So this week was FERRAGOSTO which is basically the biggest
summer Italian holiday and everything in Italy shuts down (besides tourists
places) and everyone goes on vacation. If you have to take a bus or train anywhere, you
might as well forget it because they go on vacation too. Hey have I ever told
you how Italy is known for being the least organized country in Europe. Well it
is very true. Italians don’t care about anything but food and the sea. Agh
gotta love these people. The official big holiday was on the 15th
(btw…people with Google access…anyone want to tell me why exactly they
celebrate Ferragosto. I’ve asked people and they’re like “IDK we just all go to
the beach on that day.”) And since everyone is gone, we did some DEEP cleaning in
our apartment! More on that later…Anyway half of our investigators left town on
vacation so we didn’t have a lot to do this week… BUT we still had some great
lessons and saw some miracles.
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| Small ice cream cones |
We had a great lesson with our investigator Gerardo before
he left on vacation to his summer home (sad we don’t get to see him as much,
but he’s coming back once a week). He’s a really great guy, but for some reason
he doesn’t believe in God. Most of his life he hasn’t cared, but right now he
really envies believers and wants to know more for himself. We gave him the
challenge to pray and read the BOM every day and to ask if God exists. I feel
like he is so sincere and I’m sure he will find his answer.
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| All the horrible patterns in my Italian apartment. |
We also had a great lesson with his sister Teresa, who we
are also teaching. I don’t remember how much I told you about her, but she is
kind of a miracle in herself. She has lived the past two years in Milan with
her daughter and son in law—who are both Mormon, the son in law is this really
great bishop from Milan. She has met with the missionaries a lot, has read the
whole BOM, and now she lives in Battipaglia for us to teach J. To a certain point, she believes the church is
true, but she has a hard time leaving the catholic church behind. We want to
explain that by coming to our church, we are only adding to her faith, not
taking anything away.
We also saw Rosaria and had a really great lesson. She’s
scared to come to church because she’s scared her dad will be really mad
because there’s this member who the dad hates that comes to church. We promised
her, as representatives of Christ, that
if she came to church, then everything would be OK. But then she still didn’t
come to church. Some people take a bit more time.
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| Martina helping us clean |
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| Making pizza |
-We’ve also seen huge miracles with Martina, who the Elders
are teaching for now. Martina is one of my best friends in the mission! I can’t
wait to have you meet her! She speaks really perfect English so there’s no
language barrier (I can speak good Italian…but it’s hard to be really funny in
Italian so sometimes it’s hard to really be yourself). She has been coming to English course for 6
years, loves the missionaries and has
become really great friends with all of us. But she has never taken the
lessons. Then our Anziano Rasband here invited her to take the lessons and she
said yes. Later we were talking and she was like “Why has no one ever asked me
to take the lessons before?” I just felt awful because I assumed she has been
asked a million times, but has always rejected. I think all the other
missionaries thought the same thing. But it’s better late than never! On
Thursday we had a lesson with her and the Anziani (elders) . She comes in and
was like “I quit smoking!” and we’re all like “WHAT?!?” We’ve been trying to
get her to stop for a long time, and suddenly this week she decided to stop.
She already had the program and planned out everything by herself and we were
like …”but wait…we wanted to help you…with that..!” Haha but it’s better that
she decided to do it by herself! This happened on Thursday and then we found
out that on Friday she had NOTHING to do. Her family was all going to be gone
and she was just going to be alone in her house where there are cigarettes. She
needed something to keep her busy, but that was Ferragosto and we had to deep
clean our house all day long. So we called up our Mission President and asked
if she could spend the day inside our apartment to help us clean. He said yes.
No one is allowed in missionary’s apartments besides missionaries, so it was so
fun having a friend over! I felt bad making her clean, but I think it really
helped her out having something to do, being around good people and away from
all those cigarettes! It was actually a lot of fun and the Scherbels invited us
over for lunch to have delicious Mexican food! But the best part is that she
has not smoked since Thursday!!!!!!
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| Paestum |
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| Sacrificing my companion |
Besides that this week has actually been pretty fun! Martina
and her mom taught us to make pizza, we saw Paestum today for PDAY! Paestum are
the big roman temples and they are so beautiful! I couldn’t believe how well
intact they were. They are most intact roman temples in the world and I live 30
minutes away from them. Crazy.
Anyway hope you all have a great week! I can’t believe
school is starting! I swear it got out last week!
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