My Mission and Before

November 5, 2013

Hey family and friends,

 

Well as you can probably tell based on the name of this email I have bronchitis again. Hooray! But hey instead of waiting for 3 weeks and then getting admitted into the ICU hospital here in Romania. This time I was a lot smarter. But first of all it started off as a cold. No big deal. And then it all just settled in my lungs. Ughhh it was bad. So I just called Sora Hill and she called the doctor in Germany gave me antibiotics and now I feel better. But yeah that's why I didn't write yesterday sorry about that. I just really needed to rest so I didn't end up in the hospital cause I don't want to go through that again. But no worries. I'm on antibiotics. Still have a cough but I am feeling a lot better and when I walk I can actually breathe. HOORAY :)

Oricum.

This past week we had our English classes. Oh my heck it was so great. We really went all out for advertising for English classes. Because that's honestly where 50 percent of our investigators come from. So thanks to our wonderful Elders who went and got posters and because they are a lot taller then we are they posted it all over town. It was great.So we had over 30 people there on Tuesday and then we had different people come on Saturday. Sora Newell and I were teaching the intermediate class and we had over 10 people there both times. :) It was so fantastic. We have some great potentials that are interested in learning more. 

 

This week we also tried to start a childrens English class... but yeah that didn't really work out. Us trying to broadcast and advertise for it was not the most successful thing. And Sora Newell and I realized that when we came and nobody showed up. It was super sad! But we decided that next transfer we are going to make special cards and posters and really try to advertise it. But it was disappointing to see that no one came.

 

For Halloween us as missionaries we planned a party for the branch and for potential and investigators. It was so great we had one of our potentials. She is so great named Adina who was in our English class come. And then Andreea (the greatest recent convert) invited one of her friends. How amazing. It was a lot of fun and Alin who is the Branch President talked to Adina and told her a little more about the church and then told her that he hopes that she will meet with us. Where she responded that she would. Miracles are going to happen let me tell you.

 

We tried to meet with Gabriella this week... but that fell through. Her phone I think has not been paid... kinda normal here in Romania. So we went over to her block. We were waiting outside for like 10 minutes ringing apartments until her daughter came down to see who was down here and then told us that her Mom was in the hospital with her little brother because he was still really sick. And continuing her phone is off. We are going to try to see her this week though. Hoping and praying for her. We still have faith.

 

So this week... sorry actually I need to explain a little more about Sora Newell. So Sora Newell has a bachelors degree in Mathematics. And it's not that she likes math... she LOVES math. Hahha. Where one day she explained a spiritual thought about the straight and narrow path through math. And it totally made sense. Of course during this she had to teach me about derivatives and limits. Haha it was a great night.

So let me tell you about this thought. A lot of times we think of the straight and narrow as a straight line. And as we know there are a lot of people that sway off of that path so you could then explain your path as more of a rollercoaster line. Stick with me here. We have ups and downs but we are always striving to stay on the straight and narrow path. But when we make mistakes or when we have our "downs" we learn and we become better than what we were originally. Sorry really hard without a graph here. 

Now I want you to think of the straight and narrow path now as a diagonal line or as Sora Newell would say it like y=x. And then our life line "the Rollercoaster" or as she said the sinusoidal curve always trying to reach the diagonal straight line. Then she told me," even though you're down, just know that it is a Local Minimum, and your second derivative is always positive.  Of course she had to explain this all to me but a local minimum is a minimum on a graph but it is not necessarily the lowest point of the whole graph, just in a particular/local region. ISN'T THAT COOL!!!!! Gosh it was so great! Sora Newell is a really great math teacher I hope she wants to be my personal tutor forever :) Anyways. Learning more things here on my mission especially about Math haha. 

 

I think that will be it for tonight. :)

I love you all and I feel your prayers!
Cu Drag,

Sora Stewart

 

P.S. I want to hear about Dad's weird dream. Again I promise I'm okay. Sora Newell is great and she is taking care of me hahaha :)