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
