Faith to keep going...

Be excited for me to come home. I HAVE SO MANY DELICIOUS RECIPES ALREADY.

more pizza. haha. But SO GOOD

Italia e bellissimo!

Looks like you've had a great time at Education Week! I pretty much died of laughter to see you in the Newspaper! Wow you're famous! But good picture of you and your friend! Sounds like everything is going good and thanks for the thought you shared!

Okay well this week has been great...and hard. My companion says that Satan tries to make Missionaries disobedient and if he can't do that--then he discourages them. Well I'm proud to say that I always try to be as obedient as I can...but this week I fell into the other trap for a few days, I'm sad to admit. For some reason we haven't been able to contact any of our investigators this week except for one lesson with Emilia (her father had to work so he couldn't even come). It's almost the end of this transfer and I realized how hard I've worked and how little has come from it. I haven't been perfect, but during this month I have really pushed myself in talking to as many people as I can...and after all of that to have... nothing...(okay that's not fair of me to say, I have definitely seen a lot of miracles with the investigators that we do have). Idk I just got a little sad about how everyone complains about how awful their lives are, but won't even listen to us or give change a chance. Sometimes it's hard for me to find the balance from leaving the apartment with such great faith that we will find people and then returning with nothing and trying not to be disappointed. The thing is I KNOW that there are prepared people here, but for some reason we haven't found all of them yet. Satan has a great hold here and if people would just listen for a second...anyway I was discouraged and didn't see the point in talking to anyone.

But then we had our District Meeting Monday and it was seriously all for me. We just talked about our purpose and how it is to invite others to come unto Christ--and I have definitely invited a lot of people to come to Christ or learn more! I also learned a lot about following God's will for us. Sure I would love ten baptisms every transfer, but if everything was easy--then where would I learn? This transfer has been hard at points--but I have learned so much! I've learned how to plan better, how to follow the spirit, how to really focus on my investigators, how to always have faith, how to do finding, how to explain our message, etc. God wanted me to learn these lessons so I had to go through this tough path to figure it out. I'm grateful to have this testimony that trials are really here to strengthen us and bring us closer to God--something that most people don't believe here. I've really learned that numbers don't matter, if I do my very best everyday to find people to teach. I'm grateful that through this all I have been given the talent to always smile, at least others can see my light even if they won't listen. Also, the other day I had a thought while I was doing tracking on the street, trying to talk to everyone, that God was just kind of like--"Sorella Knudsen I'm trying to get these people to listen to you too, but they're also ignoring me." For some reason this made me feel a whole lot better. Yesterday Spicq and I talked to over a hundred of people and we didn't really have any success...but that didn't even matter to me! I'm a representative of Christ. I know my purpose. I am doing my best. I'm doing great now and I'm ready to keep working and to keep loving and to keep getting rejected. :) 

Also, I had a tender mercy this week--Antonio came to church! He's my sweet non active member and we haven't been able to contact him at all this week so I thought for sure we wouldn't see him at church. But he came in his nicest suit with Jesus is the Christ by Talmage and his old BOM in hand with the biggest smile on his face. After sacrament, he gave me the biggest handshake and thanked me so much for bringing him back to church. It just made me happy to know--hey I am making a difference! If I'm staying in Pescara the next transfer, my number one goal is to convert his wife!

Love Sorella Knudsen

p.s. My English is odd now. I said a prayer in English for the first time in three months yesterday and it was the most pitiful and hardest thing I have ever done. The language of prayer in Italian has become so much more familiar to me now that I had to translate my prayer into English and it was seriously awful. 

Miracle of the week!

P-day--We visited this castle

At the castle

Zone Conference

P-day at a castle

Another picture by the castle

Just a morning run to the sea

Ciao! Come state? Wow this week has been so great! I have the best miracle to tell you! I can't believe I'm almost the end of my second transfer out here--it seriously feels like it has been a week compared to my first one. I'm glad you like your new job! And it's about time you made it to High School ;). Aw Kelsey is at college!! I can't believe it! She just graduated last week, I swear! Have fun being almost empty nesters now...poor Jordan ;). 

Okay now to my miracle of the week :). So a little background info...we've been teaching this girl Emilia from Argentina. Her mom became a member there, loved the gospel, and has been trying to get her whole family involved for many years now. Emilia is now ready and really wants to be baptized, but the other members of the family (there's two sons and the dad) don't really show an interest. This past week we took the bishop with us to the lesson to meet Emilia and to give a blessing on the house (the family thinks their house is haunted). While we were teaching, the dad (Sergio) came home early from work (this never happens) and the bishop invited him to come over. The bishop went on saying how he blessed the house and he noticed a huge lack of priesthood in this house and as head of the household he needs to have the Priesthood to bless his family. It was very direct, but so filled with the spirit! Sergio was like "yes I know." The Bishop gave them a talk about the importance of family prayer each day and invited him to start doing. Then he invited Sergio to prepare to be baptized with Emilia! The wife was saying how she always knew that one day he would be baptized and how he has great faith and sometimes is the reason they make it to church so often. I think that fact that Emilia has been really interested and wants to be baptized and has the dad think about it a lot and maybe now he is really. Anyway we are way excited and I am so grateful for how things work out for us to have this miracle! 

In other news...lately our Mission President (and I think the church itself) is trying to put more focus on in actives in missionary work. There are a lot of in-actives here, but for some reason or another they have fallen away, usually for very small reasons. One of the things we are encouraged to do is to reteach the five missionary lessons to the in-actives so they will have a stronger testimony and come back to church for good. Right now we have two in-actives (who I practically consider as my investigators)--Iolanda and Antonio! We've been trying to teach them each week and bring them to church and I am very proud to announce--both of them came to church Sunday!!! We've trying to get the ward to become more of a family and serve and help each other more so people will stay in the church. This definitely worked for Iolanda and Antonio--so many people greeted them and I could tell they were happy to be back again. 

My ward here is so great and strong. It's a pretty young ward--I can tell you the family tree of this ward and who was a member first. These members are seriously some of the best members I have ever met and the cool thing is that they are ALL converts. Sometimes when I have a little doubt about finding people to teach, I just have to remember how every member in this ward was found through missionaries. There is definitely work here to do in Italy! There are so many people here prepared--I know it! I thought the main problem about serving in Italy would be that everything believes SO strongly in the Catholic church, but honestly I feel like most people don't here. A lot of people have noticed the errors and they only believe in part of it. Jehovah Witnesses are all over the place and there are so many churches and beliefs here. Honestly, I think the people here are a bit tired of all this confusion and has just chosen to have their own faith and not listen to anyone else, even me. Religion here is who you are and not what you do. Everyone is "catholic", but most don't go to church or pray or do anything. It's hard here, but I am so very grateful to be here where people so desperately need this message! The truth is not lost! God exists! He is our Father and wants us to pray to him! I know this gospel is true and I wish I could show everyone what that really means! 

Love you all--pray, read the scriptures, invite someone to church!

Sorella Knudsen

P.S. Thank you everyone so much for your letters and emails!! I appreciate them so much and I am the worst ever and I haven't written anyone back. It's not because I don't love you--I'm just focusing on my investigators :)

Phone Master!

Beautiful Italy 

A street in Catignano

Spicq and I!

Birthday girl with the best sweets ever

Okay I don't have much time today (because we're going to a castle with the elders whoo!) and my thoughts are all over the place...so we'll see how this letter turns out! Aw my cousin Todd is in Africa now? There are SO many Africans here and they are the nicest people and have such great faith! So excited for him! Congrats on your new job! I hope you like it!! And my poor parents...almost empty nesters now!

 

Okay this week has been great! First off, I am the phone master. My first transfer I never talked on the phone...because well I couldn't understand anything and I couldn't talk very fast. But now Sorella Spicq has decided that I am ready to talk on the phone and she has given me full responsibility. I am totally fine with talking to people and making conversations, but on the phone I can't see the Italians (the language is very expressive so even if I can't understand everything sometimes I can still understand by the expressions) and it's usually important information that you don't want to miss. I was scared at first, but now I am fine. So this just shows that my language is coming along--I can understand and speak at a normal pace! Whoo!

 

Well our investigator Elena finally came back from her vacation and we had a great lesson with her!! We talked about the Restoration again and she was saying all this all makes sense. She has always felt like the Catholic church has been corrupted and so she joined the Baptist church but she was saying how she cant feel the spirit when she goes to church and doesn't listen to anyone. Haha and there's the problem about other churches! Anyway we're really excited for her and we have so much hope. She does smoke though and really wants to stop--so next week we're starting her on the church's program to quite smoking. Kind of funny that I will helping someone quite smoking! Oh well Elena is so great!

 

Okay so this week I pulled out my "Hey can you hear me" device and decided to use it on my companions. I wanted to be nice about it and make sure it doesn't interfere with our schedule or sleep so we had a day where we would be at the apartment for a few hours--perfect opportunity. I turned it on, nobody heard it, and then I completely forgot about it. So the next day during morning study we suddenly hear the sisters freaking out and run out saying that there's a voice. Sorella Spicq and I went in and waited until we heard it. Then Sorella Patterson said, "you guys can hear it too?!? I'm not crazy!?!?!" Then she told us how she couldn't sleep at all the night before because she kept hearing this man's voice saying "hey can you hear me?". She didn't want to wake us up or think she was crazy so she didn't tell us and just laid in her bed, scared to death all night. She thought she suddenly got under a lot of stress from missionary work and went crazy. At this point I felt so bad that I kept the poor new girl up all night that I had to confess that it was me and just a little voice box. She wasn't mad at all, just grateful she wasn't mad or haunted. So that's my story about how awful I am. Although now I can't help, but laugh at it! Also yesterday was Sorella Mistura's Birthday and she thought it was so funny and was laughing all day long--so at least I made some one's day.

Till next week--Love Sorella Knudsen!

Italian is getting easier to understand...The work is moving on....

My lovely sisters and I waiting for the bus to go to church

Missionaries, President Waddoups, his wife, and the Senior couple Stweurt

The missionaries in Pescara. This picture cracks me up.

Wow looks like you guys had a lot of fun this week in Snowbird! Aw my sisters are so pretty and Kylie is the cutest as ever! My Italian is coming good! I'm still struggling, but I feel like I improve so much each day! Some things have finally clicked and I feel like I can understand almost everything that is being said now. So I'm doing good! Congrats to Dallan who is now Zone Leader!!!

First off, I just want to give a shout out to one of my best friends, Anna Lewis, who is just got called to serve in the Washington DC North Mission!!! Whooo so excited for her!!!

Okay so August here is vacation time. It's right before school starts, everyone is really busy or leaving on vacation, and Pescara is filled with tourist because it is known for having one of the nicest beaches (luckily most of the tourist are just from Italy). So this week we just go to the beach everyday. Just kidding. We're still working as hard as we can, but lately it's a lot of finding because no one is home or has time. But we have met so many people this week and the work is working forward! Okay so last week we got a phone call from the Elders saying that the Mission President, his wife, and a senior couple are coming to our ward for sacrament. We were excited, but kind of nervous. All of our investigators are busy or on vacation and we just really wanted to have at least one investigator come to Church for them. We seriously invited half the people in Pescara to Church (we usually do this anyway), and we had one investigator that wasn't going to be gone--Nana. Nana is that sweet African lady I told you about. She is really great, but not very reliable when it comes to coming to Church or making appointments (I don't think she does it on purpose, it's just the way she is). We went over Saturday and luckily she was there and she was having a really bad day about so we talked with her and we really stressed about how good you feel when you come to Church. She really committed to coming and we made plans to pick her up on the way. Okay so she was talking about how she was trying to decide what to wear for Church and we're thinking she's going to show up in a very colorful, African dress (we were pretty excited for this). But the outfit she chose was sweats and a tank top with a big face of Jesus on it! I wish I got a picture, but it was so cute because she was like "I'm all ready for Church, do you like my shirt?" In other churches that she has been to this outfit is totally fine, but it was just really funny and cute taking her to Church. But hey she came!!!

In Church she saw a picture of Jesus getting baptized on the wall and she started asking all these questions about baptism. Yesterday we had a lesson with her and again she brought it up again and we taught it all about it (we invited her to be baptized in the first lesson, but we haven't talked about it yet, because we need to go very slow with the lessons with her). She was saying how when she saw the picture of Jesus she felt really good and wanted to be baptized again (everyone here has been baptized as a baby). Okay another cute thing: I was talking about the Holy Ghost and I asked her how she felt when she was with us. She said she feels really good, but when we leave she gets all sad again. We talked about the gift of the Holy Ghost and how she will Always have this feeling when she gets baptized. Anyway she is really excited and we have another baptism date: September 7! We have a lot of things to work on before then, but we're excited!

Our work is going good! Emilia is progressing and it feels like we're just helping a YW have a stronger testimony instead of teaching an investigator now. Oh...so we lost Paolo this week. Paolo who has read the BOM five times now, but still won't come to Church. Well he hasn't been progressing for a couple weeks now and we've been trying to decide if we should drop him. The other sisters are teaching and on Saturday Sorella Mistura accidentally dropped a letter from her boyfriend at his house. The next day they went back and Paolo was really upset because...well...he is in love with Sorella Mistura. He even proposed, Mistura obviously said no, he was really upset and told them never to come back. The thing is I know he has a testimony, but he has refuses to act on it and then this happened. I think sometime in the future...with some male missionaries...he will join the Church, but not right now. Kind of sad (kind of funny to me to be honest) and we've decided we're never teaching men again! And the Elders are happy to take all of our referrals haha!

Well that's all for now and by the way my P-day next week will be a day earlier because we have zone conference!

Vi voglio bene!

Braccio, Sorella Knudsen!