Buongiorno!! :) questa settimana è stata BELLISSIMA! (Good morning!! :) This week was BEAUTIFUL)
We started out with a strange pday because we were supposed to go to this place called Trani, about 45 minutes away by train, but we missed our train! So we went to the church and finished doing emails and a bunch of family history, we made lunch for the anziani, and I found my birthday present to myself (it's a cook book :) it started raining for the first time in forever so we went and ran around in the rain, it felt so good! It has been so hot here lately; one of our members told us it hasn't been this hot I this region for like 200 years (at least that is what they are saying, I don't know if they had ways to measure temperature very accurately in 1815). While I was doing family history we were listening to music off of LDS.org and I found the 2015 mutual theme music...it's all I have listened to this week. I have been studying diligence this transfer and there is a song called "Someone He can count on" that I fell in love with :) it just talks about how we want to be dependable and we want the Lord to know if He needs something done, we are willing to do it for Him. I really liked it :)
The rest of our days were well planned and busy, but we aren't teaching a super ton of people. Hence why this was a finding week. But because of Ferragosto, which is the big Catholic summer festa, everyone is either celebrating their own religion and not interested in what we have to say, or they are gone on vacation to the sea. So as a result we have done a ton of inviting people to our English course, which we will be starting back up this week! I have really missed teaching English course, it is so much fun and it is a wonderful way to introduce people to the gospel. They meet members and make friends and feel the spirit in the church. A large percentage of investigators in our mission are people who were found through English course :) so we have been trying to get people pumped up for that. We took a pause for most of the summer because everyone goes on vacation, and we wanted to clean up our student rosters. Sometimes the people who come aren't super interested in the gospel, but missionaries are actually not super good English teachers, because English is not the point of English course...so it gets frustrating for the missionaries to have students come for three solid years without ever keeping a gospel related commitment. We are hoping that the pause helps bring in new people and that the old ones will sort of forget or be a little more interested now :)
One of the ways we did finding for English this week was a survey about America. It asks things like when was America discovered, who were the people living there before Columbus came, how many states there are, etc. Then it asks "did you know that Jesus Christ came to the Americas after His resurrection?" The last few questions are about the Book of Mormon. For the people who were not interested in the BoM we invited them to come to English course and a surprising amount of people want to come :)
However, the highlight of the week is that in spite of the holiday and not having very many investigators, the person we are teaching made some INCREDIBLE progress. Francesco is getting baptized on either the 24th or the 25th, he just has to figure out his work schedule. He passed his baptismal interview this week, and we had a lesson afterwards. He shared his testimony and really opened up to us for the first time, and we were able to see how much he had taken and pieced together from what he has learned about the restored gospel and how he has already seen the difference in his life. He is so prepared. I just want to weep. (I may or may not have actually shed a tear of joy at some point...) a few weeks ago Lita Black sent out an email home talking about how we become like parents for our investigators...I can only imagine how Heavenly Father feels when we choose to come closer to Him. It is such a huge privilege for us to be able to see these peoples' growth and change as they choose to follow the Savior.
We did another scambio with the Bari sisters this week as well. They are both one transfer behind me, so we spent quite a bit of time reflecting on how fast the mission goes by and how tired our bodies are. We did a massage train and Sorella Barazoto was massaging Sorella Anderson's back. At one point she stopped and made us all feel her back because it was "so soft!" compared to the rest of us. We all had a pretty good laugh about it. It was fun to have Sorella Barona and Sorella Barazoto here with us. We all squished into the little room in our house with the air conditioner since they don't have one. We are pretty lucky that we have AC, it just sucks that it's in a tiny room right at the front of the apartment. At the beginning of the transfer we moved our mattresses on to the floor in there because the bedroom we were in happens to be the hottest room in our house. We have been living in there all transfer :)
We also did deep cleaning this week! Three times a year we deep clean our apartments, throw out all the old, broken things, and scrub the place from top to bottom. The first one is New Year's Day, the second is the day after Easter because here it is a holiday called pasquetta, and the third is Ferragosto, August 15. It feels so good to have a clean house. Even though I have denied it all my life, I do like keeping things clean. (Yes, Mom, you were right. I was.....less right. ;)
Other than that, just trying to survive the holidays this week and not get to down about the lack of people. Seriously Saturday this place was a ghost town. All the shops are closed and there is no one out and about, it's absolutely bizarre. I was in Rome 5 this time last year, but because I had just barely gotten there I thought it was normal. And we lived in such a tiny town that I just thought no one lived there! Haha it's a super strange experience. But we made it! Haha looking forward to lots of miracles in the week to come :)
I love you all! Have a fantastic week!!!
Sorella Decker
We started out with a strange pday because we were supposed to go to this place called Trani, about 45 minutes away by train, but we missed our train! So we went to the church and finished doing emails and a bunch of family history, we made lunch for the anziani, and I found my birthday present to myself (it's a cook book :) it started raining for the first time in forever so we went and ran around in the rain, it felt so good! It has been so hot here lately; one of our members told us it hasn't been this hot I this region for like 200 years (at least that is what they are saying, I don't know if they had ways to measure temperature very accurately in 1815). While I was doing family history we were listening to music off of LDS.org and I found the 2015 mutual theme music...it's all I have listened to this week. I have been studying diligence this transfer and there is a song called "Someone He can count on" that I fell in love with :) it just talks about how we want to be dependable and we want the Lord to know if He needs something done, we are willing to do it for Him. I really liked it :)
The rest of our days were well planned and busy, but we aren't teaching a super ton of people. Hence why this was a finding week. But because of Ferragosto, which is the big Catholic summer festa, everyone is either celebrating their own religion and not interested in what we have to say, or they are gone on vacation to the sea. So as a result we have done a ton of inviting people to our English course, which we will be starting back up this week! I have really missed teaching English course, it is so much fun and it is a wonderful way to introduce people to the gospel. They meet members and make friends and feel the spirit in the church. A large percentage of investigators in our mission are people who were found through English course :) so we have been trying to get people pumped up for that. We took a pause for most of the summer because everyone goes on vacation, and we wanted to clean up our student rosters. Sometimes the people who come aren't super interested in the gospel, but missionaries are actually not super good English teachers, because English is not the point of English course...so it gets frustrating for the missionaries to have students come for three solid years without ever keeping a gospel related commitment. We are hoping that the pause helps bring in new people and that the old ones will sort of forget or be a little more interested now :)
One of the ways we did finding for English this week was a survey about America. It asks things like when was America discovered, who were the people living there before Columbus came, how many states there are, etc. Then it asks "did you know that Jesus Christ came to the Americas after His resurrection?" The last few questions are about the Book of Mormon. For the people who were not interested in the BoM we invited them to come to English course and a surprising amount of people want to come :)
However, the highlight of the week is that in spite of the holiday and not having very many investigators, the person we are teaching made some INCREDIBLE progress. Francesco is getting baptized on either the 24th or the 25th, he just has to figure out his work schedule. He passed his baptismal interview this week, and we had a lesson afterwards. He shared his testimony and really opened up to us for the first time, and we were able to see how much he had taken and pieced together from what he has learned about the restored gospel and how he has already seen the difference in his life. He is so prepared. I just want to weep. (I may or may not have actually shed a tear of joy at some point...) a few weeks ago Lita Black sent out an email home talking about how we become like parents for our investigators...I can only imagine how Heavenly Father feels when we choose to come closer to Him. It is such a huge privilege for us to be able to see these peoples' growth and change as they choose to follow the Savior.
We did another scambio with the Bari sisters this week as well. They are both one transfer behind me, so we spent quite a bit of time reflecting on how fast the mission goes by and how tired our bodies are. We did a massage train and Sorella Barazoto was massaging Sorella Anderson's back. At one point she stopped and made us all feel her back because it was "so soft!" compared to the rest of us. We all had a pretty good laugh about it. It was fun to have Sorella Barona and Sorella Barazoto here with us. We all squished into the little room in our house with the air conditioner since they don't have one. We are pretty lucky that we have AC, it just sucks that it's in a tiny room right at the front of the apartment. At the beginning of the transfer we moved our mattresses on to the floor in there because the bedroom we were in happens to be the hottest room in our house. We have been living in there all transfer :)
We also did deep cleaning this week! Three times a year we deep clean our apartments, throw out all the old, broken things, and scrub the place from top to bottom. The first one is New Year's Day, the second is the day after Easter because here it is a holiday called pasquetta, and the third is Ferragosto, August 15. It feels so good to have a clean house. Even though I have denied it all my life, I do like keeping things clean. (Yes, Mom, you were right. I was.....less right. ;)
Other than that, just trying to survive the holidays this week and not get to down about the lack of people. Seriously Saturday this place was a ghost town. All the shops are closed and there is no one out and about, it's absolutely bizarre. I was in Rome 5 this time last year, but because I had just barely gotten there I thought it was normal. And we lived in such a tiny town that I just thought no one lived there! Haha it's a super strange experience. But we made it! Haha looking forward to lots of miracles in the week to come :)
I love you all! Have a fantastic week!!!
Sorella Decker
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| The set up for the Ferragosto concert in centro. I love this place :) |
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