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.