 

-we went street contacting and had a lot of people blow us off. Let's just say if you're a missionary here in Romania you have to have a sense of humor, because they can be brutal sometimes.  But every time this happened as we were walking away I would say "man, we just go flamed by them". Hence the title of my email. I don't know where I got the word from, I probably stole it from someone else. But that was my phrase this week, and it was so funny. We could not help but just laugh.

Saturday:

- we had a lesson with a referral from the elders named Marinela. All she wants to do is talk about baptism and be baptized! We're excited to hopefully put her on date soon! 

- went to visit the Ion family but they weren't there, rip. But as we were going to leave this guy came over with his kids and was like will you come talk to me and my wife? Their names are Tibiru and Simona and they had already been visited by the missionaries before, but it was a while ago. They asked us to pray for them and then asked about church! 

Sunday:

-I gave a talk!! Ughh. It was pretty good. Definitely ready for the next one to be much better though.

-Surprise!! Tibiru and two of his kids came to church!! They also stayed for Sunday school and he was so involved and making comments!! So awesome. He also left with about half our library. They're just really excited about the gospel!! We're planning on having a family home evening with them and Ions this Thursday. Hopefully it all goes well! 

That's the week! It's been a blast!! God is good!! I love being missionary!!! 

Gând Spiritual: 

"Without the blessings that come from Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, we can never do enough or be enough by ourselves. The good news, though, is that because of and through Jesus Christ we can become enough." - Elder Renlund, October 2020

This is a quote I found for my talk. It is so true!! I'm so grateful for all the blessings I've been given!! And for the daily help I recieve! 

Vă iubesc!

Sora Hansen

Nu îmi plac ciupercile cu smântână!!

 Bună Bună!!!

I hope you all have had a great week!! 

Alright here's a little summary of my week!!

Monday:

- The family in our branch, the Ions, invited the branch over for a barbecue.  The food was great ( except for this weird mushroom with sour cream), and the company was great as well. The only problem was that they wanted us to eat like everything... so I made the mistake of pounding down my first plate super fast, because as soon as I was about done they would come by and fill my plate again. I literally ate like a whole chicken by myself. And I basically rolled out of the barbecue but at least I was so full I didn't have to eat dinner!!! 

Tuesday:

-We had a lesson but had to move it to Wednesday because of rain (the lessons are outside) and then we get a text to meet at the church for lunch. So we go, and it turns out an old branch president for our branch was visiting with his wife. Their names are Gary and Debbie Spooner. They lived here for Gary's work from 2009-2014, and were over the branch most of the time. They were so nice and it was fun to hear a little about the history of our branch! They also bought us lunch so that was lit. 

-We also finally were able to pay my taxes so I won't be getting deported yet 😅

-Also took the lead teaching English class, which I was nervous for, but we ended up only teaching 1 person. So that was good for me haha. 

Wednesday:

-We had a lesson with our friend Vlad and we went to the park to met him and he wasn't there. So, we tried to call and he didn't pick up. We didn't know whether to stay or go, but it was a really nice day so we figured we could just finish weekly planning at the park. Luckily we stayed because Vlad called us back and said he was planning on coming so we stayed and had our lesson with him. We taught him about prayer and he tried saying a prayer at the end and it all went really well!! 

-On Wednesdays Sora Olsen teaches a free Romanian class over zoom, but this week she had another meeting she had to be in, so guess who had to teach the class? 😑 yep me. It actually wasn't too bad! I just hope I didn't anything wrong haha. 

Thursday:

-Met Diona. She has met with the missionaries before, but hasn't really progressed. We thought we would go and just meet her and see who she is. She was super nice to us!! She knows everything is true, and loves the gospel, but she's not willing to change. So unfortunately we will probably not be seeing her anytime soon. 

-Our ZLs were here doing an exchange with our Elders, so they offered to do a role play lesson with Sora Olsen and I,. We did it on the Plan of Salvation, and it went pretty well! It was kind of scary though... especially because they were trying to push me. So the Elders would ask some pretty challenging questions, and then Sora Olsen would just turn to me and just make me try to answer it.. In the moment, every time she turned to me and had me answer the question, I was like I do not like you very much right now. But after the fact I am really glad she made me answer all those questions. I actually knew a lot more Romanian than I thought. It really pushed me to use everything I could. 

-It was also one of ZLs birthday, so we went out to dinner for that and it was super fun! And I gave our waitress a Cartea lui Mormon so that was sick. 

Friday:

- Our week was so busy we never really got the chance to go street contacting until Friday. But luckily we had like a solid 2 and half hours. We handed out a ton of flyers for our English class, and had some interesting discussions. It was crazy how fast the time went though, I felt like we barely had any time at all. 

-We had games night, but.... no one showed up. So we just did media finding instead. Hopefully this week's is better (we're trying to work on it)

Saturday:

-We went streeting in the morning and it was really hard. We didn't get to talk to a lot of people. So many didn't even tell us no. Romanians do this thing where you just start talking to them and it's almost like you are not even worth the words. They just shake their finger at you, shake their head and walk away. But the day was beautiful and we did still get to talk to a few people so still a success in my book.

- We also had dinner with Isagani again and it was AMAZING. His cooking for real is 10/10. 

Sunday: 

-We were at church and it was about 10 minutes before the meeting was about to start and we did not have a single person there. We were like "Well, might just be missionary church today". Usually our members are like an hour early. But then within 5 minutes of the meeting starting we had a few of our members show up and a friend! Then the rest showed up like 5 minutes late, and after like 10 minutes we had another friend show up!! It was amazing!! We had a great meeting and Sunday school as well. 

This week was amazing!! I do truly love it here and love the work! Sora Olsen and I get along so well and we are constantly just laughing at ourselves (the Elders may think we are little insane but that's ok). And feel like our area just has so much potential, so we are excited to see what we can do with it! 

I will say though I definitely do have my fair share of struggles. I definitely see myself progressing in the language, but it is also so hard because every time I feel like I start to understand, the conversation takes a turn and I'm lost again. And it's almost more frustrating, because the more of the conversation I understand, the more I want to say, but I don't know how to. But I try not to worry to much about it. The language will come, this is all just part of the struggle of learning.  I just am also so tired all the time. 1 because Sora Olsen and I always end up talking a little bit past our bedtime (definitely worth it though) and 2 because I just have a hard time sleeping period. But despite the tiredness and everything else, I see the Lord helping get through each week, each day, each conversation,etc. 

Spiritual Thought:

The last few weeks I've been going through the general conference talks again, and this is one quote that I loved from Elder W. Mark Bassett's talk, "After the Fourth Day"

"Sometimes during our own challenges, we might feel like Christ is too late, and our hope and faith might even feel challenged. My witness and testimony are that as we move forward with faith in Jesus Christ, the fourth day will always come. He will always come to our aid or to raise our hopes back to life." 

I just love this comfort this brings. We may often feel this way: forgotten, unseen, unheard, out of reach. Christ will always come. It may be scary, but his timing is always perfect. He always has our best interests in mind. So if you are waiting for that Fourth day to come, keep it up!  I know that you can do it! Christ will be there to catch you when you can't. 

I invite you all to read the rest of this talk!! It's amazing!

If you ever have questions or just want to give me an update, I would love to hear!! I hope you all have an absolutely amazing week!! 

Vă Iubesc!!!

Sora Hansen