Sorella Nelson: Week 9

(Week Three Caserta)

MONDAY: Awesome miracle for the day... A man in our ward needed open heart surgery and the doctors wouldn't do it unless blood was donated so get this... Bishop announced it in church on Sunday and apparently so many people showed up to donate from the ward that they had to start turning people away! And our ward is SMALL! Super awesome support system.

TUESDAY: started off awful with apartment problems and then... Felix our African friend called us, in short, Felix and Evans committed to baptism for the 26th of September!!! This was literally the one thing that helped us keep going until we had a good laugh when five old men on the street called us over to tell us that Sorella Hamilton looks like Barbara Streisand and I am a cross between Sandra bullock and Meryl Streep... Hahaha love Italians...

More pizza.....because it's that good!!!

WEDNESDAY: district meeting in Napoli means un'altra pizza Napoletana! Seriously nothing like them... Fun fact: to eat an Italian pizza you cut it into fourths, and then to keep all the cheese and stuff in place, you fold the fourth in half and then eat. We went back to see how Maria Russo was doing and this time she was naked when we walked in... Hahahaha I seriously don't know how to handle this woman! Anywho, she LOVES to talk and complain about how sad her life is. She went on FOREVER and when Sorella Hamilton tried to share the spiritual thought, Maria wouldn't be quiet! I basically just cut the woman off in my slow Italian and told her that we don't have to be sad and complain because we have the Atonement, she finally listened but then continued giving us reasons why she is still unhappy...We left her with the thought that it's up to us to put the Atonement to use or we can sit there in unhappiness.

THURSDAY: we found the family of Antonio and Antonella!!! We have spent over seven hours of walking trying to find this referral and I wanted to cry when we finally met them! The family consists of the mom and dad with an 11 year old daughter and 5 year old boy. We taught them about the Book of Mormon and they were soooo interested! Antonio had a bad fall and has been on bed rest (still is). He had received a blessing from the elders months ago and had felt the spirit so we talked a lot about that and he is super excited to learn more. I can't wait to go back to their home.

FRIDAY: MEET THE MORMONS COMES TO CASERTA! Yes. Italian is the first language for it to be translated into and shown outside of the U.S. and United Kingdom so we have been advertising like CRAZY this past week!! Huge honor that Caserta got to host it! So many potentials showed up and the entire Napoli zone of missionaries, members, and investigators came! So so awesome! Really cool to see how technology is being used to spread the gospel.

These are our favorite Italian boys, Daniel is driving, he is 21 and is going to be going to BYUI soon!

Denis is in the middle, he is 19 and wants to go on a mission!

Antonio is the crazy on the back, he is a hairdresser and ALWAYS making us laugh.

They were all baptized a little over a year ago.

SATURDAY: visited a less active couple, they have a cat :)... Really cute couple that just needed a push to get back to church. They fed us gelato and in return we fed them a wonderful message about how members need to be missionaries as well. Bel' giorno.

SUNDAY: Fast Sunday! A less active African woman named Joy fasted with us so that she could change work schedules so that she could come to church. She was so full of faith when we called to remind her on Saturday, which really strengthened my faith. It's really hard doing missionary work and finding every day and having people not interested, but Joy's voice and excitement about the fast made me realize how important faith is. Why would Heavenly Father want to give or help us with something if we don't even believe ourselves that it will happen?

What a week it's been!! Time is flying and the work is progressing!! Love Sorella Nelson