friends, finding and miracles 🌞

Ok so I said last week was a favorite week of mine, this week may have almost beat it. Basically I'm loving life as a missionary. 

On Tuesday we had a bunch of basic start of the week things. But we still had some fun finding and English class! 

Wednesday we met some super cool people! One person we met was Livia who loved to talk with us and later told us how she knew God put us in her path. So tender. We also had the goofiest lesson. Our friend came and we were giving a church tour and she was speeding through it and would never look at us in the face haha. So it was so quick and I don't quite know what she looks like but she seems super cool haha. Then we tried some finding in a new different area. Had some sml meetings and that was about it. Super fun day. 

Thursday we had district council and then we heart attacked a member. But we didn't quite know what bloc she lived in so it took us a minute but we figured it out eventually haha. We also got kinda wrecked in streeting. People were so mean haha. But we eventually met someone nice who wants to come to church so it made our day. We also were supposed to have a lesson with this lady at her house and we brought a member with us since our member knew where she lived and we only knew the general area (we met her on the street) and so we go knock her door and she doesn't answer which was so sad because we had our cutie member with us. We later find out that we knocked the wrong door haha but now we know and we are going back soon. Then we took a bus to Cluj for an exchange! 

Friday I had an exchange with Sora Willis and it was so fun! We got to street a lot, ate good Greek food and saw one of my favorite members in Cluj! It was such a fun day. I loved it and I definitely realized that I served in Cluj during the ugliest part of the year haha fall is so gorgeous in Romania! 

Saturday we went back to Sibiu and went streeting! We met some super cool people! Definitely did not get as throttled as we did earlier in the week haha. So fun. We had games night and a lesson with Elena! We taught about Tithing and she said she knows she needs to get baptized so she will definitely pay tithing and it was so cute to see how much she wants to get baptized! 

Sunday was crazy!! One of my favorite days! When church was starting we had like 4 members there haha but a few minutes later we had some many friends walk in. They brought a bunch of their families to church too so we ended up with 8 friends at church!!! It was so amazing. The room was so full and it was so awesome. I also gave a talk that day and got a little emotional while giving it and talking about how much I love the romanian members, Sunday was a reminder that my time as a missionary is dwindling and talking to all these people about the joy of missionary work was quite a tender one for me. But so good. Some friends stayed for second hour and loved it! Our friend Livia from Wednesday came and said that it filled a gap she was feeling in her life so tender. Then we went out finding and found so many cool people! We met a guy from Tanzania and I'm convinced that I need to go there and visit now lol. But we were seriously blessed on Sunday and found so many cool people and set up a bunch of lessons. God really blessed us on Sunday. 

That is about my week!

I'll leave ya with a quick spiritual thought : 

I read a talk this week and it mentioned how the atonement is heavens antidote to obstacles and struggles of this world. The atonement has the power to fix anything in our lives. We shouldn't place any limits on the atonement of what it can do and who it covers because it's infinite. It is our antidote to all of life's struggles and it is there for our use. 

Love you all! 

Sami

A lot of exchanges in Cluj, so there were a lot of missionaries here

Member in Cluj, Laura

STL's

We carved pumpkins with a new member friend today

An Elder was shaving his head and needed it trimmed a little before he shaved it. 

Canadian Thanksgiving in romania with americans?

Ok this week was a top week, easily among one of my favorites! 

We started off with some fun finding on Tuesday! We've been running up split contacting and its been super fun and we met some super cool people. We also had a train to București to go to zone conference! I hit my 400th hour on train  played a bunch a cards, some sml work and yapped a little bit haha 

Wednesday was ZONE CONF! wahoo!! It was super awesome! We learned so much and had some super awesome discussions with everybody and even got to go streeting in București! We also played a gamed where it was basically tug a war (my girls camp knot tying skills came in handy) but you were tied to the rope instead of gripping it and my comp and I did against each other and we both left with some bruises on our waists haha. Super fun though! I love seeing everyone in our zone and chatting with all my mission friends! 

Thursday was the most fun. We had some fun finding! Met with our cute new member Alina. She is literally amazing. She kept telling us how she feels after her baptism and its awesome haha. We THEN met with our cute friend Elena! She is truly perfect. We asked her to read Mosiah 18 before the lesson and we asked her what she liked about it. We then explained the gospel/doctrine of Jesus Christ and asked her to be baptized and she said she's been thinking about it and really wants too, so she's on date for December 13! Wahoo! She is so cutie and lives by a member so they come to and from church together so it's perf. 

Friday was pretty normal. We visited a member and she fed us pizza and just kept pulling more pizza out for us haha. Super fun. Saturday was more of the same. We went finding and met with Elena and had games night! 

Sunday was fun! We worked hard all weekend to get people to come to church but not that many friends did which is hard. But we did all we could. Elena came though! After church we had a big potluck to celebrate Thanksgiving because Canadian Thanksgiving was a little bit ago and our branch president used to live in Canada and Romania doesn't have a thanksgiving so we celebrated it now haha. Super random but super fun. We also went finding and I accidentally took us to a car dealership instead of a house (she put a wrong address so it wasn't completely my fault) so we walked an hour back into the city but it led us to finding in some different areas so it was a win! Haha

Spiritual thought : 

I wish I had some profound spiritual thought for you but honestly I don't haha. I just want to say that I know that living the gospel brings joy! I know that covenants are our way to paradise and eternal joy! Any of the hard in this life will be fixed in the next and the answer to all hard things is Jesus Christ! I love you all and God loves you more! 

Love, Sami

On the train to Bucharest

Zone Conference

At the zoo with our friend

Sora Popescu from our branch

Our friend Elena

Thanksgiving dinner

rain and miracles 🌧🫶

This week was pretty awesome. I have 2 super cool stories I want to share so I'll keep the rest of the week to just some highlights! 

☆ had a fun meeting with the Adriatic north mission and got some super cool new ideas for finding! 

☆ had a lesson with our cute friend Elena and she said she wants to stay in this church forever

☆ met up with our girl Alina and went to a little history presentation about Sibiu 

☆ had a lot of meetings one day but we are hoping to make some fun changes to media work and everything!

☆ did some studies in a cutie cafe while it was raining and it was fun! 

☆ went bus/parking lot finding and it was so much fun! We talked to everybody in this huge parking lot and invited them all to church! We had a super fun time doing this, missionary work is just kinda the best 

Ok super cool miracle stories time! 

☆ first! My comp and I had a nice chunk of finding time and we decided to stop by some old friends houses and then head to a neighborhood we haven't been before and knock it. We stopped by the houses and then started to walk to the neighborhood but I felt so strongly to turn around and go down another road and my comp and I have been working on following the first prompting no matter what so we did. We went down this empty dirt road. We got to the end and my comp said we needed to go a certain way and we luckily found ourselves at an open gate that led us to a neighborhood so we said welp ok let's knock it. Let's just say we got throttled. So many people were mean and didn't want to talk. It was POURING rain. But I just kinda of had this peace that I knew I was in the right spot and that we needed to be on that street. So we kept going and kept praying and kept asking everybody if they knew anybody we should talk to and knocked on a house we felt so good about and they said no rip. So we went another direction and then I was like let's just take this other road home because it's late, I also really felt to turn around.  My comp agreed but wanted to walk and knock one more house on the road I wanted to take and we knocked this house and ended up meeting a family!! The dad comes out and asks us why we are in the pouring rain and we told we have the most important message on earth to share and he let us and we taught him and his family and gave them a book of mormon! And we're gonna go this week to meet up. Super awesome miracle. Right place, right time and following all the first promptings we get. 

☆ second! We went finding again and decided we were going to invite everyone to church! So we met some cool people but the coolest story was that we were in this one neighborhood that we had been to before and last week we knocked a door and 2 kids answered saying that there mom would like our message but she wasn't home so come back later. We went back later and she wasn't home so we left. But as we were walking out of that bloc we saw a kid (one of the og's from last week) so we knew that he was with his mom! So we chatted with them and are going to go back this week and teach them! It was super cool and we ended up meeting people who we needed too at just the right! God was guiding our efforts this week and it was so cool to watch. 

Quick little spiritual thought! 

So call me crazy but while i work out I listen to the old testament because it's the last standard work I haven't read it yet but it's kinda hard to read and long so I listen to it but anyways in Deuteronomy 1 it says "The Lord will fight with you". The Lord is always on our side and will fight with us and the strength of the Lord is stronger than any other force. With the Lord anything is possible and I know He will never forsake you. He never leaves us alone and He is fighting with us, what ever we are fighting through, He is walking through that fire with us. How great a comfort that is. 

I love you all! Email me!

Love, Sami

Our friend took this on our tour of Sibiu

Parking lot finding

It says "live Romania" but it means similar to long live Romania

5 huge bags of potatoes that I thought Austin would find funny

Soaked in the rain after finding the family