6 months! What!?!? Time is going too fast - it's freaking me out!
I'll tell about Tuesday in some detail. This was probably the best day I have had in these past six months...
Woke up, ran, ate, got ready, studied, left the apartment. This man Antonio popped out of his shop and stopped us as we were walking. He has the coolest Italian suit/tie store and he invited us in. We explained that we are missionaries and what we do here in Italy. He showed us all his pictures of Jesus and we had an awesome gospel conversation. He insisted he buy us a coffee so we let him buy us some water. We locked up his shop and walked to the bar. He had a coffee and we had little plastic cups of water. We introduced the Restoration and asked him to read it. We then scurried to church to see GianFranco.
"Che cosa parleremmo oggi?" Gian Franco asks what we will talk about today... SMOKING! GianFranco told us straight up he has a problem with smoking and wants to stop. He wanted a priesthood blessing and so thank goodness we have awesome Anziani! GianFranco said the closing prayer and specifically asked for help to stop smoking! So far he has only smoked one cigarette!!!!!!!!
Ten minutes after GianFranco we met withLucia, she brought her money to go to the young single adult conference in Verona. We have only taught her two of the actual lessons and she is paying 190 euro to go to this conference! I was so shocked that she wanted to go to the conference so badly! We taught her the word of wisdom and law of chastity to help her know what is expected at the conference but also as members of the church. She is soooo cool!!! She loved the conference and will hopefully have a baptism date this week!
We returned home for pranzo and lingua and headed back out! We went to see Gaetana at her store. She has been really upset with taking care of the holidays, her husband lost his job, taking care of her home so instead of the fabulous lesson we had planned we shared the Mormon message mountains to climb. She loved it! The spirit was there and she felt at peace and I was glad we changed our lesson.
Two people cancelled on us so we were doing some street finding. We were walking in front of the massive royal palace and I just had the most wonderful feeling of gratitude. I'm so grateful for our awesome investigators, grateful for our ward, grateful for the wonderful people we taught that day and the people the Lord had put in our path. I was overwhelmed with beautiful Italy and the wonderful culture and just soooo happy!!!
To top the day off... We decided to try to see a neighbor we had gifted a Book of Mormon to. We ended up teaching the entire restoration and it was sooooo powerful!!! I have never taught the beautiful restoration as many times as I have this week, and I have looooved teaching it! Heavenly Father was soooo kind to us this day!!!
Later in the week... Sweet Vini taught me how to make tuna mayonnaise, we got to teach the restoration to her ENTIRE family, our Lucia (senior) still repeats everything I say as I pray and interrupts to tell us who else to pray for. Haha we love her. I ate Fufu (an African dish) with a wonderful couple. It was super nasty, basically bread dough that you dip into a soup. You don't use any utensils and don't chew. I was grateful for the meal and the kindness but I hope to never eat it again...
NEW YEARS!!! Sooooo many fireworks!!!! In Italy everyone starts eating their New Year's Eve meal around 9 and it is ONLY FISH! The smell of fish in the streets and being cooked was so dang strong as we were walking home at night! We gave ourselves an early curfew because there were so many crazy people out on New Year's Eve! Ex... Man commanding us to pray, a man with a cat standing on his backpack as he walked, strange people asking where we were going, haha my reply was "non lo so" (I don't know). Sometimes I'm really bright. Anywho, it was a crazy time and there were soooo many fireworks during the night! I didn't hear them but Sorella Robertson did so she woke me up so we could watch them at midnight together. We had the best view ever! Some literally sound like bombs! We spent New Years Day doing our deep cleaning for our apartment.
Gospel is so so true and I have learned how important the Priesthood really is this week. Without the Priesthood, nothing would be able to be done in our church. So many Italians believe that their Saints and Pope and Padre Pio have the Priesthood but we are here to help them understand the truth! The gospel is so simple and beautiful! We are so LUCKY! I love love love Italy, the people, the food, the language, the gospel and am feeling so happy I still have a year to go!
Ponderize Ephesians 4:14
Love Sorella Nelson
No comments:
Post a Comment