Last pday after I emailed you guys we met up with the Anziani and got
Brioscia for Anziano Ray's birthday! It's basically gelato inside of a
brioche bun. It's SOO good but really heavy haha. It's a Sicilian
thing.
Then we as Sorelle went and toured a big theater where they do plays and stuff like that. It's super ancient and so cool. I couldn't get very good pictures though because the light wasn't very good inside. One room we got to see was the dance studio where the dancers practice. It brought me back for sure with the studio floor and the bars and mirrors.
Then we hit up H&M because it's saldi (sales) season which means everything in every store goes on sale. You can get some really good deals this time of year. My companion wants to have an Italian style when she gets home so she had Sorella Bellomo help her pick out a bunch of clothes. I just got one shirt and it was only €4!! Woo!!
As a mission, our president has invited us to study what it means to "walk with God" In the scriptures because we will be talking about it at our next zone conference. It's super interesting actually. You can look in the topical guide and find tons of scriptures on it. I have especially been studying the story of Enoch and how he was able to go from "an unworthy servant" to walking with God, and then eventually getting all of his people to walk with God until they were lifted up to heaven. I am looking for patterns in all of these scriptures and trying to see how I can personally walk with God while doing his work. If you guys would like to get into some cool scripture study, I'd invited you to study what it means to walk with God. (Enoch's story is found in Moses 6:26-34 & Moses 7)
I had my first arancina after district meeting Tuesday!! We all went and got them together. It's basically just a fried ball of rice with stuff on the inside. I got mine with tomato, mozzarella, pesto, and basil. Then my comp and I split a Nutella one. Apparently these are only good in Sicily. It was good just really hard to eat, or at least I struggled for some reason.. I'm not really used to eating stuff with my face.
The Sorelle had been working with this less-active Katia for a while. She's super awesome, I love her. neither of her kids are baptized. Her son is 10 and has no interest in coming to church or getting baptized. He tells us that he doesn't believe in God. But we found out that her daughter Anna is turning 9 next week which means that we would need to teach her the lessons before she could get baptized now. She is so cute and loves the sisters so much. The only thing that's been keeping her from baptism is that she's afraid of water. We started working with her this week and I feel really hopeful about it. It is so much fun teaching kids!! We've had to really prepare these lessons and change our teaching style tons. We use lots of pictures and teach everything as simply as possible. I love it and her so much!! She is so cute. We ate lunch with this them (my first Pranzo appointment in Palermo!!) and after she ran and grabbed her Book of Mormon and asked if we could read together. She was on 1 Nefi 8 which talks about the tree of life! We took turns reading each verse and talking about it. I love her excitement about the Book of Mormon and after we asked her mom if they would read together every night. And then guess what?! They both came to church on Sunday!! It had been super long since they'd been. It's so cool to be able to teach Anna and also reactivate Katia at the same time. Now we're just hoping to soften the son's heart a little haha we're working on it!
Wednesday was crazy!!! I had to go back to Cagliari to pick up my permesso di soggiorno (visa type thing). My day was full of difficulties but also miracles! So this is how it went- I got up at 4AM because I had to be out of my house by 5 to get to the airport. My plane left at 6:25 for Rome. But of course it was delayed to when I got in my plane for Cagliari was already boarding. I got to the gate and it said that they were boarding for Madrid. I was like what?? So I asked the lady and she's like "oh they must have switched your gate, go talk to the people at that desk" I went over there and waited in a line for a little while then the lady looked it up for me and told me which gate my plane got switched to. She's like 'you better run because they're boarding right now" I ran across the airport again and when I got there the lady's like "sorry you missed it!" So I had to go back to the lady at the desk and get a new flight. I was supposed to get into Cagliari at 9:15 but then my switched flight was at 10 so I wouldn't get there until 11.
So I finally got there and was starving. I literally lived off of little airplane biscotti that they gave us on every flight. The Anziani were super awesome and brought me food because they knew I'd be hungry. I got to see my best friends!! Anziano blocker, Anziano segura, Sorella Tingey, and her companion Sorella hills picked me up in the car and proceeded to take me to where they thought the questura was. I told them that it wasn't right because I'd been to the questura in Cagliari 3 times already but they insisted that they were right. We tried to go there and the guy told us that we had to go to the other one across town (the one I was talking about) but then he told us to go to this street so we looked it up and went there but it was wrong and anyway we basically just did a lot of driving around to find it until they finally would listen to me and go where I knew it was haha. It was a struggle but we finally got there just after 12...and it was closed. We walked in and the lady said "what are you all doing?! We're closed!" We said that I needed to pick up my permesso and asked if we could come back tomorrow morning. she said "we only do permesso pick ups on Wednesdays. You'll have to come back in a week." That means that I would be spending a week in Cagliari in a trio with the sisters because the mission wasn't going to pay to fly me back to Palermo and then back again. I was going to give in but I am so blessed that we had the Anziani with us because they told her that I had to catch a plane back to Palermo in a few hours and she said "okay fine i'll do it." Then it only took her 5 minutes I'm not even kidding to do it!! I cannot imagine having to stay there for a week just to do that. So that was a miracle!!
And I got to see Sorella Tingey and my old home one more time so that was another miracle!! I've missed her so much!! 💕
Then we went home (my old home) and ate lunch and then they picked us up and I was back to the airport to wait for 2 hours until my flight home. Needless to say I was very sick of airplanes by the end of the day. So I finally got on my last flight home and I was completely exhausted. The plane was already behind schedule but we were about to take off and then they come on the intercom and announce that they have just discovered that the entire flight crew is over hours and cannot work this flight so they have to call in a completely different crew. The flight was supposed to leave at 7:15 pm and I don't think it left until around 9... But the miracle that came out of this is that because of the delay I started talking to the girl next to me on the plane because she didn't understand Italian and wanted to know what was going on. We got talking and I found out that she actually has the coolest life story. She's lived in like 6 different countries and speaks 6 languages...but unfortunately not Italian. She was meeting a friend in Palermo for a vacation. She asked if I was here on vacation as well so I got to tell her that I'm missionary in Italy. She was really interested in what I do and believe, she had tons of questions and I ended up teaching the whole restoration--in English which was super weird and a little hard for me because Italian just kept coming instead of English haha. I invited her to visit our site and ask for the missionaries to come visit. She said she definitely would..I hope so!!
Then I finally got home around 11..man what a day.
We had tons more cool things happen this week including meeting with another new investigator and finally meeting our most progressing investigator who will be baptized on September 3rd!! But I realized that this email is way too long already so I'll talk about them next week.
Today the senior couple Anziano & Sorella Garrett invited all the Sorelle over for Pranzo. We ate fajitas and chocolate chip cookies. For a second I thought we were back in America again. It was so yummy 😊 then we just hung out with them for little while which was fun and that's basically how we spent our pday! It's been a nice and relaxing day.
Funny story: today as we were on our way to the garrett's house we saw this guy who was changing his license plate with a bucket of white paint and a sharpie 😂😂 that's Sicily for you. As Sorella Bellomo says, "Sicilia is like another world. This is not Italia." Haha it's true.
Also today I learned from Sorella Bellomo that when Italians are full they say "sono piena come un uovo." I'm full like an egg! Hahaha I'm going to start using that.
Random observation about Palermo... Quoting Anziano ridd "While walking on the street within 10 meters you can smell the best and worst smell you have ever smelt in your life." Literally it's so true. You will be walking down the street and get tons of whiffs of strange smells, some good, and some not so good.
Alright, I'll be done for this week. I love you all so much!! I know I say it always but it's true! Alla prossima settimana!! ❤️
The homies in Cagliari--craziest days ever but it was worth it to see them.
x
