Monday night we had a family home evening with the Africans! A member,
Juliet, is basically the "mom" of all of the Africans in this city.
She owns a little shop close to her home and they all hang out there
or at her home. We literally meet new people every time that we go to
see her. So every Monday she invites us over and all of her friends
(members and nonmembers) to do a big family home evening together! She
cooked a huge meal of super spicy rice with goat liver, turkey, salad,
and fruit. the sister who I replaced in this city finished her mission
and was still here in Italy with her family visiting her cities. So
she got to come to it that night with her family which was super fun
to have all of them there! The Africans didn't even eat with us
though! They just cooked the food, served us, then took pictures and
videos of us while we ate. Haha, they're so weird I love them. But it
also shows how giving they are. All Juliet was worried about is that
we were accommodated. She didn't eat the whole night while we were
there.
Wednesday was kind of hard because we had to do two "drop lessons"
that day because neither of them were progressing or keeping invites.
It's sad because they wanted to keep seeing us, but they really didn't
understand why we are here as missionaries. Then we got to babysit two
10 year old new converts (one of which is inactive) because they
wanted to do a lesson together...yeah never doing that again...
they're both sweet girls but when you put them together it's hard for
them to focus. They're kind of in they stage where they think they're
"too cool for us." But that's alright! We saw so many miracles the
rest of this week that it made up for it.
In fact on Thursday we had finished a lesson and we're heading home
for lunch. We planned to eat at 12:30. As we were about to enter our
apartment complex my companion said, "I think we need to go finding" I
looked at my watch, It was 12:24. We had 6 minutes that we could've
either spent getting into our apartment (trust me it takes about they
long because you have to unlock 3 different doors to finally get
there) or we could've stayed out on the street like we said we would
for 6 more minutes. We decided to do the latter. As we walked around
the block there wasn't a soul in site. (The streets are always dead
from around noon until after four.) We tried stopping people but
everyone just wanted to get home. Then as we turned the corner to get
back to our house (it was about 12:30 now,) this man passed us and my
companion gave him an English course card. She said, "I don't know if
you'd be interested," and he immediately said "actually, I am
interested! Can I have some more cards and invite my friends from
work?" So it wasn't anything huge, but we both felt like he was the
person that we needed to run into that day at that time.
This week has been SOOO COLD. Like so cold. I'm in southern Italy
where snow is unheard of and yet it's coming down in a lot of cities.
And it's so windy in Crotone which makes it miserable. We planned to
see this less active on Thursday night but she didn't let us
in...bummer..so we found ourselves stuck in the freezing cold weather
for a few hours with not much to do (no one was outside due to the
weather.) we decided to try some house to house tracting because it
seamed to be the most reasonable thing to do. Not having seen very
much success with this finding approach in the past, I was amazed when
we were buzzed in by a man named Max and his mother! We taught him a
lesson (the mother not being very interested,) and at the end he gave
us a referral for his niece as well! He even set up a return
appointment with us for a time that she would be there!! Wooo!!
Enduring through the hard circumstances always pays off!
This week everyone we talked to told us "copritevi bene venerdì!"
Saying that we needed to cover ourselves well because Friday would be
the coldest day of the year. On top of that it was a festa (yeah,
they're still celebrating Christmas here.) it's this holiday where
this witch comes and puts candy in children's stockings to celebrate
the day that the 3 wise men came and gave gifts to Jesus. We tried to
be smart about this day and did planning in the morning then had
appointments scheduled for the afternoon. But unfortunately we got the
biggest bidone (appointment that fell through) because we called this
investigator to confirm an hour before and she's like "yeah come
over!" Then when we got there she's like "actually never mind I don't
have time right now." So we found ourselves stuck on the streets for
about 2 hours in the craziest wind and coldest weather I've ever felt
in my life (humidity is killer.) there was literally no one on the
streets because of the weather and the festa. We tried to go talk to
these people in the one bar that was opened and they just looked at
funny then wouldn't even take our Jesus card. So we went to the only
thing that was opened (a grocery store) and made some calls and talked
to the workers. Haha it was kind of rough to be a missionary in that
moment. But then...
We went over to our investigator Rina's house and okay first let me
just say that I've made some goals for the new year and my last 6
months as a missionary and one of them is to just have no fear. I
decided to accomplish that I would set a goal this week to volunteer
for anything that scared me..so one of the things that scares me more
than anything is ragazzi...little 13-18 kids. Don't ask me why, they
just freak me out. I think it's because kids are not very well behaved
here so they're all kind of brats, especially to people like us
(American girls who trying to speak Italian and talk about Jesus.) so
we get to Rina's little house to find it filled with about 20 ragazzi
(all friends of her son.) We were definitely not planning on that but
we're like alright, everyone gather around, we're gonna teach you
about God's plan of happiness for each of you! It was hectic and not
easy teaching 20 teenage catholic boys, but it was definitely a "face
your fear" kind of moment. They ended up leaving right before we got
to talking about the celestial kingdom. I was sad because that's the
best part of the whole thing! But then that's when the spirit hid the
room. We sat and explained this wonderful kingdom to Rina and her 2
young grandkids then ended up explaining the gospel of Jesus Christ as
well. She was captivated and testified that she knew it was all true.
Saturday was my 20th birthday! And guess what?! IT SNOWED!!!! This is
the first time that it has snowed in Crotone in over 15 years. Nothing
stuck and we didn't get very much because we're right on the ocean,
but for a few hours on and off we saw flakes! My cute companion put up
some birthday decorations and made me an egg on toast for breakfast
and put candles in it but by the time I blew them our there was blue
wax all over my breakfast haha that was good. We had lunch with the
Anziani. They made this really good chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy,
and veggies. Mmmm American food. Then we had little cakes and this
nasty burnt jello stuff that my companion tried to make haha she was
struggling that day. It was super fun though! I'm so grateful for
friends in the mission!!
After that we had a pretty exhausting branch council then babysat
Xenia (9 year old new convert) and her little sister Sasi for an hour
while we were trying to do one of the after baptism follow up lessons.
They are little crazy phillipine girls. Don't worry, their mom (a
member) was there but she just didn't do anything.
That night right before we were about to pray and get into bed an
alarm started to go off in our room. We check our fire alarm and it
wasn't that. It was this random other alarm on our wall that we'd
never seen before we we thought it was like the carbon monoxide alarm
so we're like ahhh call the elders! I ripped the battery out and read
that it said "life long" on it so we're like oh no. We grabbed our
stuff and went outside and then after we calmed down a little bit we
started reading the alarm and turns out it was just another fire
alarm...don't ask me why we have 2 in one room..and apparently I get
dyslexic when I'm stressed because the battery actually just said
"long life" ....haha so after having to call and tell our elders, zone
leaders, and senior couple house specialist that it was a false
alarm....supper embarrassing but a crazy way to finish my birthday!
So being the oldest missionary (missionary who as been out the
longest) in our district, I am now the branch pianist, translator for
sacrament meeting, translator for gospel principles (which is a class
full of Africans who don't speak Italian with an Italian teacher so I
basically just teach the class and translate and everything, I say
like all of the prayers, and I am the designated substitute teacher of
relief society because the teachers never come. Haha let's just say
that Sundays are really exhausted. But I feel worse for my companion
who is in the primary presidency and has to chase around crazy little
kids all day.
Sunday there was this crazy miracle that involved getting picked up by
a random couple they we'd never met before and going to their house
and teaching their whole family. It was crazy and great and now
they're investigators.
I'm sorry that this email is awful. I get super distracted haha.
Anyway, I'll be better next week! I'm super happy! And I love Crotone!
Love you guys! Have a great week!
Grafiti that we pass every time we go to the church
BIRTHDAY lunch
Cute little puppy I got to hold on my bday
District lunch
