Sorella Nelson: Week 38

(Week 8 Bari)

Buona Pasquetta! Today is another holiday here in Italy. There isn't
really a purpose for the day, but everyone just stays home and parties
or is very lazy. Since the whole country is celebrating today was deep
cleaning day and Pday combined! 

Deep cleaning day means lasagna day!

Sooooooo much cheese!!!!!

We had an awesome Easter!!! After church we ate a wonderful Easter
pranzo with the Armense family and opened our massive chocolate Easter
Eggs. The best part of the entire day though was having three of our
Investigators at church!!!

Sunday Morning: We left our house at 7 to catch a bus so we could be
at Maria's house at 8 to ride another bus all together to the church
to be there at 9. She looked sooo beautiful all dressed up with her
lipstick and fur. She absolutely loved church and all the members were
so kind and welcoming and when they announced times for conference
this next week she leaned over to me and told me to call and remind
her. She is soooo amazing! 

Best Easter Miracle!!  Maria came to church!!

Earlier in the week we had a lesson at Maria's house and introduced
the Book of Mormon. She was so excited to read it and so surprised how
small it was. After the lesson she walked across the room and picked
up her 4 volume Bible set. She gave us each two volumes of the Bible.
We tried to explain that we don't need it but she just laughed and
said, "I'll never read that massive Bible, this book (BofM) is what
I'll be reading". We decided it was a pretty good trade so now we have
quite the Bible set. Maria is so awesome and is so excited to keep
learning! She really is such a miracle from a simple bus conversation. 

Easter selfies with Sorella Palmisano

We saw Rodolfo's family again this week, they have some pretty strange
ideas about who God is and they believe one day we will all be
vegetarians so we are taking it slow and starting from the beginning
with them. Awesome miracle: We once left the Restoration video with
them and this time Roldofo said he not only watched it twice but even
made a copy to give to a friend!

Friday morning we had the best Easter Activity ever for both the
Primaries here in Bari. We colored and decorated eggs, played games,
ate pancakes and treats, and had a wonderful spiritual activity about
the story of the Resurrection.

Buona Pasqua!!  Easter activity for both Bari wards.















Serving the wards here is so much fun.
Members are so helpful and brought many friends and neighbors to the
activity! Success!

This week's story is of my favorite human Angelo Lagattolla... We were
doing some street finding one morning and all of the sudden we see
Angelo walking towards us! We start talking with each other and he
tells us he is feeling absolutely awful. He had been smoking this last
week and also felt bad he hadn't come to church. We went to our usual
little park and had a nice long chat about how he is going to stop and
what we are going to do to help him. We talked a lot about the Savior
and how He not only suffered for our sins but also our temptations.
Angelo then literally jumped off the bench and exclaimed that he would
no longer be smoking and that he was off to go by his favorite candies
to eat instead of smoking. He is doing so much better and he calls us
everyday now to report on how he is doing.

A couple other little miracles. Sorella Magno had us swing by her
house to pick up something. She had made us a special dessert
(basically a pie made out of ricotta cheese and chocolate, sooo yummy)
and she had also made one for a less active woman in the ward. The
miracle was that we had been planning to see that less active sister
right after Sorella Magno! I was so amazed how in tune with the spirit
Sorella Magno was!

We had gone to a little town outside of Bari to meet some women this
week, but it turned out we had messed up and were in the wrong city.
We decided to do some less active hunting, but ended up getting super
lost. It was cold and rainy and we were hungry for lunch. We stopped
to say a prayer that we could find these less actives and sure enough
after asking enough people we found two of the houses! They sadly have
no interest coming back to church but piano piano... Haha we also saw
the most beautiful little piazza with the whitest cobble stone roads.
Heavenly Father loves us soooo much and always puts something in our
path to brighten our day!

This week has been nonstop talk all over about what happened in
Brussels. Everyone was so worried something would happen in Rome over
the Easter Holiday during the huge Easter mass. It really
strengthened my testimony of how fortunate we are to have the
knowledge of the gospel. In all this fear and confusion and sadness we
can be sure that our Savior lives and that because of Him we all will
live again. I'm so grateful for my Savior and for the hope and the
light He brings to all of God's children.