My companion is the girl from Brave!

Thanks mom for getting my card done! You saved my life for transfers! Plus, it was cool that I got to say hi to you! Ah cute little Kelsey is in Florida! I've been thinking about her all week!! 

Goodbye Battipaglia!

I left dear Battipaglia which was filled with a lot of sad goodbyes (but luckily I'm going back in six weeks so it wasn't too bad). I packed up all my heavy suitcases and went to the Napoli train station to wait for my train that my Greenie would be on. I made a huge sign that said "VERDINA (GREENIE)", I got on and asked who was being trained by Knudsen, a redheaded girl answered and I attacked her. Her name is....SORELLA HANSEN!!!!!!!! She is the BEST! She is 22 years old, has lived in Texas, Louisiana, Kanas, and is recently from Wyoming. She has studied at BYU, Hawaii and did the Disneyworld program. She has crazy red hair and looks like Meridth from BRAVE. She is super funny and cool. I love her so much!

SORELLA HANSEN

My sleepy Greenie.

Also, Sorella Gates was on the train down so I did get to see and talk to her! We have both heard from each other from our moms so it was funny. She is going to Sicily and being trained by someone in my group named Sorella Kippen so that will be fun for her! They traded who I would train at the last minute. 

Sorella Gates!

Being "blown in" or ''whitewashing'' as some people call it has been a really fun adventure! First, we had to trade trains and get to Cosenza where the Anziani (elders) were a supposed to meet us. We accidentally got off on the wrong stop and then had to get back on the next train and we had five suitcases to carry and it was fun I'll just say. We got to Cosenza and the Elders were not there....we had no phone and no place to go...so we just waited. Finally I found a working pay phone and called the mission office asking if they were looking for two lost sisters. They said yes and asked where we were. I told them the Cosenza station and they actually sent the Elders to another stop so they had to call them and tell them to come to the Cosenza station to pick us up.

Getting stuck at the train station.

We ended up waiting almost two hours in the station laying on our stuff to keep these gypsies girls from stealing our stuff. Finally the Elders came and they took us to our apartment...only to find out that the Elders turned our whole bedroom upside down! Haha I love mission pranks! They even made a cheesy sign that said "we hope you turn this town upside down". We unpacked everything, I got my Greenie her first Italian pizza, and then we went to bed. We live right by a very busy street and we kept hearing people outside all night long and then in the middle of the night...someone started hammering on our wall! Why would someone hammer a nail into the wall at 12 am?!?! 

Friday was spend doing weekly planning and trying to figure out everything about the area. So it turns out....we don't really have any investigators. They had a lot of work, but like last week all the investigators were dropped so basically we need to start from the ground up. Okay honestly, I am actually enjoying being blown in!  We have a whole new start on this city without any bad impressions and I've made a lot of plans to try. We have a branch here with about 15-20 members who came to church on Sunday (every city I go to the branch just gets smaller and smaller haha). All the members are very nice and welcoming to us and willing to have us come over! By the end of church, I got an appointment with almost every member! 

Finding!

We've done a lot of finding in these past couple of days and we've seen a lot of miracles and found a lot of people! We were able to have 6 lessons with a prayer on the street. I want to tell you about some of the miracles and people we have met. 

On our first day, we were doing finding and at first I was stopping everyone and then I told Sorella Hansen to talk to someone. She told me that she likes talking to people, but she was so scared. I kept encouraging her and finally she stopped this lady to invite her to English course. This lady stopped immediately and started asking questions about who we were. She found out it was Hansen's second day in Italy and insisted on buying us gelato. We exchanged numbers and hopefully we will be meeting with her on Tuesday! Her name was Sabrina and she was seriously the nicest lady ever! It gave Sorella Hansen a lot of confidence and I was so grateful that God showed us that tender mercy. 

We got a referral from a member in Crotone who asked us to meet with her husband who was in Cosenza. We had a lesson with him and he was a really nice guy, but not really willing to listen to us at all. We met with him by this bar and I noticed that there was a worker who kept passing by and watching us. After, we talked to her and we were able to do a whole lesson with her. She really admired us for what we were doing and said we could come back another day to talk to her more! We are going tonight! 

We met this really nice old man on the street who is evangelist and invited us in to talk to him and his wife. We told them about the BOM and they told us about their church, very good people.

Sunday night we had four miracles in the row. We first stopped this lady named Rodica and was telling her about English course when she asked if she could give me her number. Then she asked if we wanted to come over next Sunday to explain our religion to her (in my head I was like...WAIT I'm a supposed to ask you that first!)....we were like ''yeah we could do'' haha! Then we went down a street, but I felt like we needed to turn around and go the other way and we met this girl Rossella. We explained who we were and asked if she would like to learn more and she said yes and we're meeting with her tonight! Then we walked down a couple streets without any luck so we stopped and said a prayer and asked for someone who is prepared to received this message. We stopped this girl named Francesca and told her about the BOM and asked if we could meet up and explain more. She said yes and we have an appointment for Tuesday. Then we met this guy named Massimo and talked to him a long time about God, we're planning on passing him to the Elders though. 

Anyway we already have one new investigator and five appointments set up this week (who will all hopefully become investigators once we get to teach them a lesson). We definitely feel like there are a lot of prepared people here and there is a reason why we were sent here! I have to say...this is all Sorella Hansen's work...she has just great faith for finding people! I just do the talking. 

My companion doesn't really know Italian at all...so I get to teach her! It's fun hearing all her mistakes! Like she keeps saying about ''the woman of tongues'' instead of ''the gift of tongues''. Also in Italian there are two ways to say ''you''--unformal (tu) and formal (Lei). Excepts lei also means ''she''. In the MTC they teach the missionaries to all use the formal lei so Sorella Hansen kepts talking to me formally...which is kind of weird because I'm her companion. She will say ''Cosa lei vuole fare?'' (what does she want to do?). Every time I look around the room and ask ''who is this other woman?'' It's fun :)

I really love my companion and I feel so strongly that I had to be her trainer. She's a little fireball. She gets a little nervous to talk to people, which is normal, but once we stop someone she has no fear at all. She has a great desire to learn Italian and tries to practice it always. She doesn't seem to feel like missionary work is too hard or anything, but has a lot of energy and wants to go out and talk to everyone. She has the coolest life and we get along so well.  I am so sad that I only have six weeks with her. Can I PLEASE extend my mission!??!?!?!?!?!??!?! 

Vi voglio bene! 

Sorella Knudsen