Recipe Finding!

I can’t believe Kelsey is already leaving on her mission!!! I’m going to miss that face! Her pictures are so cute!!!Well this week was awesome!! Almost all of our investigators are reading the BOM right now! And not just reading here and there, but starting from the beginning and trying to read at least a chapter every day! It is really awesome! One of our investigators, Giovanna, hasn’t read at all, but this week she read!

But sadly…none of them came to sacrament. We had one investigator tell us that if it was sunny than she would have to go with her husband to the sea, but if it was bad weather then she would come to church. Then another investigator said that if it was sunny than her family would go to the sea and she could come to church. Either way we would have someone come to church! We prayed really hard that weather would work out well for both of them somehow… then at 9am on Sunday, they both called and cancelled…so that was sad. 

We are as tall as this vegetable

This week I figured out the best finding tactic in Italy. Last week during programming (I think the correct word in English is planning, but in Italian it’s programmare so it always comes out as programming in English) we were trying to think of something new we could do for finding. A couple months ago the mission came out with this long list of finding ideas and conversation starters. We read through the list and I read “asking for recipes”. We thought why not? We called up the Elders and challenged to a finding contest to see who could get the most recipes for the pasta by the end of the week. This was such a great finding idea!!! First, because it was really fun for us. Second, because hardly anyone rejected us! There were a lot of people that were a little standoffish and you could tell that they didn’t want to talk to us, but once we said “We are Americans and we want to learn how to cook Italian, do you know a recipe?” They immediately opened up and were willing to talk to us. Third, because all of these conversations ended with them asking about who we were and us sharing the gospel! And fourth, because I have so many awesome recipes!  

We asked these old ladies in the park for recipes and one of them was like, “I have a question…why do you do baptisms for the dead?” (which was kind of weird…no one knows who we are, and if they do…they usually don’t know we do that)Turns out this lady was an old investigator and went to church a lot and read a lot of the BOM. She also has a great knowledge of the Bible and was telling us everything she believes about baptism. She also talks in parables…which are really difficult to understand. We invited her to come to church and she came!  But had to leave before sacrament…and we haven’t been able to schedule a return appointment yet so next week she’ll be an investigator! 

Recipe count for the Elders: 6. Sisters: 24  They have to make us pasta this week and they’re begging for a rematch. 

These next four picture are from a hike behind my apartment area.  

Also, we got two new investigators this week! We live right next to this Carrefour (it’s a supermarket) and everyone there knows us missionaries. There are couple people who always asks what we are up to and last Monday I told them all about the lessons we teach and invited this girl named Giusy and a guy named Umberto to meet with us. They accepted, but also wanted to learn English. So we are teaching them both English and the gospel!

Besides that, we also got locked out of our house this week. The key just would not turn at all! Luckily the senior couple lives right next door to us so we got to stay with them for the night! Sleepover with the Scherbels! We then spent the whole next day calling all these guys to fix the door. The first guy came over and gave up. Then this other guy came and spent two hours drilling at our lock trying to break it. There were lots of sparks, it was cool. We finally got in and now we have a nice lock J. Also, I had strep throat this week, but it wasn’t too bad and now I’ll completely healed! 

The cake for Anziano Rasband. He likes Ferraris

Anziano Scherbels birthday

We celebrated two Birthdays this week: Anziano Rasband and Scherbel and everyone made cake. Cake count this week: 4. This week I’m having no sugar. 

Our name tags that the Elders stole. Mine is on the bottom.

Also, remember how a couple weeks ago I sent home a picture of the Elder’s name tags that we decorated? Well as payback…they came to DDM with a huge ice block…with our nametags inside…and they put stickers on them. Ours was cooler though.

And that’s about it folks…today the summer holiday ends, people are going back to work, and coming home from vacation, and it is getting colder outside!!!