Modena, Italy - December 9, 2010

Well, my first week in Italy not in Verona! How strange it feels. I am sorry I did not email yesterday like I normally do, but there was a giant Italian holiday (a celebration of the Virgin Mary), so everything in the world was closed and we are doing p-day a day late.

So, Modena. It is really fun here so far. I was pretty sad about leaving Verona, after spending so much time there, but I am also way loving the change and everything. Sorella Ryan, my companion now, is super energetic and way fun and positive, and we are really enjoying working together. The way transfers work here in this mission is on Tuesday night we get the transfer call, then Wednesday is p-day so you get to pack and tell your family where you are going, then Thursday is transfer day, where everyone in the mission who is being transferred comes in to Milano, the train station, and we all meet up there and switch companions and hop back on trains back out to our new cities. I have ironically actually been to this, called the transfer circle, every transfer except one, but not for me, but because my companions keep getting transferred! They are usually really fun, because you get to see a ton of people, old companions, MTC companions, and people from your old districts and stuff. Sorella Ryan and I came back out to Modena on the next train, and then we went to four appointments she already had set up! What a great first night! Our second lesson together was with a woman from Ghana. Both of us felt strongly to invite her to baptism during the lesson, which was not planned, so we did! She is getting baptized on January 8! It was a miracle, and super cool. This investigator has seen some really incredible miracles in her life, too, since she has started reading the Book of Mormon; it is really neat.

So, Modena is another biking city. There are only four cities in our mission where sisters go on bikes, Verona, Pordenone, Firenze, and Modena. Eccomi! I was excited to get to stay on bikes, which is funny considering how much I hated them and how difficult they were for me when I arrived in Verona, but after seven months of riding a bike all day every day I had gotten really used to it and learned to love it! I hate it when the bikes break and we have to take the bus, it is so much less effective. So I am here, hop on my bike (which was, in fact, bought by my trainer, Sorella Harper, after she left Verona and came to Modena as well), and start going, and felt like I was starting the mission all over again! I was so wobbly! I hadn't realized how much my bike in Verona, named Wilma, had become a real extension of my body. I was so used to that bike and everything about it, the breaks, the seat, the portapacchi, the kickstand, the balance. I got really good at it, and could actually balance at stoplights and not have to put my foot down. But not on this new bike! It is so foreign! I am starting to get used to it, which is nice, and it has a basket in the front, which is also really nice, because I don't have to carry the groceries on the handlebars as much.

Anyway, there is this one person here, whom we don't really teach but she comes to church every now and then, who is a little crazy. For example, she called us the other night, and Sorella Ryan answered the phone, and she sounded really confused and finally just said, 'Sorry, let me pass you to my companion, because I can't understand.' (Sorella Ryan is newer in the mission and thought she was misunderstanding the Italian.) So I answer, and this girl starts saying to me, over and over again, 'Ho trovato pace quando il garage e aperto da solo.' Over and over. It literally means, 'I found peace when the garage opened by itself.' No wonder my companion thought she couldn't understand! I had to repeat it back to the girl a few times before I was convinced I was not misunderstanding! She asked us what it meant. We could not tell. So we told her to come to church, because coming to church is good for people. End of conversation.

The ward here in Modena is pretty neat. A lot smaller than the one in Verona, and there is only one ward, while in Verona there are two, but I like it. And the ward mission leader is super intense.

We have got an awesome district too, and had a really cool experience in district meeting on Monday. First off, in our mission, every companionship creates a vision for the transfer, and individual coppia vision, measured in terms of baptisms, and reports it to the district leader the Sunday night before day 1 of the transfer, and from that the district leader creates a district vision. So, the sorella coppia here in Modena has not seen a baptism in over a year (we don't know how long before that, but we just know there are no new converts). And Sorella Ryan and I prayed a lot and sought inspiration for this vision, because we wanted to set the goal Heavenly Father really wants for Modena during this transfer, and both of us felt very strongly about 2 baptisms as the vision. (There are lots of other things involved too, like plans to make these two baptisms happen, like how many people we want in church every week, how many new investigators a week, how many people we invite to baptism every week, how many inviti we do on the street in addition to planned finding work every day, things like that.) We went to district meeting first thing the next morning, which is, luckily for us, here in Modena, along with three coppie of anziani, the ones here in Modena, and then one from Bologna and one from Reggio-Emilia, two other nearby cities. And we put together our district vision. And at the end of the district meeting our Capi Zona (who are in our district) were giving us a heads up about a new thing we will be doing in the mission starting zone conference time, which is one week from tomorrow, and it will be a challenge from president to place at least one Book of Mormon, in whatever language, each day. We as a mission had been preparing for this, but none of us really knew what we were preparing for, we just knew that president kept sending us all boxes and boxes of Books of Mormon, and that at the big meeting last transfer for all the mission presidents in Europe the area presidency had told us all that we are not using the Book of Mormon the way we need to be in our missionary work. So Anziano White explained this to us, and then he paused for a moment, and the Spirit was super strong, and I knew that he was about to say something directly from God, I knew it. And he said, 'I promise you each that if you will start this challenge now, and will place one Book of Mormon each day, starting today, before president extends the challenge in zone conference, you will reach your vision for the transfer. You will find two people to baptize.' The Spirit was super strong, it was a really powerful district meeting. Sorella Ryan and I talked about it afterwards, and she felt the same strong spirit I did. We are positive that if we truly do act in faith and place a Book of Mormon every single day, we will reach our vision for the transfer, and we are super super excited about it. We have been going crazy doing invites to people on the street and on the bus since then, and now, at day four, we can say that so far we have given away not one, but two Books of Mormon every day, including today, except yesterday, when we only placed one instead of two! We have been seeing incredible miracles as we have taken this challenge. We have received inspiration to randomly carry around one in Tagalog, and then during the last half hour of the day when we haven't given it out yet, knocked on the door of a Tagalog speaking woman moving to Canada within the next few days, whom we never would have been able to find another moment, and set an appointment to come meet with her brothers who are not moving. The day we took one in English, we met an amazing woman on a bench in centro from Ghana, therefore English speaking (or at least English reading), who told us she felt very happy, and when we asked her why, it was because of the things we had taught her that morning, and said she would read the chapter we left her right then that very instant in preparation for our return appointment on Saturday. Our less active member had a friend over, and we gave her one in Italian, and our less active friend explained it and testified of it, and the non-member girl said she would read it and was very excited to receive it. And then today we met a woman at a bus stop, and by the end of our conversation she said she knows it is God who arranged our meeting that morning at the bus stop. It's been incredible! We have handed out even more, and it really has been miraculous through and through! We are super excited about this transfer. Yeah!

We have also been going crazy with dieci inviti. (10 invites, it is a thing we do in our mission, we are supposed to invite at least ten new people every day to hear the message of the restored gospel.) We talk to absolutely EVERYONE these days! For example, we were walked down the street on Monday just after district meeting, and this man was biking down the sidewalk, so I said Salve way loud and flagged the guy down, made him stop, get off his bike, and talk to us. My companion was shocked. It was super fun.

Okay, this letter has been way too long, but things are super exciting. Sorella Ryan and I are working really hard here in Modena! I can't believe I am not in Verona! How strange.