Heart Sora Long: Bah cohhhhhhhhh !!!

I am in the city of Bacau, pronounced Bah cohhhhhhhhh It is the funnest city name to say!!! It is literally famous for nothing, except that it has the biggest Romanian Orthodox church in all of Romania as its center for some odd reason. Also there is a poet name George Bacovia, he is pretty famous as well. I study for about 4 hours a day from the approved missionary library and I love long walks down the middle of creepy ally ways in order to find those children of God who need to hear His message.

The church is true! I love being a missionary!

Every day here in Romania is one awesome adventure after the other. One random miracle this week that happened was my companion got suuuuuper sick pneumonia (that is not the miracle) We were 5 hours away from our city for a Zone meeting and exchanges on the 3rd day of being in the city we finally headed back to Bacau. On the morning we left to get to our train the people refused to sell us tickets for the train as we had arrived at the Gara to close to departure time. So we waited until the next train, in the time we returned to the apartment and I went back with Sora Wright in Galati, taught a lesson and helped prepare book of Mormons for an English spiritual thought. It was really strange because if we hadn't of missed our train that lesson would have never happened. It went really well and the spirit was very strong.

The Bacau it is a series of two trains and we finally got on ours at about 3 in the afternoon. On the first train we were put into a cabin with 4 other people and they just grilled me about our church. I mean super fast, ridiculous Romanian!! One was a professor of music and spoke like a professor of Romanian. The only reason I could understand them was because of the spirit. The only time I struggled was when we went through a tunnel and it was like the reception to your cell phone goes bad when you go through a tunnel, my understanding went out the window. They asked me why all of a sudden I couldn't understand and I said, "Daca nu pot sa o vad gura ta, deci nu pot sa va intelege." If I can't see your mouth, then I cannot understand you. They were laughing so hard at that response. They asked me who were some famous Mormons and the only person we could think of was Kathrine Heigl, they knew who that was and all nodded their heads. (I need a list of famous Mormon people!!) We got this new gift from Zone Conference this week it is something called a video flyer. ... Maybe you can google it.... But it is just a tiny little screen the size of a phone with a Mormon message loaded onto it in Romanian. We are suppose to get Ipads, but as the expected arrival date has come and passed 4 months ago, I think we will make due with these little miracles:) They are literally so cute!!! We showed the train full of people the video and they loved it!! There hearts were immediately softened by the spirit of our message.

In the little town of Mararesti, which is the city we missed our train in once and stayed in -4c degree weather, we were standing next to an information sign and a man came up to us and asked us where we were from. He was so incredibly kind and helped us double check to make sure we would get on the right train. Come to find out he is Protestant living in the city of Suceava. He was very interested in why we had come to Romania to teach about our church. We taught him about prophets and he was very interested in the idea that they would be gathering together and speaking to the whole world!!! So we invited him to listen to general conference online and he accepted the commitment.

When we finally got to our last train we were a little tired and as we dragged ourselves through the train we passed empty seat after empty seat and we heard a small voice pip up from behind a book in English, "Would you like to sit here?" We sat next to this girl, Irina, who was the most prepared person I have ever met before. As we talked with her I had the strongest feeling in my heart that she was one of the people that we were sent all the way to Romania to find and teach. And we were prompted to teach her the restoration as crazy as that sounds, so we did. At the end of discussing about the restoration in ENGLISH, which was so weird by the way... I shared something we call her "My Story" they "Why" as to why I came on a mission and why I know this church to be true. It was really powerful and I had little baby tears trying to get out of my eyes. As we left the train she stood up and gave us both the biggest hug and said, " I have been inspired by your story of how you found out who you are, that is what I want to do, find out who I am." She lives in Denmark unfortunately... But the cool part (The miracle I mentioned earlier) about this was when my companion was teaching she was completely 100% healed in the duration of the lesson, but as soon as we got off the train the racking cough along with the fever and headache were back in full swing.

Every single one of these people that we contacted and taught these gospel lessons to lived about 1 1/2 at the closest away from any city with missionaries in it. It is so weird to be in a country where that is the case!! This week was really cool!! I am so grateful to be here!! I love you all!

-Sora Long