Funny Facts

Fun Facts from Sora Vann

v                     I run for a lot of buses

v                       McDonalds here is better than in the states

v                    We take buses everywhere

v                   I’m going to get used to being hot

v                 People here are not afraid to tell you their opinion at all

v                  Kissing people on both their cheeks is a thing here

v                   Fruit and bread is super good but doesn’t stay good for long its also super cheap here

I'm in Brasov!!

So I'm super sad because I forgot the card reader for pictures. Anyway I love it here so much! My trainer is awesome! I seriously couldn't have asked for a better person to be my trainer! Since I came without a lot of warning, I really just got thrown into things! As soon as we got to Brasov, we had to teach an English class and then had FHE (Family Home Evening) afterwards. So I was super tired. 

Our branch is one of the few with an actual church building, so that's nice. We only have two hours of  church though, because our members apparently don't get along very well with each other. We didn't really get to meet with a lot of our investigators (people we are teaching about our church) but we did meet with a few members and a less active (someone who is a member is not currently going to church). We had a great lesson with her! We talked about how she can rebuild her faith in God.  We think we really helped her think about that and feel the spirit. We had her share a spiritual experience she has had in the past and that was super awesome.  A lot of people like to speak English with us because they want to practice, so that lesson was in English. 

We had a concert at the church, where we ended up doing like all the singing and there was a person playing guitar. It ended up going super well actually, and had a lot of people that weren't members were there! We also had a wedding on Sunday, so we only ended up with one hour of church, because everyone left for the wedding.

We are helping one of our members get ready to go to the temple and she is so excited! Its awesome :) Also its rained almost everyday here, so after two days of having wet feet, I was finally able to get some rainboots! We also ended up running for buses a lot. haha. 

Sorry I'm super scattered brained. We had the craziest hike earlier today! We ended up hiking on top of a mountain through some snow, and it would hail/rain off and on, so that was fun. We had only brought like a light jacket too. Anyway I'm loving it here in Brasov :) and the Romanian is coming. haha I love you all! I promise I'll send pictures next week! 

Love Sora Vann!                                                                                            (The picture is from the concert)

She Made It!!!

Here's a picture with President and Sora Clark at the airport in Romania.  She is ready to serve!

On Her Way!!!

At Check In

I see Kate only posted one time about her crazy ear experience. We have had so many miracles this past month.  First – we were finally able to see her regular ENT on May 12^th.  (There was so many roadblocks)  Second – At the May 12^th visit, the doctor looked into her ear, very thoroughly, and said the puncture has completely healed, no hole.  He wrote a letter to state that with no restrictions before we left the office.   Third – a prescription that had been held up in mailing, arrived the 13^th.  Fourth, Elder Hacking,  European Mission Area Authority, was able to get her travel to Romania arranged one day prior to the trip Walt and I had planned months ago.  Miracle after miracle.

Kate was set apart again for her mission yesterday.  She felt complete again now that she had her name tag on. Today was flight day.  Her luggage didn’t weigh over 50 lbs (she was really worried), and all went well.  It was harder to say good-bye this time.  Not nearly as rushed.  The lines weren’t too bad and there was plenty of time.  She was so obliging with my many pictures.  We watched her until we couldn’t see her anymore.

She will fly to Heathrow Airport (London)  7 hour flight.  Then a 4 hour lay-over.  The flight to Bucharest, Romania will be another 3 ½ hours.  It will be a very long day/night for her.  She brought a little pillow and blanket.   Her mission president (President Ivory) will pick her up at the airport.  Then the real fun starts.

We are so very proud of Kate.  She has had such faith through all of this.  She is so excited about the opportunity to help the people of Romania come closer to Christ.  The rest of these posts will be from her.  I just copy and paste and add the great pictures.  Thank you for all your prayers through all of this. 

All in God's Plan

So the Friday before I left for Romania I decided to go to the Health Clinic in the MTC because my ear had been hurting and I thought I might have an ear infection. So I went and they couldn't really tell and there was wax in the way and all this other stuff so they decided to just send me to an ENT. 

Luckily I was able to get into see an ENT that afternoon. There the ENT told me that it wasn't infection but that a small piece of synthetic material called silastic that had been placed behind my eardrum in a previous surgery was coming out of my eardrum. He pulled the rest of it out and there was a pretty sizable hole left behind. He told that they would need to watch it to make sure it would close up on its own and three days (the time before I left for Romania) was not enough time to do it. I started crying as we continued to discuss specifics. He called my companions back from the waiting room and they were of course very bewilder when they saw me crying. He explained to them the situation and there was lots of hugging and crying (mostly me). I was definitely glad I had them there as my support. 

We got back to the MTC and had to talk to like two or three more people with lots of waiting in-between but eventually it came down to that they wanted to send me home the next day to heal up and get better. They would send me straight off to Romania once my doctor at home cleared me. So we told our Elders later that night and it was a tough "see ya later". I asked Varstnicul Wilstead to give me a blessing and that was of course wonderful. I could feel how much they all loved me and how they were sad to see me have to deal with this. We took some pictures and sang some hymns and had our goodbyes, and then we left to go pack. I spent the rest of the night packing and then my surori dropped me off at the travel center the next morning at 6:00am. That was a very tearful goodbye. But I know I will get to see them again :)

Its been hard being home. Sometimes I don't what to do with myself and it's hard studying the language by myself. The Lord has definitely been helping me to handle the situation and has given me a lot of peace through this hard time. I know the Lord has a plan of me and I might not like it at first but I know his plan is better than anything I could come up with. I love you all and I will keep the blog updated about what's going on with everything! Va iubesc! 

Love Kate