When in Romania!

BUNA ZIUA!!!!

Where do I even start?? It has been the longest/shortest week of my life. Hold on... it hasn't even been a week... weird. Definitely feels like it has been a month since I got off of the plane. Can I just tell you, that getting on that plane in Washington DC to Vienna Austria was the scariest thing I have ever done. As I walked back to my seat, I looked around and no one spoke english (flight attendents included) and no one was American and that's when it hit me that I was leaving my home land and it took all of my strength not to turn around and run off the plane. I sat down in my chair and prayed for strength as I embarked on this new adventure. My prayers were definitely answered and by the time we got to Austria, our plane for Romania could not come soon enough. I wish I would have had time to call everyone, but our layovers were way too short. I'm so sorry. But please know that I love you with all my heart and I wish I could have had time to talk to everyone!! If we didn't have such a dang big family, this wouldn't be an issue:)

So getting to Romania was definitely a culture shock. Bucaresti is so busy and so much fun. Everywhere I go I just see Sora Petrisor's face (my teacher in the MTC) and I feel so honored to be here serving her people and it makes me want to work so much harder. Our second day was an amazing experience as we went out to Cismigu park where the mission was dedicated by Elder Nelson. What a cool experience. If you get a chance, you should look up the didicatory prayer to the Romanian mission. Did you know it was dedicated the day after I was born?? February 9, 1990. How neat. They were just waiting for me to be born to dedicate the mission:) kidding

So that day in the park, Sora Ewell and I got to teach our first lesson. IT WAS SO COOL!!! They sent us off on our own to go contacting and we ran into a girl who was sitting and reading and starting talking to her and as we did, we asked if we could meet with her to teach her more and she said she had time right now so we taught her her first lesson and gave her a commitment to read and pray about the plan of salvation pamphlet and set up a second meeting. I wanted so badly to stay in Bucaresti just so I could keep teaching her. It was a cool experience. Anyway, we got 2 other numbers that day and it was amazing. I love being here.

Arad is beautiful. I wish I had time to explain how much I love the people here and how laid back they are. They are so kind and so considerate. As we hand out cards to them, they are so grateful whereas americans would just keep walking and completely igore anyone trying to hand them anything.

We visited a ton of less active families last week. We visited a mom and her two kids and I am in love with her kids. Her name is Mihaela and her kids are Alexandra and Mihai... They are SO adorable. Seriously, Romanian children are probably the most adorable kids I've ever seen. (besides my nieces and nephews, of course). But really, they are so beautiful. I love them:)

We have mainly been focusing all our contacting on english classes that start next week, but have also contacted 3 people and gotten their information and hopefully we get to meet with them this week. English classes start next week and we use that as our biggest form of finding investigators. So hopefully a lot of people show up and we baptize them all!:) ha.

I love my companion, Sora Remsberg. She is from San Diego, 22, been out for 8 months, already trained once, lots of fun, very kind and sweet. Honestly, she reminds me a lot of Amy.. She is very bubbly and I love it. She is a great trainer. Super patient and teaches me lots. I love her.

The branch here is little. Like really little. We meet in a quaint little building and it's awesome. There are a lot of less actives that aren't coming to church so our goal this transfer is to reactivate a lot of them and get them coming more frequently. Hopefully we get to focus on some investigators too, but I know that Sora Remsberg is very driven to reactivate a lot of the less actives, which is awesome! It was so hard to say goodbye to Sora Ewell, we may or may not have sat and cried for a good 10 minutes while hugging at the train station. It probably looked pretty pathetic to anyone else who was watching... haha. But really, it was so hard. I love her so much. She is basically like my sister. I have gotten so close with her in the 9 weeks. I hope and pray we get to serve together. I know that our companionship would rock and we would get so much done. At least that's when I'm telling president hill so that he puts us together:) We'll see what happens. Keep her in your prayers. I'm sure she is doing amazing, but it's not easy being in a country where you can't communicate... very well.



I'm excited to be here. It's hard and tough but it's so rewarding. I love listening to the members and feeling of their spirit (I can't understand them very well right now) but I love listening. The language is already getting easier so I know that it will come!! Thank goodness for the gift of tongues

I love you ALLLLLL!!! So much. Miss you like crazy and as always, you're all in my prayers. Be good:)



Va pup,

Sora Cook



by the way, there are really cute stray dogs EVERYWHERE!!!! And I mean REALLY cute. I want to take them all home. So cute. And they don't speak English... It's weird. I don't know how to talk to dogs in Romanian.






Sora Remsberg and Sora Cook in front of the Theatre in Arad.



The Arad District! Elder Harrison, Elder Myers, Sora Remsberg and Sora Cook