Una meravigliosa settimana

Ready to hear some really awesome stories for this week? Where to begin…

Friday after a meeting we had with our branch mission leader we had an appointment with some members out in San Marino. (We have been trying to visit them for a long time, and we are happy that we finally had an appointment.) We get on the bus and we start going and I ask the bus driver to let us off right before border control (San Marino is like a different country inside of Italy that our area covers. It’s beautiful) and he tells us we’re on the wrong bus.  So we call our members (who told us this was the bus to take) and the explain where to get off.  So the bus-driver lets us off on the side of the high-way, literally. We call our members, and it turns out they had told us the wrong bus.  So we’re just chilling on the side of the highway for thirty minutes in the pitch black waiting for them to come pick us up, no big deal. My companion and I were pretty stressed to stay the least, and we weren’t being the nicest to each other.  But then as we were sitting on the side of the highway we realized the ridiculous of the situation and so we just laughed.

The next days we had district (stake) conference! It was absolutely wonderful. Saturday night was a training session for members on how they should work together with the missionaries.  We watched videos, and President Dibb and Anziano Raina (a seventy from Spain) gave the training.  There were many sweet moments when they had the missionaries sing Called to Serve, the first verse, and then all of the members stood up and sang with us. I hope they will start catching the vision and be ready to reach out to their friends who I know are prepared to receive the gospel.

Another crazy story/beautiful miracle/ I can’t believe that really happened moment:

A couple of weeks ago we got a referral from the other sisters from the office.  This referral was from…. MORMON.ORG, and this man had requested a visit from the missionaries.  They problem is, he lived really far away and we had no idea which bus would get us there.  We tried calling him, but he didn’t answer.  So we enlisted the help of one of our members, and out we went to find this man.  We didn’t know if he’d be home or anything.  Okay, so we show up, and low and behold, we are in front of a factory.  A pretty big factor that is closed off and you can’t get in. It seemed like we had the wrong address.  At this point, I was thinking about turning around because obviously we had the wrong address. But no, instead I got out of the car and asked rang the citofono and asked for this signore. They start telling me to go down to the other entrance. We drive down, and this man walks out asking us what we need.  We told him we were looking for “insert name here” and he said – that’s me!  Why are you here? So we told him – well, you went onmormon.org and requested for us to visit you. “oh yes, oh yes, come in, come in.” So we walk into this factory, and he takes us to his office and tells us that he is not interested, but his mother -in-law is.  Guess how? (now I am not sure if I understood the Italian correctly but this is waht I think he said).  HIs mother and law married an American and lived in Denver for a little bit, and I guess she had gone to the Mormon church a couple of times.  Well, she has lived in Rimini for 12 years now, and is getting pretty sick and not doing well.  She just started asking her son-in-law that he had to find the Mormon church so she could go.  So, he got on mormon.org and asked for us to come and give him more information.  And here we were.  He had put his work address and work phone number.  Anyways, we sat down and taught him the first lesson.  He has invited us to go and teach his family next week, and he will be taking his mother-in-law to church on Sunday! It was such a neat experience, to say the least.  I hope that his family will recognize the Spirit and happiness that the gospel brings. (His home address is in the other sister’s area, so we won’t be teaching him but we are excited to see what will happen.)

I know that this message is exactly that, happiness. I know that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints holds the truth that is the key to complete happiness.  It all makes sense.  If we can just open up our eyes to see it, we can be happy too 🙂

Dio vi ama, e vi voglio bene!

Sorella Strong