June 1st Letter

This week was INSANE!!!!!! First Alexandru got BAPTIZED!!!!!!!!! I cannot describe the spirit that was there. Alexandru has overcome so much to get to this point even the day of he was getting texts trying to persuade him not to get baptized. But he bore it all. Very gracefully, never once have I heard him complain about the sacrifices he has made for the gospel. He completely left his old life behind, including his job, and basically all of his friends for this gospel. It has been an incredible journey with him and it is not over! Next stop: temple! The baptism was beautiful we met with him every single day this week making sure he was ready and in every lesson he bore the most incredible testimony. He also said some of the most beautiful prayers I have ever hear. In one of them he thanked God for the power that God had given him to allow him to enter onto his team. I loved the way that he phrased it, baptism is simply us entering onto the Lord's team. Alexandru asked me to give the talk on baptism so that was fun. It was in Romanian, and a lot of the vocab used for baptism is very tricky so I had some solid language study this week, the Lord is literally blessing me in all aspects of my life with now. Georgetta made me give her my talk to read before the baptism so that she could correct it.She came early to make sure everything was set up and her joy was just describable she felt the water to make sure it wasn't too cold made us show her the baptism suit to make sure it was the right size, she had a little bag packed with towels and extra clothes. Then she just sat and just said how incredible this day was, it was so touching to just watch her. She has been 100% faithful for 10 years all the time just waiting for Alexandru to do this. Steve a convert of about 2 months did the baptism and WOW it was so powerful. After when Alexandru received the Holy Ghost President Olteanu said in the blessing "the Lord knows the forces that you have had to overcome and he is so proud of you and he will continue to give you strength." In our lesson with him a couple days later Alexandru said that it felt like the power of heaven had come over him when he received the Holy Ghost. The day of the baptism was a little crazy we had to fill up the font with water and the hose was not working for a little bit so we just grabbed bottles and started taking the water from the sink in the kitchen to the font in the next room to fill it up but we finally got the hose going. Then we had to go print the programs for the baptism and buy some flowers to decorate. We were basically running around crazy so when the actual baptism started there was this incredible feeling of peace.
So yeah that was ridiculously awesome. Then we had district conference on Sunday. BIG things are coming to Romania. They changed the district presidency which is kind of equivalent to a stake presidency. President Constantinescu got made District President. He is amazing. He talked about how as members we need to stop gossiping, THERE IS NO PLACE for that stuff in the church. (Mercy loved that part of the talk) He talked about how we need to put the church on the map here in Romania. At the beginning of the meeting a bunch of families sang I am a child of God and it was so COOL! The church is GROWING here. I am so grateful that I get to be apart of it. With the incredible leaders and members that we have MIRACLES will happen in Romania. We will have stakes here! There was such a feeling of hope in the meeting it was so sick. We heard from Elder Reina an area 70 from Spain. He shared the story of his conversion and then he talked about the biggest problem that the church has is keeping our members active. He talked about how every one of us goes inactive everyday when we stop aligning our lives with Christ. It was a really cool concept that I have never thought about.
So my challenge to you is to STAY ACTIVE this week. Let me know how you do it! Constantly be looking to serve the Lord, Elder Reina talked about coming early to church and be ready to get something out of it. He also talked about honoring and fulfilling our callings. Alright my humans there is my provacare for the week!
Hope to hear from y'all!
Sora Armstrong