This week has been so great! You know how I wanted to have a fresh view of things. Well I have been looking and praying really hard and I just had an amazing experience with it! I will give some details a little later in the email. Mom, I am so glad you felt inspired! It makes me feel special that you liked my email that much :) haha
So questions...
Package from Granny...I haven't gotten it yet, but zone conference is this Friday and if the Assistents have room they will bring it with them. Also the Steurers said that I received a package so that might be it!
Chicken feet! Oh those silly girls! No I never got it! haha but I love Sorella Mathews and Stephens! Ugh I am so jealous that they get to serve together and I am missing out on all the fun! But after the mission we are going to party it up together! Return Missionary style!
I got the letter from Colten and Dallin. Thank you!! Seriously...whenever you send me something, it seems to get here on the day that I need it the most! :) I love you Colten! I am glad you had a good birthday and I hope you are feeling better! Yayy for braces!!
I am not a fan of Monday pday either.... in Italy everything is closed so we are having a hard time doing our shopping and seeing cool cultural things. Hopefully it will get changed back.
So you know your really yummy brownie recipe. Would you mind sending that to me :) Also a chocolate chip cookie recipe that is really good and doesn't use Crisco. I know the one on the nestle chocolate chip bag is good.
I have also been a little bit worried about my pictures. I really don't want them to get lost or deleted. One of the Anziani in my district convinced me to use drop box. He showed me how and it is actually a lot easier than I thought. So over the course of the next few weeks I will be sending all of my pictures over drop box. I am just uploading them to my account and if you could download them onto your external hard drive it would be much appreciated!
Also so sometimes I wonder what to write in my email. I feel like they are the same every week. So if you want to know any specifics or if you would like me to talk more about certain things, let me know! There is so much I have to write and I just pick and choose what to write about, so let me know if you want anything in specific.
This week!
Tuesday we had an interesting lesson. We did a lesson with the excommunicated member. She has been begging to do the lessons with us (rare thing) and so we did one with her on Tuesday. The funny thing is that she has a super strong testimony and I don't know what she wants us to help her with!
We did a lesson before English Course with one of our students, Rosa Anna, she is about 50 and she is so sweet! Like a lot of people here, she has a really strong conviction in Jesus Christ, but has a problem with how the Catholic church is run. Hopefully things will go well with her.
Wednesday
One thing that Presidente Waddoups has really stressed with us this transfer is district unity. We have one of the biggest districts in the mission and it sometimes can create some drama with work and such. One way that our district has tried to solve that problem is to look at our investigators as a district investigator, not an individual companionship's investigator. So we have been doing lessons with each other's investigators. And it has been really great! For both the missionaries and the investigators. On Wednesday we did a lesson with one of the Anziani's investigators. Her name is Veronica and she is 17. She was supposed to get baptized 3 weeks ago, but last minute her mom wouldn't give her the permission. So she is waiting until next May when she will be 18. It is so sad! But she has such a great attitude about it. She is practically a member now. She is more active than a lot of members and she even bears her testimony in sacrament meeting. She has such a sweet spirit and I love that girl!
We did two meal appointments. One for lunch and one for dinner..... ugh! This Sicilian food/culture is starting to catch up to me!
Thursday We did our lesson with Giuseppe! And even though he didn't bring his girlfriend, and the boss didn't show up, he brought his brother. The lesson went so.well. They told us their amazing stories and they have one of the strongest convictions of Jesus Christ. They both are very active in their religion. But I know that they have the spirit with them, because they were so willing and open to coming to our church and doing the lessons and reading the Book of Mormon. They are definitely following the will of God and it is so refreshing to see people who are doing the lessons with us for the right reasons, who take our invitations seriously, and are sensitive to the spirit. I am excited to see how it goes! We have another lesson tomorrow!
We also did English course and it was my turn to give the spiritual thought. I read in Alma 7 about the Atonement. The spirit was so strong and I could tell that all of the students were listening and feeling the spirit. I have seen many times that when we talk about the Atonement, no matter what religion a person is or if they are in harmony with us or not, the spirit is always there and we are both refreshed by it.
Friday we helped this American couple that lives in our ward move. They are so nice because....they currently live in a really big apartment and it is just the two of them. And a couple of weeks ago, there was a huge drug bust by the Anziani's apartment, so the mission wanted to get them out of there. So to get them out as soon as possible, the Alders (the american couple) moved out of their apartment so that all 6 of the Anziani in Palermo could move into the big apartment! And now the Alders live in the same complex as us! In fact in our old apartment! haha
There was also a baptism in Palermo 2! So fun to watch!
So last week I was telling you about how our ward is having some issues. They straight up don't like the missionaries and are very resistant in helping us. It has been so discouraging! But Palermo 2 has been begging to have a set of sisters. And they actually have work for us to do. So we called the mission president and he gave us permission to help out in Palermo 2. We told the bishop at the baptism and he went crazy! He is soooooo excited. Right then and there he invited us to ward council and made a really big deal out of it. And the ward. is. a missionary's celestial kingdom. They are doing things the right way and for the right reasons. Someone made a comment about helping the missionaries more with their work and the bishop stopped him and said "no no no, this isn't THEIR work, this is OUR work and they are helping us"..... seriously! Then right after we participated in their amazing ward party where all the members insisted on feeding us. Then we had 2 or 3 offers to drive us home, but the bishop wouldn't settle for anyone but himself taking us home. In the car ride he got to know us and had fun with us. He even asked us to give him a list of our talents so he could better analyze who would be best for each companionship to work with.
I came out of that meeting a little jealous that I am not in Palermo 2. But here is where my fresh view came into play. I realized that it is okay if Palermo 1 isn't perfect. I didn't come on my mission to work in a perfect ward, I came to help fix broken things. Sure it is discouraging to work in a ward that doesn't support us. It's really hard. But they need us more than the other ward does. Then I started thinking about how we can help Palermo 1. What do they need. I started thinking back to the blessing I got at the beginning of the transfer "Palermo needs you and you need Palermo". What do I have to offer. Why did the Lord and the Mission president send me here. I decided....
Palermo needs happiness! They need a little sunshine in their souls! They need to be reminded of why the gospel is a message of happiness and joy! And I would consider myself a pretty happy person. For goodness sakes my favorite hymn is "There is Sunshine in my Soul Today".
And then it clicked. That is why these past two transfers I have been so off, why I have been so discouraged and sad. Because Satan knows that I need to be happy for this ward! And he wants nothing to do with that.
So now I know what I need to do, I have gotten to work. I have been trying to be as happy as I can, get back to my normal self. I have been noticing the beautiful things of life and it has made such a bigger difference in my outlook on this city and these past two transfers.
Instead of thinking about how hard this city is, how different my mission is from those in the United States, I have been thinking about the wonderful things that are coming from this mission. Maybe I don't have any progressing investigators and maybe I won't have any baptisms. But the Lord is aware of the Rome Italy Mission. He has great plans for this area of His Kingdom. And I know that once the Temple in Rome is done, Italy is going to be exploding with missionary work. And I am so privileged that I get to help set the foundation for that. So lucky!
So I am glad I am in a hard mission. I am glad I am in a hard city!
Saturday we did a lesson with this older widow. Her name is Silvana and she keeps having these crazy dreams about God and Jesus and she can't figure them out. I am telling you! Italians and their dreams!
We also went to the bishops house for dinner.
Sunday was ward conference and the stake president came. It was really cool, he broke some boxes! Rompere le scatole! {Translation: Break the boxes} I am just so glad that he did it and we didn't have to say anything!
One other thing that has given me a fresh view this week is the pioneers. I started reading the book "Our Heritage" and I wasn't really expecting much from it, but man it was just what I needed this week!
In the letter that I got from Dallin (Goodman) he mentioned the phrase "Sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven" from the hymn Praise to the Man. And that phrase has just been going through my mind like crazy. And as I was studying about the pioneers I gained this greater understanding of the meaning of sacrifice. I have always wondered why the saints in Nauvoo kept building the temple and sacrificed so much time and money and energy building a temple that they knew they wouldn't get to use. And I read in Our Heritage that before the Saints left Nauvoo over 6,000 members were able to recieve their endowments and were able to be sealed to their families! They went on to describe the hard journey to Salt Lake. How many people died and how many hardships they had to endure. All of the sacrifices that they made for this new found religion. What kept them going? How did they have the strength to not turn back? Because they had been through the temple. They had made ordinances with God. They knew the true meaning of sacrifice. They knew that in the eternal perspective of things, the blessings obtained by sacrifice are greater than anything that is given up.
Along with Our Heritage I have been reading our family history stories that you sent me. And I have gained so much spiritual strength from my amazing pioneer heritage. Especially being here in Italy where nobody has the same heritage of ancestors settling out West, I feel so privelaged that I am a descendant of these amazing saints. They truly must have been chosen spirits of the Lord. And I am so grateful that I get to continue on the work they founded. And I am so privelaged to be serving in the time of missionary work! It is a historic time in the history of the church, and I am sure it is exciting for not only those of us here, but those amazing pioneers on the other side of the veil.
I love you guys! Have a great week! You can get my pictures off of drop box!
Sorella Bank
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