Agosto

Cara famiglia,

This week has been filled with adventures and laughter and lots of sweat, haha. And lots of miracles.  We have met a lot of potential investigators that hopefully will turn into progressing investigators 🙂  Tomorrow is a major holiday in Italy where everything shuts down and goes off work.  So wish us luck! Adventures ahead! Apparently members usually invite the missionaries over… but since we’re the other/new set of sisters in the ward we think they forgot about us.  It’s okay, we’re gonna knock on so many doors someone’s bound to let us in! (And yell at us for disturbing their holiday…) The probability/chances will have to work out…right?

But, although the days seem slow we have seen some major miracles.

We are teaching two 14 year old girls. We have taught them a couple times now.  14 is such a difficult age.  They are so open and yet so closed.  They have experienced heartbreak and have difficult family situations. We are trying just to teach them that God loves them. It’s such a simple concept and yet such a difficult one to believe.  Even as a missionary I forget this sometimes.  But when we can understand who we are and our divine heritage, we have the confidence to conquer any weakness or any sin, and face every difficulty that life throws at us with hope. Our main goal is to get them involved with young womens and such at church.  There is one young woman in the ward and she is going to learn how to be a missionary fast!

We found a mother! With two children! She is from Russia and she’s beautiful.  I see her at the park and my heart just goes out to her – she seems so sad and having some family problems. We shared with her our message about families, and she just started crying.  We shared the message with her and how we know it can make her and her family happier.  We are meeting with her again tonight.  We know she felt the spirit, she just needs to be brave enough to realize that what we have is different and worth investigating.

My favorite miracle – an area book miracle. So we’re going through the area book a couple of weeks ago, and we find this man.  At the bottom of his sheet it said he just wasn’t ready.  We call up his compagna and make an appointment.  It turns out that the woman he is living with left the church many years ago. She wants to change so badly, but it is so hard to change, and she feels judged and not loved by the people at church. We testified that in order to change and feel the power of the Atonement in our lives, we have to act.  We have to actually get down on our knees and pray.  We have to come to church, open up the Book of Mormon and show God we’re willing to change for Him, because we only can do it with His help.  My companion is so bold I love it.  She said – “Non vediamo, non speriamo, but facciamo.”  Which translates to mean – We don’t see, we don’t hope, we do.  We thought she was bitter towards us.  But guess who walked into church on Sunday?  As soon as I saw her I ran up to her and kissed her and welcomed her.  It was such a beautiful miracle for the week.

Finally, last night we taught a lesson.  With a woman that has become a progressing investigator.  She came back from vacation and decided to meet with us.   She’s reading the Book of Mormon and praying. And we’re so excited, but we’re praying so hard that she won’t lose interest.  We pray that she will see the changes that this gospel can bring.

These things all sound so generic and I’m sorry I can’t go into more detail.  It’s just that these people’s lives are so personal and I don’t want to share all of this deep stuff all over the internet if you know what I mean.

I love being a missionary and getting to know these people.  Although I am still trying to figure out what they’re saying, it’s getting better.  I love them.  We meet so many people every day, and God loves them all.

His hand is in all of our lives individually.  I look for this every day. Sometimes I forget, but as I pray to Him for strength, I see that He is watching over me and over all of you.

Grazie for the emails! I Vi voglio bene,

Sorella Strong