Such a good week. Filled with miracles!!
For example, TUESDAY we went to visit an excommunicated member who we
will start working with this week. She was in the hospital doing
chemotherapy for a tumor that she has. We had no idea where this
hospital is and unfortunately my companion knows this area just about
as well as I do so we were lost. I decided to start asking people for
directions because it's always worked for me before. My companion is a
little more skeptical because I guess she's been led astray by a few
Italians in the past so we decided not to trust them and just follow
her map. After we had walked for 2 hours (during the hottest time of
the day might I add) we were basically completely lost but still
trying to follow this map. Then behind me I hear someone year
"sisters" at first we both ignored it because we get strange men
trying to talk to us in the 3 English words they know all the time.
But then I thought, maybe I should see who that was. I turned around
and saw a member waving us down- he speaks English. We told him where
we were trying to go and he looked us up and was able to give us
directions there. He said it would take us probably 3 more hours to
walk there from where we were at. We ended up having to do a little
back-tracking to go and catch this bus p--which by the way was what
the lady had told me to do in the first place haha. Then we got off
where we were supposed to and were planning to walk from there to the
hospital but I felt impressed to ask the lady In front of us if that
was right. She said that we needed to turn around and take a different
bus otherwise we'd be walking for a while. At the bus stop I asked a
different lady which bus we needed to take and she ended up getting on
the same one as us so I sat by her and talked to her about the gospel
of course! It was great! She said she was busy with work right now but
wasn't opposed to hearing our message! She also was able to tell us
exactly which stop we'd need to get off at. As soon as we got off this
man came out of nowhere and said the hospital is right here and
basically walked us there then left. Angles were guiding us I'm
telling you. I think God was like, "alright you can't waste anymore of
your time, I'm going to make it impossible for you to not get there,
as long as you trust me." Which we finally did. My companion felt
super bad after it all happened and said that she's trusting me to get
us everywhere from now on. I told her that we'd just trust God
instead.
Tuesday evening after English course, oh wait have I told you guys
about the English course here yet? I don't think I have...I love
them!! We split it up into 3 levels and in Cagliari I taught the basic
class but here the sisters always teach advanced. It was super weird
to switch from speaking mostly Italian and teaching basic English
words to only speaking in English. I loved my students in Cagliari,
but our advanced class here is so much fun. It's really small and
usually the only people who come are these 3 best friends who just
like to joke with us the whole time and an old guy who was born in
Palermo but grew up in the US then lived in Germany for a while and
now he's back here. The 3 friends always say stuff like "sister have
you been drinking? don't you be lyin'." They know all about the word
of wisdom and one actually tells us he's a Mormon in his heart because
he no longer drinks alcohol or coffee. Anyway they're hilarious and
it's super fun. Apparently they're loaded and travel the world
together and keep saying they're going to come to america and visit me
next summer. (Mom, dad, don't be surprised if we have 3 crazy Italians
showing up at our house next year.) in fact after I showed them some
pictures of st George one asked if I would marry him so he could live
there too 😂😂
Okay so then after English course we celebrated Anna's (our
investigator) birthday with her family and a few members she's close
with. She is such a cutie I love her so much. She's 9 now and
officially an investigator so we were able to commit her to a
baptismal date for the 3rd of September!! (The same day as Alesia.)
she's still timid and nervous but we've been able to help her open up
tons already and I know that these lessons are really helping her
mother to reactivate as well.
WEDNESDAY we celebrated my 6 months mark (6 months since I entered the
MTC) by getting some gelato with the sisters in the morning. There are
so many gelaterie in this town I'm never going to be able to try them
all! But we found a new favorite Wednesday. They also do crepes with
gelato inside that I'm definitely going to have to try.
We also had our interviews with president Pickerd Wednesday. I love
the Pickerd's, they're so sweet. We decided to get them bombe (a roll
filled with Nutella, deep-fried, and covered in sugar--haha welcome to
Sicily..I just realized how unhealthy that sounds) on our way there
because we knew they'd appreciate something sweet (and something they
hadn't tried because neither of them served in Sicily) after all those
interviews. We bought 4 for them and the assistants and the owner of
the shop ended up giving us 8 because we're bffs and say hi to him
every time we walk past (which is multiple times a day.) it pays to
have friends in high places I'm telling ya.
We saw so many amazing miracles this week! One of them being our
lesson with our investigator who will be getting baptized in September
named Alesia. We had planned to teach her about sabbath day observance
in order to help her come to all three meetings in church. We planned
to meet her twice this week and thought we'd teach her about
priesthood and auxiliaries the next time. When we were planning for
her lesson we had forgotten that we'd be teaching about the sabbath
and just planned to teach about the preisthood. We also planned to
have a member in the lesson but she cancelled on us but at the last
minute we were able to get another member there. The lesson ended up
being exactly what she needed. It was amazing because this member and
our investigator have actually been friends for a while and she
respects him so much. He is a priesthood holder and was able to help
explain to her what that means. We then talked about the auxiliaries
and how, under the direction of the priesthood, we as women can serve
others and be lifted up through relief society. After explaining this
we invited her to come to relief society next week (Our relief society
is at the beginning here and sacrament is at the end. She is just used
to coming to sacrament and says its too early for her to come at 9:30)
and she accepted! We finished by talking about the blessings of the
priesthood and specifically, priesthood blessings. She asked if her
friend (the member) could give her a blessing so he did. The spirit
was strong. Afterwards she said something like, "I felt like God was
talking to me through John." at the beginning of the lesson she
questioned the priesthood a little bit, saying that all churches have
the power of God, we were able to refer back to the restoration to
explain and after the blessing she received I know she has a testimony
of the power and authority that we have in our church. It was a
special experience for me.
Zone conference was Thursday!!! I love zone conference! Our main
subjects were how we can better walk with God, the doctrine of
repentance and how we can teach it using examples in the Book of
Mormon, and 3 works that president uchtdorf admonished us to use when
he came and visited Rome a few weeks ago "come and see." He told us
that we don't have to fear August (the hardest month for this mission
because everyone either leaves town or goes to the beach all day every
day) if we'll just invite people to come and see. We are going to work
on inviting everyone we can to church every week and doing more church
tours. The zone leaders ordered lunch for us and literally everything
we are was deep-fried haha welcome to Sicily! Apparently that's
usually what we eat every zone conference and is straight up Sicilian
food..they deep fry everything. It was really good nevertheless.
Well those are the highlights this week! Thanks for your faithful
examples! I love you!! 💕
Anna's birthday!!
6 months brioscià --I only have a year left 😢 where does the time go?
Zone conference food. Proprio siciliano
I drew this for our gesso last night! Also I have a new "boyfriend" here. Every gesso this guy in his 70's come up and talks to me for like 30 minutes...he's always like "do you want to get a coffee with me? It's just right there, I promise it won't take long" 😂 I just told him he can come hang out with us at church on Sunday.
x
