Staying in Cluj!

Not a ton to write about this week, but that's okay! First off transfers were this week, but I am going to be staying in Cluj with Sora Gleason for another transfer! Yay! Anyways...

Seeing Daniela at the Airport -  So good to see her again!!

In the beginning of this week, I was talking to Daniela and seeing how she is doing and everything. While we are talking she just randomly says - oh yeah, my mom is going to be landing in Cluj in a hour and you guys should go see her at the airport if you have time! Of course we went, and it was great getting to see and talk to her! I haven't seen her since she got baptized :) She is doing great though ! So that was fun. 

Ghetto Romanian Garage

We had a super cool experience block knocking this week! We had gotten a lot of rejection that night, but someone finally said "yes" to watching our video about Christ Afterwards they invited us in to talk more! We ended up teaching them about the restoration of our church and giving them a Book of Mormon. One of my favorite things I get to do as a missionary is bare testimony that I know that book is true and that it has helped me so much in my life. We hope to continue teaching that family. :) 

Teo and Me!!

Saturday we went over to Teo's with the Elders to make/eat spring rolls with her. It was quite interesting. She just made all the ingredients that went in them, and then we just put them together ourselves as we ate. It was funny because Elder Oak (who is half Korean) the only one who is any kind of Asian, really struggled with making his. We laughed at him a lot. haha. It was a ton of fun and now that Teo is done with exams, she promised that she would get back to reading the Book of Mormon! I told her we should have a competition to see who can finish it first in Romanian! So that will be fun :) 

Our District!

We also had Branch Conference this Sunday, and it was awesome because we had so many investigators at church! We had two and the Elders had five! Teo came and loved it! :) A recent convert, Fratele Balough, got called to our branch presidency, so now President Lepure has a counselor !  Yay! We are all so happy for him because he has been doing everything by myself for a while now. This will be great for our branch :) 

I think that's about everything! I hope you guys have a great week! I love you all! 

Love,

 Sora Vann

Oh yeah! I also got to see Daniela at the airport here in Cluj before she went home!  

A week of protests and British accents

Silly Faces - Sora Gleason and Me!

So people all over Romania have been protesting all week  about the government letting past leaders, who they don't like and think are corrupt, out of prison. They are really peaceful protest though; so nothing to worry about and they mostly just get in the way of traffic and buses. We had to walk home one night after meeting with someone because all the buses we backed up. 

When you are building a block but than ran out of money....there were people living in this block 

We did a lot of block knocking this week and meet a cool new family! The husband (least we think they are married) is from Turkey and is Muslim. The wife is from Romania and is Christian. They weren't interested in our video about Christ but they were interested in our free English class, and they invited us in for tea. We stayed and talked for about a half an hour and they asked us so many questions about our church. It was super cool! We talked a little bit about Joseph Smith, and he seemed really interested that we believe in current prophets. 

A license plate we found on the ground the night we walked home 

Other things from this week: 

We got JWed (Jehovah Witnesses). There are a lot of Jehovah Witnesses here who like to show us mormon missionaries that we are wrong. We ran into this nice lady and started talking to her and we find out she is a Jehovah's Witness. She tries to give us a pamphlet and than pulls out her Bible and starts reading us verses. We politely told her we had to go. She also flat out told us the Book of Mormon is not scripture. To each their own...

The Elders decided to pretty much only talk in British accents for the past week. It made district meeting quite entertaining.

The Steak - Yum!!

Sora Gleason and I decided we really missed steak and went and got steak this week from a restaurant and it was so good! 

Everyone in college is busy this week with exams :( so that kinda stinks right now.

Anyway,


I think that's about it! I love you all! Hope you guys have a great week! 

Love,

 Sora Vann 

Quick Weekly

Sora Gleason and I - ready to Paint Ball (Story coming up)

Quick weekly! We had a missionary broadcast this week and it was great! A lot of good stuff was said, and they changed a few things around. (like planning in the morning and we now only have 4 key indicators) but that all means nothing to a lot of you, so anyway! 

We also had lunch with a less active and it was great! She is a super cool lady from the United States living in Romanian because of her husband's job. We have really started to develop a great friendship with her :) 

Parcul Central  (Where we did chalk contacting)

We went chalk contacting this Sunday and it went super well! We wrote "Ce va aduce fericire?" Which means "What brings you happiness?", and asked people to write their answers down on the sidewalk. It went super well! We got a lot of people to write, and were able to start a lot of good conversations :) 

Chalk Contacting  "What Brings you Happiness?"

Car with ghetto license plate (made out of cardboard)

On Saturday, Elder Wagner (our district leader) called us and told us that President Lepure (our branch president) wanted each of us to give a ten minute talk on Sunday about how we stay disciplined on our missions. We started freaking out. So we called President Lepure; turns out he actually just wanted us to give comments about that in Sunday School, totaling ten minutes between all 6 missionaries. We were very relieved to say the least. 

Our District - Paint Balling on P-Day!

Fun thing of the day! We went paintballing with the Elders and one of their investigators today and it was so much fun! 

Me and Sora Gleason - Armed and Ready to shoot some paint!

Afterwards, we got burgers; which were the best burgers I've had in Romania! It was a good P-day :) 

Best Burger Ever!!

Getting my burger.  Paint went through the camo top.

Sorry, that's it for the week! Hope you guys have a great week! Love you guys! 

Love

 Sora Vann

I got to fly! (again)

Me and Sora Gleason on the plane to Bucaresti

So the big story of the week is we FLEW down to Bucuresti to do exchanges with the STLs (sister training leaders). That fight is literally the best flight I have ever been on. You take off, get up to cruising height, get a free yummy sandwich and  a drink, and then land. It's only like a 30-40 minutes flight. It's like all the fun things about flying without being stuck on a plane for forever.

 

Cluj

Sora Falkenberg

Anyway the exchange was a lot of fun too! I was with Sora Falkenberg, and we had a lot of fun. We got stuck in someone's house for a  extra half hour because the key broke when Sora Falkenberg went to unlock the door when we were leaving. The lady's son had to come home from work to unlock the door to let us out. In the mean time, we had been thinking of alternate escape plans (like climbing out the window). We ate subway in the Metro station (the irony) because there were no seats in the subway. I also got to see Sora Savoie and give her a hug! :) On the way home however, we almost missed our flight because it took us a half an hour to get a taxi. Gotta love Buc!

But back in Cluj, the Elders had a lesson with Rares after English this week and it went really well! He is going to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it and about Joseph Smith's first vision! The Elders said he seems like he is really prepared :) 

Sora Gleason and me in the countryside of Cluj

We had a lesson with Teo this week and it went well. But she hasn't prayed about what we have been teaching her (like the Book of Mormon, or Joseph Smith's first vision or just the church in general). We re-committed her to do those things, and we are really hoping she will. I've thought a lot about how we teach people about our church and we tell them how we have come to know it is true, but they can never come to know if it is true or not, unless they decide to see for themselves by praying and asking for their own answer from their loving Heavenly Father. 

Other fun things: 

1. I won our game of spoons at games night (yay!)

2. Sora and I did face masks this week :) 

Our face masks!

3. I'm sick again (I guess this isn't actually a fun thing)

See those Pigs!

Pigs in the Trash

4. We saw some huge pigs digging through some trash this week!  

That's about it :) Hope you guys have a great week! 

Love you all! 

Countryside of Cluj - Where you see pigs.

Love,

 
 Sora Vann

Half Way There!!!

Gleason and Vann on the frozen lake

Today is my half way mark on my mission and it's crazy! I feel like I just barely got out here still! 

Anyway, I forgot to mention this last Monday but in the morning we meet with this really cool women named Andrea. She is a therapist and we were talking about her job and the conversation naturally just followed into us talking about the plan of salvation. We taught her the whole thing right there and then, it was so cool! She thinks every religion is right so I don't know if she will want to get baptized anytime soon but it was a super cool experience :) 

Selfie - Block Knocking

We did a lot of block knocking this week because like no one wanted to meet with us, but hey that's okay! We had some really cool experiences and some really interesting experiences. One time, when we were blocking knocking , our video flyer (the thing that we use to show people videos) died. So we decided to ask people if they wanted a free Book of Mormon. One lady we asked, started asking us questions. We then basically taught a whole lesson on this lady's door step! It was so awesome! She didn't seem very interested but maybe she'll decided to read the Book of Mormon we gave her :) A different night we went blocking knocking didn't go so well. To sum it all up, I fell down the stairs twice (I'm fine don't worry haha), had a lady open her door and yell at us and then slam it.  (she said "You go from door to door asking every person if they have faith or not, why do you care?! *slam), and a man tell us you can't sell Jesus (we told we aren't selling Him, He is free :) Sora Gleason and I just laugh about those thing now. haha 

Cluj in the Snow

Super cool experience of the week, is a guy named Rares! We met him at the mall. He was working at a bank kiosk and stopped us and asked if we had a minute. Since we ask people that all the time I figured we could give this guy a few of our minutes. He didn't end up getting us to sign up for a credit card but we did tell him about our free English class. I've never seen someone's face light up so fast! He was so excited. He came on Saturday to class and loved it! At the end of class, he asked if this is where we have church. I said yes, and then he asked when. I told him Sunday at 10. He said he would see us Sunday, and he came! Afterwards he had questions about the Book of Mormon and said that he had loved church! :)

Eggs and Butter at the Market

Other fun things:

 

Our Branch President's son Dani got baptized this Saturday :) 

We made rice krispy treats for the baptism, except we made them with corn flakes because it's hard to find rice kripsies here. 

Sora Gleason on the frozen lake

We walked on a frozen lake by our apartment like the rebels we are ;) 

Sora Gleason with the friendly dog

And we made friends with a very friendly stray dog.

I think thats everything for this week :)

 I love you all!

 Have a great week :) 

Love

 Sora Vann!

Let it Snow! Let it Snow! Let it Snow!

The Stage in Centru for New Year's Eve (Cluj)

We didn't get that much snow compared to a lot of other places in Romania but it snowed on and off all week this week. I love it and Sora Gleason hated it (it's okay, she's from California). 

So this week was awesome! We did a lot of blocking knocking (when we go into a block (an apartment building) and knock on every door). This time we asked people if they wanted to watch a video about Christ. We got some funny responses, some mean responses, and some awesome ones as well :) One guy said "Don't be mad, but I'm communist and atheist." We just couldn't help but laugh at that one after he had shut the door. He was this cute adorable little old man!  Another guy said he was busy right now but we could come over another time. So we got his number and his name and we both swear that he said his name was "nachos" but with a Romanian accent. We laughed about that one for a while too. We also had about 4 people that actually seem interested in our message :) 

Sora Gleason and Me (Flash is bright)

We also visited a member this week named Sora Lepure (Iepure is rabbit in Romanian. hehe)  We went and visited her even though we couldn't get a hold of her before hand. I felt bad about going over there unannounced but felt a really strong feeling that we should. When we got there she was so happy that we had come. She said it was exactly what she needed :) She is having a hard time right now so we were able to go over and just talk with her and help her feel better. :)  

Maria (from the Christmas Targ) and Me

They don't really have Mexican food here (I know - it's really upsetting!) but there is a Mexican restaurant in the mall, and Sora Gleason and I both really love Mexican food. We decided to try it. It didn't taste like Mexican food at       all, it was sad!  But it's all good! 

I think that's everything! I love you guys and hope you all have a great week! 

Love 

Sora Vann

A Monkey Stole my Name Tag

Monkey who stole my name tag!

Okay, it wasn't a real monkey but its still a good story. We found these cool/weird statues and one of them was a sock monkey. We decided to take pictures with them and when I hugged the monkey, I guess my name tag fell off. We didn't notice till we were all the way home; so we weren't sure where it fell off. Sora Dusenberry thought it might have fallen off in the giant shoe (one of the other statues). So we looked at the pictures and in the last one my name tag was missing. So we were able to go back there and find it! So happy! 

Found my Tag!

Another statue

 Also, we got an online referral of someone wanting a Book of Mormon. We called her and planned a time to go give it to her, and talk to her. Just as we were getting there a lady walked up, and it turned out to be her! It turns out that her mom had to go to the hospital and so she wasn't going to be able to meet with us that day. We just happened to arrive at the same time, so we were able to give her the Book of Mormon! She was so happy! We are going to go back this week and talk to her :) 

Today when we were taking a taxi back from the train station (because my new companion didn't have any bus tickets yet) we started talking to our taxi driver. It turns out that he had met the missionaries a year ago and they had given him a Book of Mormon. He said he hadn't had a chance to read it yet but that he had some questions. We exchanged numbers to meet up sometime and talk about his questions :) 

Cool bridge we found

Other funny/exciting things: 

While blocking knocking, one guy opened his door, looked at us for a second, and before we could say anything said "pa" (bye) and then closed the door. I was just laughed, it was so funny. 

Found this sign while block knocking

I ate liver this week, and it was actually pretty good.

 (I didn't know it was liver when I was eating it; thank goodness).

Herecleea, (one of our investigators) read and prayed about the Book of Mormon this week! She said she feels good about it and believes its true! :) But said that she wouldn't want to change her religion...so that was sad. But she's going to still keep reading :)

Oh yes! I almost forgot! I have a new companion now -Sora Gleason! I'll send pictures next week with her :) I love you guys! Have a great week! 

Love, 

Sora Vann