Week 57: Exhaustion and Joy

Buongiorno famiglia mia! Come state? :)

First off, HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY to Mom and Milo!! July 23 is one of my favorite days now ;) I hope you all did something fun! I wish I could have been there, but I was thinking about you all the whole day. I miss and love my family so much!

This week was long and hot, but still pretty rewarding. Monday we went and did a little shopping at the mall just to catch the summer sales, then we played a card game called "And it came to pass..." It's sort of like Uno but the LDS version :P We had FHE after and we taught everyone how to play do you love your neighbor, they LOVED it :)

Tuesday morning all our appointments fell through, so we went to the train station to buy our tickets for Bari so we could go to zone conference on Thursday. It was one of the hottest days or the week, around noon, and there was a really high humidity level...in short, I got heat exhaustion and we had to stay home for the rest of the day. I just felt super nauseous and light headed, I was having a hard time getting enough air in my lungs....but I am fine now. 

We stayed home Wednesday morning too, just because I still didn't feel 100% and with how hot it has been I didn't want to overdo it or get heat exhaustion again on top of having had it the day before. But we went through and made a bunch of area book phone calls and got things taken care of at home that usually have to go undone because we are busy all the time, so that was nice. It was just frustrating because I was only like physically sick, I still wanted to be out getting stuff done. I think maybe the Lord needed us to take a pause just so we could both stay on our feet...but it all ended well. Wednesday evening we had two appointments, one with Sergio and one with Viktoria and Giacinta. We had a member of the bishopric come and help us teach him, and it was such a good lesson. We wanted to explain to him the restoration. So we taught him the lesson, he asked really good questions, the member helped explain things really well, Sorella Anderson did an AWESOME job teaching about the First Vision of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon...and we invited him to be baptized! And he said yes! We are really excited for him. We are shooting for 15 August as the date. He actually lives in Rome, but he is from Foggia and he is here on holiday until the end of August. We shared a really sweet Mormon message with Viktoria and Giacinta from President Uchtdorf, about the ugly duckling and our true identity. They loved it, and they're so sweet that they gave us hats to keep us safe from the sun and Giacinta made us bracelets! I love them, we are so excited to see them after they get back from Austria.

Thursday was zone conference!! It was one of the best ones I have ever been to. The theme was "back to the basics", and everyone who did the trainings left really wonderful invitations so that we can apply what we learned. We are really excited about it, especially since we talked about how to grow our teaching pools and stuff in new and creative, more effective ways. I really hope to leave Foggia better that I found it. Not that it wasn't in good shape when I got here, but I want to leave it as the kind of place where I would love to be transferred to. That is always my goal :) we got home at the very end of the day, the zone leaders drive us back to Foggia because we had to wait for our interviews with president. So while we waited, we worked on family history :) I love it, I cannot wait to get home and keep working on our genealogy. Also got a letter from Sister McKenna Wright! And then two letters that I had sent to other people got returned. Dang it. And we did the musical number! A really pretty arrangement of I know that My Redeemer Lives :)

Friday we got to volunteer at the local soup kitchen again, we met this really nice girl there who is a new volunteer. She was just really sweet and fun, no we really hope to be able to share our message with her then eat time we go. That evening some freaky stuff happened all at the same time while we were at home and then someone knocked at our door (very uncommon) and the light on our floor is out so we couldn't see out the peephole. So we called the zone leaders and they ran all the way to our house...only to find out that the lady upstairs had dropped some laundry off the balcony and was coming to ask for it back. I felt like such a dork. #loam.

Saturday was weekly planning....we made really solid goal and plans for the coming week. We are calling it miracle week because there is no way, with the way we have everything planned out, that we are not going to see miracles every day. We are super excited and I can't wait to tell you guys how it goes!:) We had lunch with Mike and Valentina, the made pasta alla bandiera italiana, which means Italian flag pasta. Arugula, tomatoes, and fresh pasta. Then we made hash browns for them so we could do a little "cultural exchange"... They were so good. Mike had Sorella Anderson try a sauce he had made and canned a while ago, and she immediately recognized the alcohol burn that came with it after she tried it....poor girl! And we made them brownies with a Nutella frosting.

Then we went to church, Francesco came late and so did Ada. We are a little concerned for Francesco because he was supposed to get baptized this weekend but his parents are out of town and he is running the shop all by himself. So hopefully when they get back things will smooth out. We are just praying really hard that he keeps reading his Book of Mormon and praying so that he continues to feel the spirit. We did the same musical number in sacrament meeting that we did at zone conference. I love getting to share my musical talents with people, it's my favorite way to share my testimony. Afterwards we had lunch with all the anziani and one of their investigators and his parents. It was really cool because the investigator is ready to be baptized but the parents won't give permission, so we went and just chatted with them while we ate. The anziani explained the whole restoration to them and it was really good because they realized that we are just normal Christians. And plus she made us homemade lasagna. I love Italian food. And food in general. At the end of the day we went in to centro and did a gesso (chalk) mostra...we drew the Italy Rome temple and wrote "le famiglie sono eterne" (families are eternal) next to it. It turned out sooooo good!! We got two phone numbers so hopefully we can start teaching both of them in the next week.

Other than that, things are going really well for us. I love being able to watch the Spirit teach and work with our companionship and I am so grateful for how in tune Sorella Anderson is to the little promptings. I feel like she is teaching me way more than I am teaching her. I am so lucky to be her companion :) we decided our theme for the rest of the transfer is going to be "no exceptions, no lost causes." It comes from the video the church put out for Easter, He Lives. And it's true. There are no lost causes, especially not in the gospel. I am so grateful for the time I have been able to spend out here helping other people recognize how much our Heavenly Father loves each of us, and I am so glad that I am not finished yet. I don't ever want to leave the country! Maybe we can just all move to Italy instead? ;)

I just love being a missionary. "And I do this for a wise purpose; for thus it whispereth me, according to the workings of the Spirit of the Lord which is in me. And now, I do not know all things; but the Lord knoweth all things which are to come; wherefore, he worketh in me to do according to his will." (Mormon 1:7).

 I love you all so much!!! Have a fabulous week!

Sorella Decker

Comp photo at the conference!