Dang, I will be in Romania for this entire year,
that is insane. My New Year's Resolution is to learn Romanian. I have a
few others but that is a major one.
First off I want to thank
everyone for all the Christmas packages, letters, and cards. I was
definitely the most spoiled missionary in Romania this year. Seriously,
your letters of encouragement and love meant a lot so thank you so so so
much!
Okay now for stories from my first Christmas in Romania.
We ate a lot of PORC, everything was porc. I have never eaten so much
meat in my entire life and I am not even sure what part of the pig it
was coming from. The members were so generous. We had two families
invite us over. We went first to eat with Sora Violeta. She is an
awesome woman. We have been working to reactivate her and her husband,
they are such a cute young couple. They have come to church four times
in a row so that is awesome! Anyway we ate with them, we had mamaliga
which is baked corn flour, then we had lots of different types of porc,
this mayonnaise salad thing and sarmale. It was so much fun to see all the
traditional Romanian food, at the same time, it was so interesting to see
what a humble Christmas it was for them. Then we went to the Familia
Musat's home with the Elders. We got to watch the Lego Movie which was
fun and weird at the same time. The Musat's have this little girl that
reminded me of Mandy so much. She would crawl onto my lap with this make up
set she had gotten from Mosii Craciun ,Santa Claus, and try and put
pounds of make up on me. She already had a ridiculous amount on her own face
as well. She is a gorgeous little girl though it felt just like I was
hanging out Mandy Brown having her hanging off me. It was great. Then we
ate more food. I was done with porc at this point but Sora Musat made me
try this porc jello stuff and I almost gagged. I really cannot even
explain it. Just think all the excess parts of the pig that should never
be consumed put into clear jello. Yes I ate that, it was rough. Thank
Goodness for water and bread. Sora Musat asked us about our ancestors
where they came from and stuff and I got to share a couple of stories
from the books that Grandma put together for me. They loved that,
especially the story about the missionary in New Zealand finding the
bread on the side of the path from his wife at home. Translating that
into Romanian was a little difficult but Sora B had my back. All in all
it was an incredible Christmas, one that I will never forget!
This
week I have been working on going forth with faith not fear. One of my
favorite things I have learned is that when we push forward with faith,
our will begins to be aligned with Heavenly Father's. No matter that
trial we are encountering we can overcome it if we have faith that our
Father in Heaven is there helping us. I promise you He is. There are
days of discouragement for sure, days where we feel the weight of all
opposition pushing against us but I have never had a day here in Romania
where I have not felt my Heavenly Father's love. Sometimes He saves it,
but when I need it most His love encompasses me and bears me up. This
is not an experience only missionaries are allowed to have or even only Mormons.... all of God's children can feel His encompassing love and power.
All we have to do is get on our knees and pray for it. I know that
Christ died for all of us and that we all can be recipients of His
saving grace through faith, repentance and enduring to the end. I love
you all so much! Have an incredible week!
La Multi Ani
Sora Armstrong
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