Wow.. What a week

 I feel like this week has just been jammed packed with things. We had zone conference on Monday so all the missionaries from Moldova and Iasi came to Chisinau. We had 4 other sisters stay in our apartment for one night. So on P-day we walked around the city a little and went to piatias. It was also Elder Lasaters last day (my mission dad) so we all went out to eat to celebrate. We usually go out to eat on P-days anyway :)

So the other day we had a problem with our toilet. The button was stuck (cause in europe they have buttons and not handles) and so our toilet kept flushing and wouldn't stop. Me being the daughter of a plumber should know what to do, but everything we tried didn't work! We tried to turn off the water and it didn't turn off. Well I don't really know if it was the water switch but it was a little blue lever thing in the bathroom behind the toilet. It made sense at the time!! It didn't turn it off though. We called the senior couple and asked them what to do because we were out of ideas. We finally just called the apropratar (landloard) and he had a repair man come and fix it for us! We just took that time to do some language study. So that was an adventure we went through on Tuesday. 

I went on my 1st exchange this week. Because our mission is so spread out the sister training leaders come to us and we all stay in the same city. So they came Wednesday night and them left Thursday afternoon. One of the sister training leaders was actually Sora Cases MTC companion and the other one was her host., so that was a fun reunion. My companion for the next few hours was Sora Staplie. Something really cool we were talking about in our companion study was about testimonys, then we went and talked about Ether 12:27, which I love and is my mission scripture if I remember correctly. 

"And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will i make weak things become strong unto them."

She told me a story about on Sister who didn't think she was as progressed as she could have been in the language considering how long she had been there for. She went to this scripture and wondered when the Lord would make her weakness her strength. Her companion was listening to her and told her that when she talks people don't pay much attention to her beacuse hse can speak the lanuage but she told her companion (the one that couldn't speak as well) that when she talks people pay close attention and actually listen beacuse they need to to be able to understand. So in a sense, her weakness was actually a strength. People payed more attention because she couldn't speak as well. I never thought that maybe sometimes our weaknessess are strength. We just have to see how to take them and maybe use them in a differnet way.

Something really cool that happened this week was Elder Fingerly came to talk to the people the Moldova ( he is a member of the 70) He came Saturday and talked about something that Elder Ballard came and talked to the people of Europe about how to strenghten the church there. People from all over Moldova came, and the missionaries from the different branches. There are only 3 branches I think in Moldova, but they got to come and listen to him speak. It was also great because he speaks English (he is from Germany) but he doesn't speak Romanian or Russian so he had someone translate into Russian. I was happy I could understand though! He also talked to the people about the Pathway program. They tried to get the pathway program in Moldova but it was turned down for the time being. So they wanted someone here to come talk and see that these people need the program. We will see what happens in the future. He was also there on Sunday so we got to hear him talk I think a total of 4 times. It was just cool that we got to listen to a memember of the 70 talk here in Moldova :).

Everything here is great. Our 2 progressing investigators haven't been able to meet with us these last two weeks but hopefully they will be able to this week. If not we have a lot of contacting to do. I understnad now when people say this is a finding mission. Especially Moldova it has only been open for 10 years. It was opened then closed and is open again, so I'm not sure exactly how long in total it has been.

Love you all!! 

Miss you!!!

Love,

Sora Bynum

Funny line of the week:

So I go into the bathroom and notice it has a fruity smell but we don't have spray or anything then I look at the toilet paper and see it has some orange design on it. Out of curioisty I sniff it and it is SCENTED!!!! They have scented toilet paper in this country!!! I come out and I'm like "Sora our toilet paper is scented!! We may not have any baptisms or investigators right not but we have sented toilet paper!!!" It was a good day in our house haha