My Mission and Before

May 20, 2013

Hello my loved ones!

Things are great here in Cluj-Napoca, and the work is just blooming. We have a really wonderful district who are just filled with the desire to work, and share the gospel with everyone.

I feel like things are never really normal with the last couple weeks of this transfer, there are just so many changes and so many things going on in general.

Last monday we went to go see Familia Iepure. Who is the branch president here. His wife Weronica is from Poland and so Sora Modzelewska just fits right in. It's really adorable and very cool to see how Sora Modzelewska has just molded into this branch! She keeps telling me that she feels that the Lord was preparing her, her whole mission to come to Cluj and be apart of this branch. I honestly feel that she will die her, I think she really wants to die here actually too. :) Anyways back to Familia Iepure they have the two most adorable kids. Dani and Simi. Super cute little boys and since Weronica is Polish and Mihai is Romanian and they speak English to each other. Weronica speaks polish to the boys and Mihai speaks Romanian to them. They obviously know Romanian best because well we live here in Romania! They understand all of those languages. So we were sitting and talking and Dani comes up to me and says something. And it doesn't sound Romanian and so I listen harder and I felt so dumb he was speaking to me in ENGLISH! "Please Come." He kept saying that over and over and I didn't understand him. Extremely embarrassing. President Iepure was laughing so hard. It was a good moment. :)
I think I told you about our wonderful little couple that we are teaching Mariana and George? Maybe? I'm just going to talk about them again because they are such wonderful blessings that have come into our life. They are pretty open about religions, but they are still orthodox and like thier religion which is totally understandable. We teach them 30 minutes of English and 30 minutes of Gospel discussion and this last time they agreed to come to church! I didn't get my hopes up but as we are walking up to the Villa and I saw their car I may have done a few heel clicks walking up to the front door. They were dressed in Sunday best and the branch just enveloped them with love. It was almost a perfect Sunday. The speakers spoke about what we wanted to teach them and they told us that they really loved împărtăşania. Sunday School not as good. But we still have lessons to teach them and appointments set so we are excited :)
They are such a loving couple who just laugh all the time. They are just so happy which is wonderful to see here. :)
The biggest blessing since I have been here? Sabina. Oh my goodness my heart just rejoices with her. Because I just love her so dearly! She has come to church every week since we have started meeting with her, she has agreed to every commitment, and has kept every commitment. She has read and prayed and has commented in Church. And she just is so humble, so willing to follow the example of Christ. She makes me feel so loved, which is strange since I am supposed to make HER feel loved! Yesterday we were talking and she just wanted to know about my life, and family, and what I like to do. And she must have given me 30 hugs within 10 minutes. And she just kept saying over and over how grateful she was that we were there for her and that I was just the person she needed in her life. Oh my goodness I can't even put it into words how much she made me feel so loved. The most beautiful part to me is when she was talking about my church and then looked at me and said well actually I guess it's my church now too. :) She is so excited to be batized on the 1st and she agreed to have pictures taken since she wouldn't let us take any pictures before. I can not even discribe to you how much I love this woman, and how loving she is, and how willing she is to follow Chist. It's the most beautiful thing I have seen here. :)

We had exchanges this week too. Well sorta. They changed some things out here with mission rules and ways to do things. Before each area would switch with a specific area. Like Cluj switches with Sibiu and Timişoara with Arăd and so forth. Well now we have Sister Trainer Leaders which is what Sora Ewell is in Arăd and so now the STL goes to all the areas she can and has an exchange with the senior companion to help them meet goals and be a better trainer or Senior companion. So Sora Ewell and her companion Sora Deruvo who was in the MTC with me came and we had an exchange. I was with Sora Deruvo and we just had a blast. I really like exchanges because I am forced to have to speak and try my hardest to communicate. And I just immerse myself in the language and with what we are doing. And I was complemented on my Romanian which is still really bad, but Romanians have mercy on me and just love that I am trying to speak in their language and they love that. They appreciate that oh so much. It really is just nice to see that I am progressing little by little in this country. :) Little blessings just matter so much to me.

And I had such a blast serving with my dear friend for that day. :)

I love this gospel. And I love being a missionary more and more each and every day! I love feeling the spirit and I work everyday to just have the spirit be my constant companion. I think that that may be one of my favorite things about being a missionary. Is that I feel the spirit all the time. And it testifies to my investgators and I all the time. It's the most amazing feeling. I can't imagine now how it would feel to not have this constant companion that just feels my life with such great stregth, hope, and happiness. I know that God lives and He loves His children. I see everday how He has prepared His children to accept and be apart of the Gospel. I have no doubt that He knows all of us and He knows His lost sheep. And He still loves them. :) Isn't that beautiful? I'm learning a lot about love lately. And it is beautiful, endless, and everlasting :)
I love you all :)
Sora Stewart