Sora Sami Schofield Romania Bucharest Mission: April 2025

Tuesday, 29 April 2025

livin on the streets

I have no idea how people start emails without sounding goofy so let's just get into the events hahah

Basically because we are starting a new areabook we have a lot of finding time so we are on the streets a lot! Here's some fun highlights from the week (we had some funny moments haha)

- had a few really cool lessons with our friend Marian, he is awesome and you can see the difference in his life now that he is reading the Book of Mormon, we met up with him twice and he even came to church!

- we met up with a member who can't really come to church and we walked with her around the park and listened to her, it made me grateful for elevators and made me never want to get old

- we had a few awesome lessons with our friend alina and she brought her boyfriend too! We taught them about the restoration and they asked about life after death and it was super awesome, she loves the Book of Mormon! She did say she believes in reincarnation so we'll have to work on that haha

- we were able to meet a lot people this week and get a lot of numbers and we hope to be able to meet up again soon! It really was God's hand in the work

- we met some lady on the street who told us she was going to come to church and we just really hoped she did (a lot of people say that but they don't normally come) but she actually came! It was so fun. We ended up having 2 friends at church this week and it was a super cool miracle ️

Some funny moments :

☆ some guy stopped us and told us how the Pope was called romania the garden of Mary ( the mother of Jesus) so romanians go crazy for it and are sad that the Pope died and then the guy rode away on his bike

☆ got a call from a guy who asked us to pray for him so we did and then he prayed and he prayed like 10 minutes and it was kinda more yelling then praying

☆ the old ladies in church argued and shouted at each other for the entirety of the relief society lesson

☆ the lady teaching the lesson talked and clapped right in our friends face because she was excited she was there and wanted her to learn haha

☆ the same lady asked what we did this week and we told her what we did and that we talked to a bunch of people and she went "a lot of people? That's good, very good" super funny but she just really wants the branch to grow so I get it

☆talking romanian outside and getting weird looks because we are two blonde white chicks speaking romanian haha

☆☆spiritual thought

I gave a talk in church this week about how we can see God's love and how we need to make our love for God and Jesus Christ our motive/why in life. It was based on the talk from general conference called "my why is my love for my Savior" or something like that and it talked all about how we need to do things out of love and not of just because. It was cool to think about why I'm on a mission and doing the things I do, and it is because I love God and Jesus and know they love me. I know we can see their love for us everyday in all the everyday things of life, all the "coincidences" and in every little miracle.

I love you and They love you

Sami

Monday, 21 April 2025

trains and holy week

Hey everyone this week was quite a crazy one so here we are:

☆Tuesday (pday) we had to go to Arad to get my companions visa so we had pday there which was fun then we had to travel to Bucharest and we had 2 people's stuff in a tiny little room so it was little goofy and hard but good!

☆Wednesday we were in Bucharest with the whole mission and we learned all about how orthodox celebrate Easter and we got to do some fun traditions together. My new companion and I got to go with the ap's to pick up all the new missionaries coming into country. It was so cool to go with them and experience the first day in Romania from the other side. We took them around Bucharest and helped them talk to people and it was super crazy and cool to see that my Romainan started out like theirs but now I'm the one leading them around, it was a cool progression for me to see. I also got to see all my favorite mission people and then we had to get on a train and we had so much luggage and people were mad at us and the train situation was so opp-y and bad but we eventually made it to Timișoara!

☆The first few days were wacky (still are) with me and my companion trying to figure out the city, how to get around and get our feet under us. Luckily there are other missionaries here so we have been able to get some help. But because we have no friends right now we have just been finding a lot which is a lot of fun! Plus it's super warm outside so I enjoy it. We have had some pretty cool miracles already and have found so cool people to teach, we sat on a bench Sunday for an hour explaining a lot of things to a couple and it made my heart so full and so excited to share the gospel în timi

☆Easter Sunday was so fun and cute, when I told a branch member I was new to the area and there are now 4 sister missionaries here. She practically jumped into my arms she was so excited, she dragged me and told all the members (about 3 other people) that there are more missionaries here and they said they needed to thank the mission president for putting more people here and they are excited for the work here in timi, I'm excited to serve them!

☆I also got to go to midnight mass and it was so cool, got my candle lit and the city blessed by a priest for the next year, it was cool. Orthodoxy celebrates Easter a lot with a few interesting traditions I'm not the biggest fan of ......

This week was so crazy and so good, I love being a missionary and all the joy there is!

Holy week is great reminder that Jesus Christ lived and died for us. He is risen, truly He is risen. He lives and we have the amazing gift of the Book of Mormon to learn about the resurrected Christ. Remember all the Jesus did for you and how individual the atonement is for each one of us!

Love you all

Sami