Merry Christmas
So much happened this week. On Monday, one of our friends we met on Saturday invited us to go to the Salt Mine about 45 minutes outside of Cluj! It was so cool to explore the old mine! They also have made the bottom of the mine super open and have put a ferris wheel, ping pong tables, golfing stations, and row boats there. After exploring around we played ping pong for a while which was so much fun! It was also such a great opportunity to be able to spend time with our friend Robert! He was baptized a while ago but has not come to church in a while because of some really hard things he has had to go through in life! I believe that Heavenly Father is very aware of his life and knew he needed a reminder of how much he is loved and cared for! This Sunday Robert showed up to the church needing some help and the Elders were able to give him a blessing. I am so glad he felt comfortable coming to us for help and that we were able to run into him a week prior to him needing help so that he knew he could count on us! This was a big testimony builder for me that Heavenly Father's hand is literally in every aspect of our lives!
Our branch put together gifts for all the children so this week we got to deliver gifts to some families we have never met because they either only go to church through our zoom link because of COVID or they have not come to church in a while. It was so much fun interacting with these families, we had so much fun just getting to know them. Everyone here is also so kind and we got treats at every house we went to! One family fed us tiramisu made with fruit juice and it was actually so good!!
Our mission held a country wide Christmas get together on Wednesday in a city in the mountains called Brasov. We left on a sleeper train at 10:30 Tuesday night and arrived at 5:00 Wednesday morning. There was about 4 inches of snow on the ground so I was already very happy! Since our train arrived at 5am and no one was awake yet, we decided to walk to the center of town and check out all the Christmas lights! It was actually so pretty and quiet outside! When we got to the center of town we saw that McDonalds was the first place to open and it did not open until 7am so we still had about 1.5 hours to go until we could use a bathroom and get warm. We ended up just wandering around talking and exploring and we found a hill to climb to get a better view of the city. It was kinda cool being the only ones walking around at the time. I was also grateful for the company we had. It was Sora Saunders and I, Sora Anderson, Sora Robinson, and Elder Olsen and Elder Rouse. Although we were quite cold we still had a blast together with lots of laughs! Later after McDonalds opened and we got some food we met up with some of the other missionaries and got the keys to the church building. Once more missionaries started showing up at the church, before our conference started at 10:30, we had a big snowball fight! Haha, it was so much fun! Our conference consisted of a Christmas Program, every companionship running out to the streets of Brasov and handing out a Book of Mormon (I think we gave out like 35+ books in 30 minutes), a very powerful and amazing testimony meeting, and presents from our Mission President's family as well as the senior couples and other friends within our mission! You could feel so much love for everyone at the conference! It was a really special experience!
Sora Saunders and I also got super lucky and the Downs (the senior missionary couple in Cluj) offered to drive us home so that we did not have to take another sleeper train! We ended up getting back to our apartment before our train was even supposed to leave Brasov! Huge Blessing!
The rest of our week was full of serving other members in our branch, our friends we are teaching, and even random people we met on the street! When we went caroling to an older lady in our branch she fed us turkey sarmale and it was soo good! I actually love sarmale(pickled cabbage rolls)! It tastes a lot better than it sounds. On Christmas day the Downs invited us over to their apartment for Christmas dinner along with the Elders and our friend Jonny who was baptized not too long ago! We had turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn and homemade rolls! It was sooo good! I may have had two full plates of food. . . haha. We also sang several Christmas songs together which was one of the highlights of my day! I can always feel the spirit so strongly through music!
All in all my week was very busy but so much fun! I am so grateful for the Spirit of Christmas and all the amazing blessings that come from forgetting yourself and serving those around you! I have seen more clearly the love that Heavenly Father and Jesus have for all of us this last week and that has been such an amazing blessing in my life!
Crăciun fericit!! Va iubesc😍
Sora Acton
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