We had a nifty week this week! We got to see a great investigator again, and we are starting to move in to teaching her the commandments, because she has been taught all the doctrinal lessons already and accepts them pretty well. The cool thing about her is that even if she has a problem with something we teach, she prays about it and gets and answer and then she knows the truth. I know that what we teach is true because it is not just the ideas of another man who started another church, but the eternal truths directly from God Himself. We are not teaching ordinary philosophies, but things that the Lord said in person to prophets or sent His angels to say to them. I love it so much. Well, we were planning on teaching the ten commandments along with a heap of other simple ones she is already living, like pray often and study the scriptures and obedience. So when we got to the ten commandments we thought we wouldn't have to take a lot of time talking about them because she is pretty cool and lives a very good life, but then we read the very first one, Thou shalt have no other Gods before me, and remembered all of a sudden that we still hadn't succesfully addressed the idea of worshiping mother Mary with her. So on the spot we had to teach her the principle of what this commandment means. We taught her that God has asked us not to worship images, or anything or anyone else instead of Him. Since prayer is a form of worship, that means that praying to Mary is a violation of this commandment. Obviously we believe that Mary was a wonderful and chosen woman, the mother of the Savior of the world, but God has asked that we direct our worship not to her, but to Himself. She objected very much, and we just bore strong testimony that we knew this principle was true. We knew we had to be very firm on what the truth was, even though she was not happy about it, and we were, very firm, but of course polite. And by the end of the lesson she had already told us she knew what we were saying is true. We committed her to pray about it to know for sure directly from God. She will. I am excited to see how that went for her when we see her again!
We had another potentially tense experience with an investigator this week. A woman whom we have been teaching off and on for almost two transfers now. We have had a couple of very powerful lessons on the Restoration with her, and she listens very closely and understands what we are teaching very clearly. It is so neat to see and then to hear her tell back accurately the truths we have taught her. The spirit has been very strong. Then we went this Monday and she starts off by telling us that she can't learn with us anymore. She told her family about it and they said that she can't follow two religions at once, that is Catholic, and must not meet with us anymore. Normally I would have felt very nervous about what the right response was or the right thing to say to help her eternally, but I suddenly just felt very calm and peaceful, which I recognize as having been the strong influence of the Spirit, and my companion said afterwards she felt the same way, and we just knew what to say and how to help her. She let us pray with her and teach her the deep importance of reading the Book of Mormon to know for ourselves, and the importance of counseling with God in her decision making. We read Alma 32 with her to help her understand how to find answers and find the truth - she told us she was searching for which church holds the truth - and she talked a lot and opened up and really felt the spirit. She told us back again very clearly that she understood that she must read and pray and come to church, and committed to come to church next Sunday. We were so excited! Sorella Snodgrass and I are so so grateful for the strong presence of the Spirit in that lesson with us. I have had a few times in my mission where I felt strongly that I had said exactly what God wanted in a lesson and really delivered His message to that specific person exactly and that now it was truly that person's choice fully and completely. This was one of those times. She let us teach and committed to continue learning because she felt the Spirit, and wanted to follow it. Preach My Gospel warns that some people reject your message even after having received a witness of its truth. She texted us today to tell us she does not want to meet with us anymore. We called to find out what had happened and she was very closed and would hardly talk to me, but said she could not find the time right now and that she had not been reading the Book of Mormon. It was way sad, she was our most progressing investigator right now. But that's her choice. Way sad.
But three people we met very recently did come to church on Sunday and that was a big boost! We haven't had any investigators in church in a long time. We were very excited that they all came to church on their own, even invited themselves. Yeah! We will see how this goes.
Probably the biggest news from this week is the scambio we did. I went all the way up to Pordenone, a good solid hour north of Venice, whereas I am two hours south of Verona. It is a very small town but really nice, I liked it a lot. My scambio companion, Sorella Burgoyne, and I had some fun casa experiences. We invited an old Italian man waiting for an elevator, and he declared he was atheist because of deaths in his family, and kept talking with his hands very much (as all Italians do), but getting uncomfortably close to me as I was talking to him. So I would casually take a step back when he came too close. Then immediately he would get closer again while ranting about our beliefs. And I would back up again. He literally chased us in a circle and then out in a straight line a solid ten feet away from the elevator he was waiting for, almost separating off my companion from me at one corner because the sidewalk was too narrow, and all without noticing at all that we were moving. It was hilarious! Finally we just said, 'well, we have to go. Thanks. Bye!' and had to rush off because I was trying so hard not to laugh it was so funny. Then in that same complex we were walking and nearing a corner, and suddenly a man came running around the corner and scared me half to death. I literally screamed at him and flung myself against the wall to get out of the way I was so startled, and then busted up laughing because he was just running past to his house. It was pretty embarrasing. Also Sorella Burgoyne and I lost each other for a solid ten minutes. I had no clue where I was or where she had gone, so I just sat put with my bike and waited for her to come back and find me. It was pretty funny. I just biked in circles in the piazza I was in. But it was a really fun scambio and I enjoyed working with a new sister I had not hardly known before.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Modena, Italy - February 2, 2011
I don't really have very much to say today at all, and I am not sure why there is so little but it is so. But my companion and I did have a funny moment that makes me wonder how strange I will be when I come home. Last Wednesday after email we were chatting and I told her about taking that scuba diving class at BYU before leaving for my mission, and she was asking how it works and stuff, and so I told her how we would have about an hour and a half of classroom time and then a half hour break and then reconvene at the swimming pool for practice for the first three weeks of the class, and then the last three weeks were all just open water dives in the crater out in Midway. And so I told her how it was a little tricky taking it when I didn't have a car or any friends in the class, and how every time we split to reconvene at the pool I had to just sort of walk around until I found someone who would let me ride with them, and how I had to set up rides with random people in my class to get to the crater. And she asked if a friend of hers had been in my class, a guy named Nathan, and we thought for a minute it could have been the same Nathan who would give me a ride to the crater. But it wasn't. Then we were talking about how I would like to take the last class maybe when we are back at BYU, and were talking about having to get rides again, and started talking about how it will be tricky now to make sure we have another woman in the car so that we are not breaking the rules. And then said, 'wait a minute, I wouldn't have to get a ride from a female, right?' and she said, 'wait, I'm not sure. um...' and we were actually legitimately confused for about ten seconds, then realized those were all just mission rules non-applicable to normal people and we laughed a lot. Another strange thing about mission life that I have heard carries over: you basically change your name for a year and half. I really am not 'Rebecca' anymore, ever, but instead I am Sorella Langham. But in practice, your companion and other sisters and often even elders drop off the last name and we just refer to each other as 'sorella' or 'anziano', in effect changing your first name for 18 months from Rebecca to Sorella. But it isn't just me, either. You always just refer to your companion as, 'hey sorella, look at this!' or 'sorella, do you have a pamphlet in Bulgarian in your bag?' or whatever it is. But you do that for each companion, and everyone does that for every companion. So basically for 18 months you spend all your time with a bunch of other people who all have the same new first name, sorella, that you do. And it is so automatic now to just call the person I am with 'sorella,' that I am pretty sure I will accidentally call people 'sorella' when I come home too! bah! How strange!
Nothing much has changed this week, just did a lot of finding work and second appointments with the people we found last week. We did have interviews with President this week, and a training from the assistants during, and it was actually really good, Sorella Snodgrass and I really enjoyed it quite much.
Well, next week we are doing scambi, but a three-way scambi with Verona and Pordenone, and I will be going to Pordenone, way up north in the middle of nowhere, for Tuesday and Wednesday, and so we are bumping back p-day to Thursday. I'll write again next Thursday!
Nothing much has changed this week, just did a lot of finding work and second appointments with the people we found last week. We did have interviews with President this week, and a training from the assistants during, and it was actually really good, Sorella Snodgrass and I really enjoyed it quite much.
Well, next week we are doing scambi, but a three-way scambi with Verona and Pordenone, and I will be going to Pordenone, way up north in the middle of nowhere, for Tuesday and Wednesday, and so we are bumping back p-day to Thursday. I'll write again next Thursday!
Modena, Italy - January 26, 2011
So, as you know, we were meant to have zone conference last wednesday. It was incredibly awesome! Elder Kopischke, of the 1st quorum of the seventy, who is a member of the Area Presidency of Europe, came and did the whole thing. It was the longest zone conference I have ever been to, all the way until 6 pm (started at 10:30), and so awesome. He had served previously as a mission president in Germany (he is German), and told us tons of awesome stories and gave really solid, practical advice about things like how to know when to leave an investigator and go on to someone else, or how to help members get involved in stuff, how to invite people to church. He did a lot of role plays, and they were usually hilarious and also instructive. It was way cool. I loved it. One thing that President Wolfgramm, our mission president, mentioned before Elder Kopischke spoke was that one of the reasons he likes doing casa is because he looks at it as a game. Normally when people open the door they don't keep it open hardly any time at all, and just straight up slam it in our faces. He said he looks at doing casa like a game to get out a question before they close the door again. So Sorella Snodgrass and I started doing it, and it was amazing! We had so many conversations with people instead of just slammed doors. Not a lot of people necessarily let us in, but they talked to us. We're not talking questions just like, 'What's your name?' but more like questions of the soul, like, 'Well, what do you think the purpose of life is?' And it has been a blast. People talk instead of slam and it helps us feel a lot more productive in doing casa.
In fact, we've seen a lot of miracles in our finding work lately. For example, we had already knocked every single door in this one palazzo, but were back for a follow-up passby thingy, and there was a young Philipino girl waiting for the elevator. So I asked her if we could come up and talk to her family (talk to everyone, preach my gospel says, even when you have knocked all the doors and everyone else said no), so she said yes and let us come up with her! We went inside and met her mom, and I was feeling confused because I really did not remember having knocked on the door of any family from the Philipines, when out of the back popped this older talkative Italian man, whom we did recognize because he was the one who answered the door. It is his house, and he rents part of it to the family, but we did not know that when we knocked on the door and he answered. he was very polite, and kept telling us what a bravo man Joseph Smith was, and really was very polite towards Mormons but said he had already read the Book of Mormon and wasn't interested. Well, he was totally okay with us coming in to talk to the family, and we even had a Book of Mormon in Tagalog with us. (Usually before going out the door I try to pray and think about which Book of Mormon language to take with me that day, and that day I had felt Tagalog, and usually my companion tells me I am insane when I try to take Tagalog because it is such a random language.) So we taught mainly the mother and the old Italian man, actually, about the Book of Mormon, in English, too, because the man understands English abbastanza and the family speaks English much better than Italian. and then halfway through the lesson the man interrupts and turns to the mother and says, 'look at their eyes. You can see they talk with God by their eyes, can't you?' he actually was the most excited one in the room, and he is the one who had told us no when we knocked on the door! We were able to really discern some of the mother's most pressing questions of the soul, revolving around her family, and the old man even left half way through because, 'the husband and children must hear this message!' and went and brought the whole family. It gets even more incredible, at the end of the lesson the old man said kind of sheepishly, 'um, could I have another copy of the Book of Mormon? I would like to re read it.' And so we gave him one in Italian (we always carry one in Italian). And we have a return appointment tonight with the whole family and the old man! We are so excited! It was a really beautiful experience.
We have actually gotten many many comments lately about how clear our faces and eyes look and how bright, and from others even more specific things like how that means we talk with God or that we have the spirit or we represent Jesus Christ. It has been a really humbling thing, to think people really do look at us that way, and know that we really have a responsibility to represent him. But this is not only us, but all members have taken upon them the name of Christ at baptism. We really do represent Him in a very literal way. What a privilege! (in fact, someone in the priesthood session of this past general conference talked about this, about member missionaries or something, which I cannot remember the name of. But my friend Hermana Kinghorn mentioned Elder Nelson's priesthood session talk in her letters home recently, so maybe it is that one. Check it out!)
I read a talk of President Monson's today from the past general conference about gratitude. I realize that I really do need to be more grateful. As I write these awesome experiences we have home, I realize that I really am so grateful for the chance to be a missionary, for the things I am learning, for the people I get to meet and help and teach and even see baptized. What a privilege! But sometimes I am just so tired or we go a whole day where no one shows for their appointment or lets us in the door doing casa and so we return home without teaching a single lesson, or I have a headache or I am hungry and biking quickly because we are late, or someone awesome flat out tells us they want to settle for the terrestrial kingdom because it is easier, and I think how much I will be glad to return to normal life when this is over and not be a missionary any more. I think all missionaries feel that way at times. But I think that maybe a lot of these feelings stem from un-gratitude and that if we make a bigger effort to be grateful, to see miracles and recognize our blessings and what a privilege we have, a lot of our tired frustration and homesickness or hopelessness that anyone will ever open a door or get baptized will go away. I love the gospel. I love the interactions between different gospel principles. Gratefulness affects faith and hope and, therefore, miracles. I love being a missionary, and am excited to see more miracles together with Sorella Snodgrass here in Modena!
In fact, we've seen a lot of miracles in our finding work lately. For example, we had already knocked every single door in this one palazzo, but were back for a follow-up passby thingy, and there was a young Philipino girl waiting for the elevator. So I asked her if we could come up and talk to her family (talk to everyone, preach my gospel says, even when you have knocked all the doors and everyone else said no), so she said yes and let us come up with her! We went inside and met her mom, and I was feeling confused because I really did not remember having knocked on the door of any family from the Philipines, when out of the back popped this older talkative Italian man, whom we did recognize because he was the one who answered the door. It is his house, and he rents part of it to the family, but we did not know that when we knocked on the door and he answered. he was very polite, and kept telling us what a bravo man Joseph Smith was, and really was very polite towards Mormons but said he had already read the Book of Mormon and wasn't interested. Well, he was totally okay with us coming in to talk to the family, and we even had a Book of Mormon in Tagalog with us. (Usually before going out the door I try to pray and think about which Book of Mormon language to take with me that day, and that day I had felt Tagalog, and usually my companion tells me I am insane when I try to take Tagalog because it is such a random language.) So we taught mainly the mother and the old Italian man, actually, about the Book of Mormon, in English, too, because the man understands English abbastanza and the family speaks English much better than Italian. and then halfway through the lesson the man interrupts and turns to the mother and says, 'look at their eyes. You can see they talk with God by their eyes, can't you?' he actually was the most excited one in the room, and he is the one who had told us no when we knocked on the door! We were able to really discern some of the mother's most pressing questions of the soul, revolving around her family, and the old man even left half way through because, 'the husband and children must hear this message!' and went and brought the whole family. It gets even more incredible, at the end of the lesson the old man said kind of sheepishly, 'um, could I have another copy of the Book of Mormon? I would like to re read it.' And so we gave him one in Italian (we always carry one in Italian). And we have a return appointment tonight with the whole family and the old man! We are so excited! It was a really beautiful experience.
We have actually gotten many many comments lately about how clear our faces and eyes look and how bright, and from others even more specific things like how that means we talk with God or that we have the spirit or we represent Jesus Christ. It has been a really humbling thing, to think people really do look at us that way, and know that we really have a responsibility to represent him. But this is not only us, but all members have taken upon them the name of Christ at baptism. We really do represent Him in a very literal way. What a privilege! (in fact, someone in the priesthood session of this past general conference talked about this, about member missionaries or something, which I cannot remember the name of. But my friend Hermana Kinghorn mentioned Elder Nelson's priesthood session talk in her letters home recently, so maybe it is that one. Check it out!)
I read a talk of President Monson's today from the past general conference about gratitude. I realize that I really do need to be more grateful. As I write these awesome experiences we have home, I realize that I really am so grateful for the chance to be a missionary, for the things I am learning, for the people I get to meet and help and teach and even see baptized. What a privilege! But sometimes I am just so tired or we go a whole day where no one shows for their appointment or lets us in the door doing casa and so we return home without teaching a single lesson, or I have a headache or I am hungry and biking quickly because we are late, or someone awesome flat out tells us they want to settle for the terrestrial kingdom because it is easier, and I think how much I will be glad to return to normal life when this is over and not be a missionary any more. I think all missionaries feel that way at times. But I think that maybe a lot of these feelings stem from un-gratitude and that if we make a bigger effort to be grateful, to see miracles and recognize our blessings and what a privilege we have, a lot of our tired frustration and homesickness or hopelessness that anyone will ever open a door or get baptized will go away. I love the gospel. I love the interactions between different gospel principles. Gratefulness affects faith and hope and, therefore, miracles. I love being a missionary, and am excited to see more miracles together with Sorella Snodgrass here in Modena!
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Modena, Italy - January 18, 2011
Elder Kopishcke, a member of the Europe Area presidency, is coming to the mission so we are having a special zone conference of half the mission tomorrow, our normal p-day. Sorella Snodgrass and I are excited!
In fact, we had a really awesome miracle, which for some reason was super extra exciting for both of us, on the day we were coming back from Milano with her luggage. We got off the train in Modena, and went to the elevator. It was extremely slow in arriving, and we were worried because we did not know how we were going to manage all the very heavy bags down the stairs, but then it came. We got ourselves all loaded in, and pushed the button to go down, and it would not go! Nothing was happening. We were concerned. So Sorella Snodgrass said, 'well, in Bergamo, we prayed once to make the elevator work and then it did.' So we started praying. Really hard. Many times. Then we asked a random person going down the stairs to push the button downstairs and try calling it from down there. And we prayed some more, trying to be very faithful that it would work. We literally stood in the elevator praying for about five solid minutes. Finally, we were about to step out and try to figure something else out, and right as I was about to take a step, the door closed on us! We got very excited! So now we were in the elevator, but it would not move. So we pushed the button, and faithed it some more, and then it very slowly moved to the bottom, and opened up! It was so awesome! The scriptures say that even a grain of mustard seed of faith can move a mountain. We moved an elevator! Hooray!
And then two days later, our long lost friend (investigator) finally came back from her Christmas holidays in Bulgaria! And we got to see her at last, with Sorella Bergamini, a member here, who came with us to the lesson. It was awesome. And the investigator came to church the next day too, which was a particular act of faith because she brought back her aged and infirm mother from Bulgaria and was very afraid to leave her at home for the three hours of church, but we told her it was an act of faith and that God would protect her mother if she came, and then she came! And now she is praying really hard about getting baptized next month, in February. We are so excited! Woo hoo! I really admire that woman's faith. I already told you about how she came to know this church was true, right, about how she kept hearing the voice over and over that told her she knows already where the truth is, and then how after that she talked herself into baptism during our lesson? Well, yesterday, she said that after she agreed to baptism with us (this is all still before she left for Christmas, but we hadn't been able to see her in the interim, so we just found it out yesterday), when she was alone she started freaking out because she is not at all perfect and still makes mistakes and so she can't be baptized yet because she is not ready. I was totally ready to jump in and start telling her that no one is perfect and you do not have to be perfect to be baptized and I just really wanted to correct these false notions right away, but she talks louder than I do, so I had to wait and listen to the end of the story (good thing). She said she started praying to tell God that, that she couldn't get baptized yet because she wasn't perfect and didn't feel ready, and she said she felt the same voice (the one that said, 'tu lo sai dove la verita' about knowing where the truth is), say to her 'don't worry, you can get baptized anyway.' So now she knows that she can get baptized! She fixed her own doctrinal issue and concern through prayer! SHE IS SO AWESOME! Prayer is so powerful. I really know that anyone who prays with faith and is willing to accept and act on the answer will receive.
Also, we got this new training booklet when they introduced the new training program to the mission all about the eight mini-lessons that goes with preach my gospel. It is super awesome. There is an additional section about finding in it, with some fun finding ideas, and one idea is to carry around a whiteboard with a yes-no question of the soul written on it. (Actually, at first that confused me, because normally we don't like to ask yes-no questions so we can get people talking, but then it explained that if it is a yes-no question people are usually more willing to stop and add their answer, and then you can ask a follow up question to start talking to them.) And then underneath you have a yes and a no section where people can tally mark their answers. We brainstormed questions like, 'Is there life after death?' 'Can a belief in Jesus Christ affect my every day life?' 'I wish there were a prophet like the ones in the Bible on the earth today.' and 'I prayed last week.' We ended up writing out 'I prayed last week' (ho pregato l'altra settimana) and just walked around asking people to tally in their answer. we did it for about two hours, and by the end of the time had about four new follow-up appointments with people, many of them actual Italians! It was remarkable! When someone tallied their answer, we would follow it up with something like, 'how do you pray?' (i.e., memorized prayers, to God in the name of Jesus, stuff like that.) And bear testimony of prayer and ask to see them again with our message and it was so super cool! We had a ton of fun doing it.
I really love teaching people about the gospel, and am so grateful for the restored truths we have thanks to God's love for us in calling the prophet Joseph Smith to restore the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yay!
In fact, we had a really awesome miracle, which for some reason was super extra exciting for both of us, on the day we were coming back from Milano with her luggage. We got off the train in Modena, and went to the elevator. It was extremely slow in arriving, and we were worried because we did not know how we were going to manage all the very heavy bags down the stairs, but then it came. We got ourselves all loaded in, and pushed the button to go down, and it would not go! Nothing was happening. We were concerned. So Sorella Snodgrass said, 'well, in Bergamo, we prayed once to make the elevator work and then it did.' So we started praying. Really hard. Many times. Then we asked a random person going down the stairs to push the button downstairs and try calling it from down there. And we prayed some more, trying to be very faithful that it would work. We literally stood in the elevator praying for about five solid minutes. Finally, we were about to step out and try to figure something else out, and right as I was about to take a step, the door closed on us! We got very excited! So now we were in the elevator, but it would not move. So we pushed the button, and faithed it some more, and then it very slowly moved to the bottom, and opened up! It was so awesome! The scriptures say that even a grain of mustard seed of faith can move a mountain. We moved an elevator! Hooray!
And then two days later, our long lost friend (investigator) finally came back from her Christmas holidays in Bulgaria! And we got to see her at last, with Sorella Bergamini, a member here, who came with us to the lesson. It was awesome. And the investigator came to church the next day too, which was a particular act of faith because she brought back her aged and infirm mother from Bulgaria and was very afraid to leave her at home for the three hours of church, but we told her it was an act of faith and that God would protect her mother if she came, and then she came! And now she is praying really hard about getting baptized next month, in February. We are so excited! Woo hoo! I really admire that woman's faith. I already told you about how she came to know this church was true, right, about how she kept hearing the voice over and over that told her she knows already where the truth is, and then how after that she talked herself into baptism during our lesson? Well, yesterday, she said that after she agreed to baptism with us (this is all still before she left for Christmas, but we hadn't been able to see her in the interim, so we just found it out yesterday), when she was alone she started freaking out because she is not at all perfect and still makes mistakes and so she can't be baptized yet because she is not ready. I was totally ready to jump in and start telling her that no one is perfect and you do not have to be perfect to be baptized and I just really wanted to correct these false notions right away, but she talks louder than I do, so I had to wait and listen to the end of the story (good thing). She said she started praying to tell God that, that she couldn't get baptized yet because she wasn't perfect and didn't feel ready, and she said she felt the same voice (the one that said, 'tu lo sai dove la verita' about knowing where the truth is), say to her 'don't worry, you can get baptized anyway.' So now she knows that she can get baptized! She fixed her own doctrinal issue and concern through prayer! SHE IS SO AWESOME! Prayer is so powerful. I really know that anyone who prays with faith and is willing to accept and act on the answer will receive.
Also, we got this new training booklet when they introduced the new training program to the mission all about the eight mini-lessons that goes with preach my gospel. It is super awesome. There is an additional section about finding in it, with some fun finding ideas, and one idea is to carry around a whiteboard with a yes-no question of the soul written on it. (Actually, at first that confused me, because normally we don't like to ask yes-no questions so we can get people talking, but then it explained that if it is a yes-no question people are usually more willing to stop and add their answer, and then you can ask a follow up question to start talking to them.) And then underneath you have a yes and a no section where people can tally mark their answers. We brainstormed questions like, 'Is there life after death?' 'Can a belief in Jesus Christ affect my every day life?' 'I wish there were a prophet like the ones in the Bible on the earth today.' and 'I prayed last week.' We ended up writing out 'I prayed last week' (ho pregato l'altra settimana) and just walked around asking people to tally in their answer. we did it for about two hours, and by the end of the time had about four new follow-up appointments with people, many of them actual Italians! It was remarkable! When someone tallied their answer, we would follow it up with something like, 'how do you pray?' (i.e., memorized prayers, to God in the name of Jesus, stuff like that.) And bear testimony of prayer and ask to see them again with our message and it was so super cool! We had a ton of fun doing it.
I really love teaching people about the gospel, and am so grateful for the restored truths we have thanks to God's love for us in calling the prophet Joseph Smith to restore the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yay!
Modena, Italy - January 12, 2011
Allora, cara famiglia, e' gia finito un'altro trasferimento.
Well, dear family and friends, already another transfer is done. Moving on into transfer number 7, I will be on my second city, still here in Modena, with my sixth companion, who will be Sorella Snodgrass! She was in the MTC with me, so I already know her. How cool is that? Sorella Ryan and I had a blast, and the transfer zoomed by super super fast, but she is off to go be whitewashed into Milano 2 with Sorella Thurston (a.k.a. Anna, with whom I studied abroad in London, still way weird that we're in the same mission). She is excited and ready to leave her first city. I am excited for another new companion! I never thought I would be so steadily switching companions so far nearly every transfer. Still Sorella Mullen is my only companion for more than one transfer! Strange! This'll be fun.
Also, this week we found something really awesome. In the July 2010 Ensign (or at least the Liahona, which is what we get here), in the section of Latter-Day Saint Voices (where people mail in and tell cool stories), you have got to go read, right now, the one called 'Forgetting Ourselves in Sicily.' The reason it is so particularly extra cool is that, yes, the Interdonato family, the one in the story, is totally in my ward here in Modena!!! Sorella Interdonato, who was just released from her calling as Relief Society President, was giving us a ride to an appointment and coming with us a few days ago, and told us the whole story of her conversion from her perspective. It was hilarious, and so awesome. She said her son, Omar, contacted the missionary and they printed the story all without telling her, and when she read it, she cried a lot. And our whole relief society, when they read it, all cried. Crazy! Go read it. It's super exciting.
Also, we have been doing a ton of finding work, lots and lots and lots of casa in these days. So at one of these places I forgot to take off my helmet and didn't realize it until we were already in the palazzo, so I certainly did not want to go back out to the bike to put it away, so I just carried it in my hand the whole time. Then, after getting about 50 other doors slammed in our faces, we were lamenting and wondering if we should be trying something different, because nothing seemed to be working. I made some joke about using my helmet, and my companion laughed, and we just kept going. This guy opened the next door, and my companion started talking, and all of a sudden I just jumped forward with the helmet up and a huge smile on my face. The guy gave me the weirdest look, especially because I hadn't said anything yet, and Sorella Ryan almost started laughing, and I just started talking and telling him how lots of bad things happen in life, and sometimes it's hard, and although we have helmets to protect us if we fall when biking, sometimes it seems there is nothing to help us out and keep us safe when these things happen to us in life. I told him we had a message about the helmet for our life (il casco della vita) that we would really love to share. It was awesome! He gave us a time to come back, because at that precise moment he was studying for an exam the next day, and told us to come back the afternoon after the exam was over. Cool, huh? It was way fun.
And speaking of helmets, it brought out another awesome story this week. No one in Italy wears helmets when they bike (and everyone bikes, even if they are 90 years old), except the missionaries. In fact, that's how people identify us. 'Wait, I know who the mormons are, but I've never seen the girl ones, just those guys on bikes with helmets.' It's kind of fun. Anyway, we were teaching this family, mainly the adult daughter and the mother, and there were three very small children, a six-year-old girl and twin 3-year-old boys. The boys are the most adorable thing ever, so cute. Well, we were biking along the other day and saw this woman with a wall of small children ahead, and when we got closer realized it was those small kids! (But with a different woman, I don't know why.) Anyway, we stopped and said hello to the small children very briefly, and the twin boys, were so excited to see us, and one of them kept looking up at me and saying, 'wow, che bella testa oggi!' which means, 'wow, what a beautiful head today!' And after a moment I realized he was talking about my helmet, and that this three-year-old Ghanian boy has never seen a helmet before in his life, and it is so foreign looking it did not even look like a hat to him, and he literally thought that today we had changed our heads. Not our faces, just our heads. And it was just such a funny thought how real that could be to him, that these awesome American missionary sisters could just change their head for the day. It was so adorable though, just over and over again, che bella testa oggi! hehe.
Oh yeah, and also, this week Sorella Ryan and I took our first ever cultural day. Once every other transfer we are allowed to take a short p-day and instead on another day attend some sort of event that we could not do during normal preparation day hours, so Sorella Ryan and I went to Bologna and saw a play in Italian! It was Agatha Christie's 'The Mousetrap,' and it was super interesting, because I have seen it before in English (in London, actually), but this time it was all in Italian. It was a really cool experience with the language in particular. We really enjoyed it.
This week we finally had a breakthrough with all our finding work and got to see one of our new people for the second time - the Italian family I think I mentioned a while back that we saw the first time right before Christmas. We were able to bring them a book of Mormon and teach them about it, and both of the wives (we actually haven't been able to see the husbands yet) are very interested and want us to come back, so we have another appointment this weekend! Hooray! We are very excited. It went well.
Well, I think that's it for this week. We have to pack up my companion today! I am so glad we have an elevator in Modena. In Verona, we were on the fourth floor and I moved four different people into and out of that apartment, and no elevator, and the bags are really heavy to drag up and down that extremely tall narrow staircase. Bleh. I expect tomorrow to go much more smoothly with an elevator. yay!
Well, dear family and friends, already another transfer is done. Moving on into transfer number 7, I will be on my second city, still here in Modena, with my sixth companion, who will be Sorella Snodgrass! She was in the MTC with me, so I already know her. How cool is that? Sorella Ryan and I had a blast, and the transfer zoomed by super super fast, but she is off to go be whitewashed into Milano 2 with Sorella Thurston (a.k.a. Anna, with whom I studied abroad in London, still way weird that we're in the same mission). She is excited and ready to leave her first city. I am excited for another new companion! I never thought I would be so steadily switching companions so far nearly every transfer. Still Sorella Mullen is my only companion for more than one transfer! Strange! This'll be fun.
Also, this week we found something really awesome. In the July 2010 Ensign (or at least the Liahona, which is what we get here), in the section of Latter-Day Saint Voices (where people mail in and tell cool stories), you have got to go read, right now, the one called 'Forgetting Ourselves in Sicily.' The reason it is so particularly extra cool is that, yes, the Interdonato family, the one in the story, is totally in my ward here in Modena!!! Sorella Interdonato, who was just released from her calling as Relief Society President, was giving us a ride to an appointment and coming with us a few days ago, and told us the whole story of her conversion from her perspective. It was hilarious, and so awesome. She said her son, Omar, contacted the missionary and they printed the story all without telling her, and when she read it, she cried a lot. And our whole relief society, when they read it, all cried. Crazy! Go read it. It's super exciting.
Also, we have been doing a ton of finding work, lots and lots and lots of casa in these days. So at one of these places I forgot to take off my helmet and didn't realize it until we were already in the palazzo, so I certainly did not want to go back out to the bike to put it away, so I just carried it in my hand the whole time. Then, after getting about 50 other doors slammed in our faces, we were lamenting and wondering if we should be trying something different, because nothing seemed to be working. I made some joke about using my helmet, and my companion laughed, and we just kept going. This guy opened the next door, and my companion started talking, and all of a sudden I just jumped forward with the helmet up and a huge smile on my face. The guy gave me the weirdest look, especially because I hadn't said anything yet, and Sorella Ryan almost started laughing, and I just started talking and telling him how lots of bad things happen in life, and sometimes it's hard, and although we have helmets to protect us if we fall when biking, sometimes it seems there is nothing to help us out and keep us safe when these things happen to us in life. I told him we had a message about the helmet for our life (il casco della vita) that we would really love to share. It was awesome! He gave us a time to come back, because at that precise moment he was studying for an exam the next day, and told us to come back the afternoon after the exam was over. Cool, huh? It was way fun.
And speaking of helmets, it brought out another awesome story this week. No one in Italy wears helmets when they bike (and everyone bikes, even if they are 90 years old), except the missionaries. In fact, that's how people identify us. 'Wait, I know who the mormons are, but I've never seen the girl ones, just those guys on bikes with helmets.' It's kind of fun. Anyway, we were teaching this family, mainly the adult daughter and the mother, and there were three very small children, a six-year-old girl and twin 3-year-old boys. The boys are the most adorable thing ever, so cute. Well, we were biking along the other day and saw this woman with a wall of small children ahead, and when we got closer realized it was those small kids! (But with a different woman, I don't know why.) Anyway, we stopped and said hello to the small children very briefly, and the twin boys, were so excited to see us, and one of them kept looking up at me and saying, 'wow, che bella testa oggi!' which means, 'wow, what a beautiful head today!' And after a moment I realized he was talking about my helmet, and that this three-year-old Ghanian boy has never seen a helmet before in his life, and it is so foreign looking it did not even look like a hat to him, and he literally thought that today we had changed our heads. Not our faces, just our heads. And it was just such a funny thought how real that could be to him, that these awesome American missionary sisters could just change their head for the day. It was so adorable though, just over and over again, che bella testa oggi! hehe.
Oh yeah, and also, this week Sorella Ryan and I took our first ever cultural day. Once every other transfer we are allowed to take a short p-day and instead on another day attend some sort of event that we could not do during normal preparation day hours, so Sorella Ryan and I went to Bologna and saw a play in Italian! It was Agatha Christie's 'The Mousetrap,' and it was super interesting, because I have seen it before in English (in London, actually), but this time it was all in Italian. It was a really cool experience with the language in particular. We really enjoyed it.
This week we finally had a breakthrough with all our finding work and got to see one of our new people for the second time - the Italian family I think I mentioned a while back that we saw the first time right before Christmas. We were able to bring them a book of Mormon and teach them about it, and both of the wives (we actually haven't been able to see the husbands yet) are very interested and want us to come back, so we have another appointment this weekend! Hooray! We are very excited. It went well.
Well, I think that's it for this week. We have to pack up my companion today! I am so glad we have an elevator in Modena. In Verona, we were on the fourth floor and I moved four different people into and out of that apartment, and no elevator, and the bags are really heavy to drag up and down that extremely tall narrow staircase. Bleh. I expect tomorrow to go much more smoothly with an elevator. yay!
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