Fire Breathing Adi Boss

Bună Bună!!!

Highlights:

-New Transfer!!! Still here in Craiova and still loving it!!! 

-Fire zoom meeting with the mission

-District Activity!!! We went to Pitești and cleaned up trash and then weeded at a members farm!!! 

-LUCA!! (best pretzels ever)

-Walking to our grocery store we saw the path was covered in trash!! So we bought green rubber kitchen gloves and trash bags to clean it up!! We now our planning to always have them with us so we can pick up any trash we see!!

-Went Flower finding!! Basically we just bought a bouquet of flowers and put some scriptures about Jesus on the stems with our number on the back. We went around trying to brighten up people's days by giving them a flower! It was so awesome!! And we had some great conversations with it as well!! One lady we were able to exchange numbers with her and we might get to do some service for her!

-Visited another church!! A couple weeks ago this lady came up to us and started talking about Jesus, cause she saw our tags. She invited us to come to her church and we said yes!! And invited her to come to ours 😉 On Thursday we were able to go and it was so amazing!! The members were all so nice and their pastor too! He shouted us out right at the beginning of the sermon and just said how cool it was that we are out here doing what we're doing!

- Our mission leaders came to visit us!!! We were able to go "flower finding" again with Sora Fowler and it was such an awesome experience!! She is absolutely amazing!! I loved getting to know her better!! We also all went to dinner together and got Gelato, and then went streeting together (all six of us) super cool!! 

-The Fowlers also stayed the night and came to church the next day and the Elders were also able to get their friend and his family to church. They stayed for Sunday school after and we were able to the most amazing discussion with them!!

Not-so-Highlights:

-Im not gonna lie this week was honestly just really good, and I can't think of anything bad and I'm not going to try too hard to come up with something 😂

Funny:

-This week we pranked the Elders by giving them cake pops full of salt. They didn't realize at first it was a prank so they were trying to be nice and play it off... yeah it just made it so much funnier.

-Then when the Fowlers were here we went to take them to see our member family the Ions. The son is a little wild. To try and settle him down the elders gave him gum but he just kept eating it, and then finally at like piece 4 the mint started to burn his mouth or something because he just starts fanning his mouth and running outside. While this is going on his mom is not paying attention and telling about her life and conversion story (amazing btw), so we literally can not laugh. It was so hard... I may have let out a little squeak...

Gând Spiritual:

This week I read in 1 Nephi 16. In this chapter Nephi and his family are in the wilderness and Nephi breaks his bow (the only good one they have), his entire family gets angry and turns away from God. He instead chooses to turn to God and is able to make a new bow and get food for everyone. 

While reading this I realized the difference between our "situation" and our "experience". As we see in this story the "situation" or basically everything out of anyone's control, was the same for everyone involved. They all were in the wilderness, they all were hungry, and all had families to feed. But the experiences are completely different. For those who turned away from God the bad situation turned into a bad experience (experience being based off their decisions) .  They were hungry until finally solution came to be. But for Nephi, even though he was in a bad situation he had an amazing experience. He was able to be directed by God and see God's hand in his life. 

We all have the same choice no matter what our "situation" might be. And I can testify that any situation will always be made better when we turn to God and let him be involved in our lives. He can make any situation an amazing experience if we let him. 

Vă Iubesc atât de mult!!

Sora Hansen

More pictures: 

 

I CANT EXIST WHEN YOU SPEAK!!

 Bună Bună Tuturor!!!

This week literally flew by...

Highlights:

-Lit English class!! Mirela brought us food!! She's so sweet!! Had some more crazies there though, but it's all right just adds to the fun! 

-I made cookies that actually turned out (ingredients here are a little weird)

-Did some service!! We are trying to find all the service we can, but Romanians in general just don't love to have people help them, so we haven't found anything. So we just decided to go the center of the city and clean up trash!! It was awesome! Had people come and talk to us!! 

-Went tried a new finding activity, suggested by our STLs. You draw one of the lessons in chalk and then people can come up and ask about it!!! It was super cool! We did ours about the Book of Mormon and the Bible!! We had a drawing and little summaries of both books and then at the top we put "If you knew that another book of holy scripture written by prophets about Jesus Christ existed, would you read it? We had a few people come up to us to ask about it!! It was super cool, and a change of pace for sure!! 

-Thursday, Friday and Saturday were a whirlwind that's for sure. So my comp Sora Reynolds had to go get her permis (visa), and she had to go back to her last area. Well her last area was Oradea!! It is one of the furthest out cities, right next to the Hungarian border (by train it's at least like 10 hours away). So we took a train to București and then a sleeper train to Oradea on Thursday afternoon/evening, and then we spent the day in Oradea Friday, and then Friday night took trains back to arrive back in Craiova Saturday afternoon. Craziness!!

-Oradea is absolutely stunning. And it was so fun because our STLs also happened to be doing an exchange in Oradea, so 6 sisters in one city=party time!! We ate way to many calories, walked a booty ton of miles, got Sister Reynolds permis, visited members, went to a little market, and went chalk finding again!! All in under 12 hours!! Successful day if you ask me.

Not-so-Highlights:

-Had someone literally come up to me just to roast my language skills, then proceeds to ask me to help her find a bathroom?? We love Romanians haha.

-Our trains home from Oradea were awful. We weren't able to get a night train, or a train straight there so we had three separate trains that we had to get on during the middle of the night. And then with the last one there were many technical difficulties so it didn't start going for 5 HOURS!! We were supposed to get back to Craiova at 11:00 but we hadn't even left the station at that time. We were literally dead and it wrecked all our Saturday plans... But the last train ride was absolutely stunning! We went through these canyons and it reminded me of Provo canyon at home!! I've definitely missed the mountains! 

Funny:

-Well me + Sister Reynolds + staying up all night for trains makes for some quality laughs. We had random toothless Domnuls (old men) trying to make friends with us at 4 in the morning, hilarious sleeping positions and half asleep vlogs. It was a good trip all in all, do I think I could do it again though? Absolutely not. 

Gând Spiritual:

My spiritual Thought today comes from the World Wide devotional for Young Adults this January. I heard that Sister Holland had passed away and I remembered listening to her talk in this devotional right before I started my mission. I decided to read through it again and it was amazing!! 

I love this quote from Sister Holland:

"I plead with you to look upward. The eyes that look down on yours will be those of your loving Father in Heaven who can, and will, bestow upon you all those things you hope for in righteousness. You can’t get these blessings by chasing them. Please stop running to the point of exhaustion. Be quiet; be still. Simplify. Be meek and lowly of heart, and pray. I testify to you that miracles will come when we slow down, when we calm down, and when we kneel down." 

Right now in my mission I feel like I am hectic just trying to run around and accomplish all things I want too. Though I feel I accomplish a lot of things, at the end of the day it just leaves me feeling, tired, exhausted and stressed about the things needing to be done tomorrow. Reading this talk helped me to realize that I still need to work just as hard (even harder sometimes) but that I need to stop complicating things and stop trying to rush through. I need to enjoy the moment, do all I can and let God handle the rest!

Thanks for tuning in to this week's rant from Sora Hansen haha. 

Vă iubesc atât de mult!!! 

Sora Hansen

More pictures (and my vlogs from the trip haha): 

You don't like your meat rare?? I do... just not my chicken

 Bună Bună!!

Highlights:

-An English Class friend gave me some Romanian chocolates (without rum!! That's rare) and asked where I was last class!! It was good to get to talk to her this week, I missed it last week!

-EPIC finding session on Wednesday!! Talked to a bunch of young people and we were able to get their Facebooks!!! Then we ended it off with some bubble tea!! What could be better than that? 

-Preșidentele Fowler and Sora Fowler came and visited Craiova!! We had interviews with them and then had lunch! They are both AMAZING!! I am so excited for all the good things they will do here for the people and the mission!!! 

-Visited our friend Salomea!! She lives like 20 minutes outside of the city so we can't visit her often, but she has such a strong testimony of God and always loves to hear what we have to say and our message. The miracle with this is that we were actually able to get ubers back and forth from her house. Because the drivers can pick and choose who they take, we weren't guaranteed to have anyone pick us up. But thankfully Heavenly Father is watching out for us because 1, we were able to get enough service to request a ride in the first place and 2 someone actually accepted the request to get us 20 minutes outside of the city basically in the middle of nowhere.

-Saturday Leonard's Branch Birthday Party!! Leonard is one of our awesome members here (if you look at my past pictures he's the one we always go walking with him and his dog) and it was his birthday this weekend!! So we had a branch barbecue!! Most of our branch was there! It was lit! And then because our games night was right after, they all stayed and played games. We got to talk to Sora Elena for a lot of it and it was cool to be able to show her photos of America haha.

-Sunday was actually Leonard's birthday so we had cake after church and talked for a bit!! 

Not-so-Highlights:

-It's still hotter than hot here, I don't think I've ever sweat so much in my life

-We taught primary for Adi, and he especially pushed my buttons this Sunday (I guess one day I finally learn this "patience thing", I wish that day would come sooner) 

-Had a lot of frustrating interactions with people who don't seem to grasp the concept that we're American, but can actually speak Romanian as well. 

Funny:

-So we had our barbecue for our branch, but here's the thing, Romanians lowkey are not super good at cooking food on a grill. Their method is to get a massive flame going, and then to put the grill right on top of it. Then they just throw on the meat cook it until it's charcoaled and call it good. So we were eating at the barbecue and Sorin really likes to give everyone at the table more portions of food until it's all gone. So I'm finishing up and he slaps down this massive piece of chicken on my plate, and tells me to eat it all. I go to cut into it, and it isn't working. I break two forks, Sora Reynolds has to go get me real silverware and it still takes some effort to cut it open. When I do, that's when I see the pinkest chicken I have ever seen in my life. There was no way I was eating it all. Luckily though I was sitting next to the meat tray so I cut like a fourth of it off and then snuck the rest back in the meat tray. As I was eating our Filipino member looks at my grossed out face and goes, oh you don't like it? That's how we cook all our steaks in the Philippines!! Rare! I was like yeah but this isn't steak it's chicken! We had a good laugh. I did end up having to eat that small fourth of it so let's pray that doesn't come back to haunt me this week.

-Sora Reynolds and made treats and the Branch members liked them a lot. Our branch president told us we're ready for marriage!! Let's go!!

Gând Spiritual:

1 Nephi 10:19

19) For he that diligently seeketh shall find; and the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them, by the power of the Holy Ghost, as well in these times as in times of old, and as well in times of old as in times to come; wherefore, the course of the Lord is one eternal round

I love this statement. As we seek and look to find the Lord will help you recieve answers!! Just as in the days before Nephi, the days of Nephi, and the days after, we can all recieve revelation from our Father Heaven!! It's amazing!

I hope you all are doing well!

Vă iubesc!! 

Sora Hansen 

Mi-e cald. (Understatement of the year)

 Bună Bună Tutor!!! 

Welcome to the "cuptor" (oven) month!!! That's right, hot buses, hot trains, hot walks, hot apartments, and the lovely smells that accompany all of the above!! What's not to love???

All joking aside, it's been a hot, tiring week, but still an absolute blast!!! 

Highlights:

-Târgoviște!! Super cool town, castle/fortress, and it apparently used to be the capital of România! What an adventure!!! 

-Pitești exchange!!! We had a Fourth of July dinner on Monday night, first weekly zoom meeting with the Fowlers, had a bomb day of streeting around Pitești, made a chocolate cake, had English class, ate SHAORMA with this awesome member named Robert and while we did this we sang "I'm proud to be an American" with him, and to top it all off we had a dance party on the massive patio of the STLs apartment. It was a whirlwind to say the least.

-I officially got my permis, so I'm legal now!!! 

-Talked to some really cool people streeting, and just traveling from place to place. Nothing has really gone anywhere with any of them yet, but it was nice just to have good wholesome conversations!! (Also one of the has declared that she is now our Romanian aunt, so that's lit!!)

-Met with the Ion family!! Always a pleasure!

-Got a ping pong table for our building!!!! (This has been at least a few transfers in the making) 

-more SHAORMA!!

-New flavor at our favorite Gelato shop!! Biscoff!!! Literally so freaking good!!! 

-Had three people at games night!!! That's new record!!! Exciting!!!

-I made homemade sweet pork enchiladas for our Sunday dinner, and they were amazing!!! Shout-out to my mom for all the recipes she keeps sending me haha. 

Not-so Highlights:

-Well I already mentioned the heat, and most places here don't have ac either we just burning up around here. (I would not have made it as a South America missionary) 

-Târgoviște and our exchange was super fun but all the travel takes a toll, and we were definitely feeling it a bit this week.

-Language is still hard. It makes all of our other work even harder. But we'll get there, and for now we'll just keep on keeping on.

Funny:

At games night I mentioned we had 3 people there! It was great but... they were 3 very different people. One was this older guy who lowkey not all there, the other was a 35+ year old who is obsessed with board games and the last was a college student. Then throw in 4, 19-20 year old missionaries... haha it was an interesting experience, but super fun nonetheless. As soon as everyone left Sora Reynolds and I were just laughing and what we experienced. 

Gând Spiritual:

"However late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines."

-Elder Holland

I listened to this talk this week and I love this quote!! 

Vă Iubesc!!! 

Sora Hansen 

I DIDNT REALIZE IT WAS THE SAME STALL!

 Bună Bună Tuturor!! 

Currently writing this on train to place called Târgoviște, so that's lit!!

Highlights:

-Lessons on Tuesday with Vlad and Mariana!! Both were supposed to be with members and the members fell through, but hey we're always just glad to be able to have lessons!

-Last Zoom Mission Meeting with the Ruckers!! It was definitely so sad to see them go, but amazing to hear from them and their family one last time!

-English Class!!! It was absolutely hilarious. We definitely have some interesting people that live here Romania, and a few of them have decided to attend our English class. Let's just say Reynolds and I could hardly keep from laughing when we weren't teaching, never a dull moment here!! 

-MISSION CONFERENCE IN BUCUREȘTI!!!

   -Met another "interesting" person on the train

   -Partied it up with the MTC homies, and Sora Olsen (love her 😘)

   - Met Președintele and Sora Fowler!! They are so amazing!! I love them already!

   - Made our train back! Not to many mishaps this time around

-Went Block Knocking for the first time... we got let into 2 apartments (Let's go), it was super fun to try something new!!

-Had a lesson with our friend Adela!! She's so lit, she brought us treats, and we talked about the Book of Mormon (she's reading it right now)

-Had someone new at games night!! (Always a plus)

Not-so-Highlights

-Vlad has been ghosting us and didn't show up to church, so we'll have to move his date 

-On Friday we were supposed to have three lessons and all of them fell through, but at least it gave us time to go finding!!

-Sora Reynolds and I are over the stories for our Mission Facebook page, and we kind of failed at getting them out this week... but next week we'll do better haha

Funny:

-Ok so this one's actually pretty good. During our Mission conference it was mentioned that Sister Fowler got stuck in a bathroom stall (I think nothing of it). We have lunch, clean the church, do some work, and then we're getting ready to go and go to the bathroom before we leave. I go into the stall and the lock is funny, it's not really working, but finally I maneuver it enough and it locks, which is great... until I try to get out and it won't open. So here I am and we need to leave for our train (we could not miss another one) and I can't get out ( the stalls at the church are weird and the front wall goes all the way to the floor, and the side walls only go up 3 or 4 inches, because let's be honest at the point I wasn't over climbing under the stall, but it wasn't an option). Sister Reynolds goes and gets some other sisters and after variety of suggestions and methods, I end up getting on the toilet, hopping over the stall wall and then was helped down by another missionary. Craziness!! I could not stop laughing, this would happen to me. Luckily we were also able to get out in time to make our train so all is well!! 

(If you want gold videos of my struggle, look at my Google photos album, they'll be there) 

Gând Spiritual:

I've been starting the Book of Mormon again this week and I really like this verse from the 2nd chapter.

1 Nephi 2: 20-21

20) And inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper, and shall be led to a land of promise; yea, even a land which I have prepared for you; yea, a land which is choice above all other lands. 21) And inasmuch as thy brethren shall rebel against thee, they shall be cut off from the presence of the Lord.

I like these verses because they set the tone for the rest of the Book of Mormon. We see that the Lord always keeps his promises!! The Book of Mormon is such a great example of this!! So put your trust in God!! He's always there for you! 

And that's a wrap!! Hope you all are well and of course always reach out if you have questions or just want to give me a life update 🙃 

Vă iubesc atât de mult!!

Sora Hansen