Domnul rizzing continues!!!! 😵‍💫

Bună Bună!!! 

Gonna try to keep it shorter this week

Highlights:

-Talked with all the sects... this week we met or spoke with someone from about every major religion here. Kind of cool. All conversations civil, and all about christ. 

-Our lesson with Irina was lit!!! 

-Had a missionary day with a youth in our branch. It was surprisingly a really amazi

ng experience!

-We had branch conference this weekend!!! Lots of members, lots of food and lots of fun! No complaints here! 

-Brought our friend Mariana some brownies and her and her family decided to come to church next week. I mean decided. We didn't even ask them to come. They just said they were... let's go!!!!

No-so-Highlights:

-picking up our member from the train station... at 7:15 in the morning. We left the house at 6:30 

- bad food... something we ate has been bugging me and Sora Barnett but I think we'll be ok..OK... we'll see how the week goes.

Funny:

-Get hit up by the homies here in Arad. Had an interesting convo with this guy on the tramvai, went a little something like this:

40+ Guy - stops us and tells about how he knows a missionary that used to serve here. Asks us to call her for him.

Me - politely declines 

The tramvai stops we get off.

Guy - do you have a boyfriend?

Me (seeing where this going) - yes, in the US (if you are wondering this is in fact a massive lie haha) 

Guy - oh. Well. I really like you 

Me - 😐

Guy - will you be my girlfriend? 

Me - nope sorry. 

Guy - but I really like you. 

Me - 😐 thanks. 

Guy - so you can't be my girlfriend? 

Me - nope. can't do it

Guy - oh, you have a boyfriend in America.

Me - yep! bye!!

So yeah at least if things don't workout after the Mish I got one homie waiting for me here!! 

Gând Spiritual:

Alma 30:44 

44) But Alma said unto him: Thou hast had signs enough; will ye tempt your God? Will ye say, Show unto me a sign, when ye have the testimony of all these thy brethren, and also all the holy prophets? The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.

We shared this with Irina this week. The more I learn, and experience, the more I can testify of the truthfulness of this scripture. All things denote there is a God. And if we know there is God than all we have to do is trust him and his council, everything will be ok. 

Vă iubesc!! 

Sora Hansen 

 

Friends and Food, who could ask for anything more?

 Bună Bună!!! 

Highlights: 

- More homies showed up to English Class!! 

- Officially started Taco Tuesdays here, we had all the boujeeness (even refried be-ans, a commodity here in Romania)

-District Activity Wednesday in Oradea!! (Just when we thought we were done with trains we got ✨️blessed✨️ with another) it was super fun though and we had district council in person, did some finding, got Shaorma and Gelato, so I'd definitely call it a success!!

-Carved pumpkins!!

-Met with Irina! Didn't go exactly as we hoped but meeting with her was good! 

-A lady Sora Barnett started messaging on Facebook asked her to meet up. We went and she was like "oh do you all want to get a pizza?" Um...yes of course. She buys us pizza is literally the sweetest, then goes "hey my house is just right here can you come over and meet my husband and son?? And I have cookies for you?" Um yes... of course. She was of a different religion but super open and we ended up sharing a small spiritual thought and giving her a Book of Mormon!!! So cool!

-Met with the sweetest member, she told all about how she's going to be a temple worker!! So cool! 

- Friday the Sibiu sisters had a layover in their trains so we got to have lunch with them!! 

- On Saturday a long time friend of the missionaries asked if we could meet her. She bought us Mcflurries and we talked about our faith, I loved how we were able to focus on our similarities and not our differences!! She's awesome. 

-We've been looking for a new church building!! Ours is too big, and too far away from everyone. Any prayers would be appreciated for us to find a new building! 

Not-so-Highlights:

-Tried to play the piano at church. Played the opening hym and probably hit like 2 notes right. Despite all my practice and prelude music I played beforehand just fine. Needless to say I'm glad for the recordings on the piano so I didn't have to play any of the others. 😓

Funny:

-Tried to prank the Elders with plastic Halloween spiders this week. We had them everywhere, strung up on the doors, stuck to toilet seats, etc. The Elders barely got scared it was lowkey a fail. After we did it though we had to hurry to a lesson, but it was a Thursday and no one is ever at the church except for Sunday so we figured we could clean them up the next day. Well the next we go to meet our member at the church and guess whose there, our branch president. And the elders also told us he's not a fan of Halloween. Yeah the was super awkward. But he seemed to think it was funny when we told him it was for the elders.

Gând Spiritual: 

I listened to a BYU Speech by Elder Neal A Maxwell this week called "Patience".  I love this quote. It's long but so gas.

"Patience helps us to use, rather than to protest, these seeming flat periods of life, becoming filled with quiet wonder over the past and with anticipation for that which may lie ahead, instead of demeaning the particular flatness through which we may be passing at the time. We should savor even the seemingly ordinary times, for life cannot be made up all of kettledrums and crashing cymbals. There must be some flutes and violins. Living cannot be all crescendo; there must be some dynamic contrast."

I love this. It made me realize how much day to day stuff I don't take time to just enjoy. Like walking to our church. Not many people are around to talk to so we often walk fast and I just think about all the things that need to be done. But after listening to this, I took I moment to "savor" this "seemingly ordinary" time in my life. The walk isn't pretty by any means but I appreciated the cool morning air, the quiet stillness, even just the feeling of walking and stretching my legs. So amazing. 

If your someone like me who struggles with patience, I highly suggest listening to this talk, if you can't find it hit me up and I'll send the link!! 

Vă iubesc atât de mult!! O săptămâna bună!!!

Sora Hansen

Actually remembered a subject this time

 Highlights:

-Fall is officially in full swing and I'm here for it!!!

-Lesson with Irina!!! We ended up getting sidetracked talking about the 3 Kingdoms of Glory... but ended with talking about covenants and why they are important. She wants to learn more!! I'm excited!! 

- We've been trying to find and contact all our members, we were given a list and then we made a map and had a goal this week to try and contact all the inactives. We didn't quite get there but we did make a lot of progress!! 

-On one visit we had finished at the members and then were walking away and  their neighbor was just standing in outside the gate of their house. We talked to her and got her number and we are excited to talk this next week. 

- Got Mcflurries and had comp study!! For the last 2 months they have only had these special Mcflurries with a Romanian chocolate bar, which sounds good but most Romanian made chocolate has rum, so it is not my cup of tea. BUT... they finally had Oreo back this week and it was amazing 😋

-The Elders in their contacting ended up contacting an inactive member who wanted us to come over!! We all went to her house and just talked about her life and her experience with the church. AMAZING. Her name is Timea and she says she's going to try to come to church next week... I hope she does!! I just feel like she could do so many great things for the branch, and I think they could do great things for her too!

-I made SOUP!!! 

- Saturday/Sunday was district conference in Cluj!! They don't have any wards here in Romania just branches, and the whole country makes up 1 district. So it was basically stake conference with the whole country. Also at the conference they had a young single adult conference, which is what we were actually there to help with. We took the youths out finding!! We were paired up with a girl named Cristina, who actually has a mission call to Bristow, England!! She was a Rockstar and I loved working with her!! The rest of the conference we just helped out where we could. It was so fun to meet so many members and to see our members from Arad!!

-So... Saturday also happened to be my birthday. Thank you to all those who sent birthday wishes!! I had great day and it was so fun to spend it with so many members and missionaries!! Plus my mission leaders were there and they definitely made sure to make me feel loved!! But more important than all of that is that it was MY MOMS 50TH BIRTHDAY on Saturday as well. Luckily mission rules allowed us to talk together on our birthday. 

Funny:

-While going to look for members we were trying to find this apartment and basically got flamed by an old lady. The members apartment was like behind hers or something like that and she was the best guard dog one could buy. She did not let us through and yelled at us to leave 🤪 We then went around another side and were trying to see if there was another entrance and she saw us in the window... we barely ran away fast enough to avoid another scolding from the baba 😪

Gând Spiritual:

"That is what we all want—we want to see Jesus for who He is and to feel His love." 

-Elder Robert M. Daines 

October 2023

I love this quote from this last general conference. Whether we know it or not this is what we all desire. As a missionary I'm here to help people realize who Jesus is, and to guide them to recieve a greater outpouring of his love in their lives. And I know that as I have had the opportunity to do this, I too have come to know him better and felt his love. 

I invite you to read this talk if you haven't!! We studied it this week as a mission and it has so many good insights!! 

Vă iubesc atât de mult!!

Sora Hansen

10/9/23

 Bună Bună!!

Highlights:

-Lesson with our friend Irina, gave her a Book of Mormon and we're excited to teach her again!!

-ZONE CONFERENCE!!! We headed to București this week!! We actually had sleeper trains this time so that's lit!!! Left Arad at 8:30 Wednesday night and got into Buc at 8:30 in the morning!! I really liked everything that was shared and especially our mission president. It's just so crazy that every time he councils the whole mission there is always something that specifically helps with the problems that I'm facing. 

-Got to see Sora Reynolds at the gară!!!! #bestdayever

-Went streeting and met Ovidiu. He actually said yes to hear our message about the atonement (I was floored), and then we invited him to church and he came!! We taught him the first lesson and gave him a book of mormon!! He said he wants to keep coming to church!! And later he texted us later asking why we stopped to talk to him. We said that God let us to him. He said thinks the same!! I'm excited to maybe meet with him this week.

-The weather is finally getting cooler!! I'm so excited to break out all my sweaters haha.

Not-so-Highlights:

-um so that sleeper train??? Yeah we almost got bedbugs from it. But luckily Heavenly Father knows Sora Hansen could not do bed bugs so I was able to find one of the bugs right when got home and we should be in the clear now 🤪

Funny: 

A member în our branch came in with a big box of pill bottles? She starts handing them out and telling everyone it's collagen and that we all need to take them. We all started looking and realized they are postpartum supplements? I have no clue why she had them, why she wanted us all to have them, and also why did she give them to all the men too????? Habar n-am!

Gând Spiritual:

One thing Președintele Fowler shared during Zone Conference really resonated with me. He talked to us about "patient confidence". And I really love this phrase. Because I think often Patience is associated with sitting still or waiting. But it's not Patience is about doing what you can in this moment and not worrying about how fast or slow you maybe moving. I then especially love the "confidence" part of the equation. This is when faith comes in. Having confidence while being patient means to me that while yes we aren't to worried about the end goal coming right now, we are confident that it will come some day. And with this confidence we are always ready and looking for that next step. 

I don't know if this made any sense at all, but I love this thought, and know that this is what God asks of us. He asks us to trust him, to put faith in him, and then to have patience, knowing with confidence that his timing is right, and being sure not miss what he be laying out for you.

Vă iubesc pe voi toți!!

Sora Hansen

UTA Fotbal Meci!!

Bună bună

What's up yall?!?! Sorry meant to send this earlier 

Highlights:

-New person at English!! Her name is Angelica and I can already tell we're going to be friends... she's so sweet! And then at the end of English we were getting ready to give our spiritual thought when she asked if we could sing one of our hymns!! Sure of course!! We sang Lângă Tine, Doamne (nearer my God to thee) once in Romanian and once in English. The spirit was so strong!! Ughhh so awesome.

-Had a lesson with our friend Irina, those are far and few between so always grateful for the opportunity to teach 🙏 

- EXCHANGE!!! We headed to Oradea this week!! I was on an exchange with Sora Bundy and she is awesome!! We helped out at a soup kitchen and hit the streets hard!! We also went to a block that kind of scared us... it ended up having some of the nicest people!! 

- If you were wondering, nope I did not spell my subject wrong... The college fotbal team here in Arad is called UTA (ootah) and has the same colors and Utah University, it's lit. We went to a game this week with our branch presiden!! It was lit!! (And only made me a little trunks to go home and play soccer haha)

-We had regular church this week despite General conference, but our friend Josif pulled up so that was awesome!!

Not-so-Highlights:

- running like chickens with our heads cut off to get everything done haha

Funny:

-Our Josif we found on the street and he stopped us for like an hour to talk about his life and some miracles (they are amazing) but then when came to church he basically took our whole second hour to tell the elders word for word basically what he told us on the street. Plus his is very committed to his stories so its almost like watching a one man play. And we got to see it twice haha.

Gând Spiritual:

I really enjoyed President Eryings talk from conference,

He talked about how we can develop the constant critical companionship of the Holy Ghost. It so important and I love his advice on it. 

If you haven't watched all the sessions yet I invite you to catch up!! (I still need to watch Sunday afternoon so don't worry) and if you have already watched it all I invite you to start re-listening and re-reading the talks this week as they come out on Gospel Library.

Vă Iubesc Atât de Mult!!

Sora Hansen!! 

Also it's my brother Isaiah's birthday this week so hit him up with all the birthday wishes!!!