Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Week 71: Rain, Halloween, French, and more Rain

Another week...gone. Seriously y'all. Time is freaking me out.

Well, Monday we shad the coolest pday ever. There is an ancient Greco-Roman theater hiding in the middle of the city, so we went and toured that. It was SOOO cool. We are both history dorks so it was a lot of fun :) we also went to a building that used to be a monastery and is now part of the Catania university. It was beautiful. There are lots of little treasures that we are discovering here in the city :)

We had scambios with the Siracusa sorelle on Tuesday, it was so much fun. Sorella Thorpe and I went to a members house to eat dinner which was an adventure that I will never be able to accurately describe in words. Let's just say in the end she started talking about temple ceremonies in front of her whole nonmember family and it was really awkward. Yeah...an email will never do it justice. All our appointments ended up cancelling which always happens on scambios for some reason, so we got to just visit and learn from each other and it was really good. I also got us super lost and we ended up out on the coast looking at the Mediterranean instead of at our appointment. Oops. It was pretty though!

We went and saw Ann and David (finally!) and taught them the plan of salvation, which wasn't the lesson we had planned but it worked out perfectly. Right when we got there Ann told us that David's sister had just passed away back in Nigeria, and when we taught her the plan of salvation last time he wasn't there. So we were going to talk about the gospel of Jesus Christ , but it worked out really well to switch it. They still aren't 100% sure about being baptized because they were both baptized by immersion in an evangelical church and they don't want to make a mockery before God, which is absolutely the right way to feel. So we invited them to read the Book of Mormon and pray together, because the real concern is whether or not the priesthood has been restored and there is only one way that they will ever come to find that out. But a prayer for their family wouldn't go amiss, they are definitely having a hard time.

We got to teach Gabriella the plan of salvation too, she loved it! Right when we got there she told us that ever since we invited her to be baptized she has been thinking about it a lot and it just makes her really happy. We told her that it was the spirit that was telling her it was the right thing to do, then she started asking her usual bajillion questions about how our church works and we worked it around to the lesson plan. It was awesome :) she had lots of questions and understood a lot. Plus, because we had taught it to Ann and David the day before, I kept feeling to turn the teaching over to Sorella Flansberg and she rocked it! It's been cool to see her confidence and trust in herself and the spirit grow since I got here, I am so proud of her.

Our Halloween was quiet, Friday night they put out a weekend weather warning so it was a pretty stormy day. Actually, the whole week was pretty drizzley. It was lovely :) but on Saturday all our lessons cancelled on us because of the weather, so we decided to go put English course posters up around the church. We went to the church to print them off, but there was a skyped stake leadership meeting going on so we couldn't use the computer. So we helped the YM president put up decorations and blow balloons for the Halloween party that they had for the youth. Then the downpour started. Literally, the lightening cracked and the heavens opened and a sheet of water came crashing down. It was the craziest thing I have ever seen. Once it subsided enough to make going outside without instantly drowning a possibility, we braved the storm to go wait for the bus. Needless to say, without coat or umbrella we got soaked (or inzuppate as they say, which means "souped"). We saw a bat flying, we ran across a black cat, and there was thunder and lightening and a lot of wind. It was the perfect setting for a Halloween evening, so we sang thriller and the Addams family theme and this is Halloween as we waited for the bus. It was a good time :) it took us an extra hour to get home though because people are pansies in the rain.

Then on Sunday we had the biggest miracle of my mission. We got a call last week from the anziani in Reggio Calabria and they said they had a new convert who had just moved to Catania but she is from the Mauritian islands and she doesn't speak Italian...but she wanted to come to church and she had asked for a blessing in French. We found a member to get her to church but we couldn't find anyone who spoke French for the blessing. We were waiting for her in the foyer when a young couple came in, obviously from out of town. They were talking to us in English with American accents so I was absolutely floored when they said that they were from PARIS. I immediately asked the husband if he could give a blessing to Marieanne after explaining the situation to them. They were equally shocked at the "coincidence" of it and immediately agreed to help. It turns out that they were on their honeymoon and had been staying in the Messina area, but her mom surprised them by sending them to Catania for the day so they decided to come to church. Sorella Flansberg and I both thought about how cool it must be for Arielle, the wife, to know that she has married the kind of person who is worthy and willing to exercise his priesthood authority whenever he is asked. Then we got another shock when our member Angelo came in with Marieanne and was fluently conversing with her in French. He translated sacrament meeting for her, Arielle bore her testimony in French for Marieanne, and I didn't understand a word of the blessing that Samuel gave to her but I did understand that Heavenly Father knows His children perfectly and individually, and that He will always take care of us. It was a beautiful experience :)

We also had the best member Pranzo I have ever been to on Sunday, they made homemade basil pesto and I wanted to cry because of how good it was. We also had horse, which was actually pretty good, albeit strange to think about.

I love you all! I want to leave you with a thought from one of my studies this week, it's a quote by Neil L. Anderson: "As you ask yourself, 'what thinks Christ of me?' you will know that you are His disciple; you are His friend. By His grace He will do for you what you cannot do for yourself."

Vi voglio un saccone di bene!!!
Sorella Decker

The roman theater from pday:




View from under the theater seats:






Accidentally found the Mediterranean Sea. Oops:



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