MTC Adventures and Kendra's birthday!

Ciao la mia famiglia e i miei amici!

My District

Awkward/Nervous photo before teaching

All my roommates

 

We practice our lessons on this orange

Girls in my district

Guess who's the oldest one in the MTC now! Haha just kidding, but kind of feels like it. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the packages and Birthday notes everyone!! Especially the Birthday cake and package you sent mom! My Birthday was really great--just ate a lot of junk food and got sang to in different languages. Haha kind of average, but I don't mind, because Birthdays don't matter on missions! Hey could I ask a favor of my friends and siblings--if you send me a letter, could you do it through DearElder.com instead of email? That way you could make my day throughout the week and I could spend more time looking at it. Thanks!!

 Well good news--my companion's leg is doing better! Although she can't go running with me, she is off her crutch and can walk at a normal pace! The doctors scared us by saying she would have to get surgery and maybe go home, but all she needs is to go to physical therapy each week (more times I get to leave the MTC haha).

So we finished teaching Gabriele--who got baptized! Yeah! Oh funny story..we had to do a companionship exchange for one of the lessons and in the lesson before the other sisters taught Gabriele about how faith is like a seed that will grow. Well when he said he wanted to be baptized the next time, he said his seed has grown, it's not a tree yet, but a small broccoli. Sorella Hunter said "Ew I don't like broccoli" so he asked "Cauliflower? Carrot?" She said carrots are good and he said "okay, I have a small carrot of faith then." Then in the prayer he said "Grazie per la mia piccola carrota di fede (thank you for my small carrot of faith)" It was so funny! I'm sad we don't get to teach Gabriele anymore, but now the teacher behind Gabiele has begun teaching us and it was so weird at first to hear an American accent and have been teach us this time--but he's a really great teacher so it's great now. Also Brother Mortensen reminds Sorella Perkins and I of Mario from Nintendo all the time--he looks just like him (minus the mustache) and makes the "ahhh" noise that Mario makes when he hits the lava. It's hilarious. 

This week we got two new investigators: Angella (who's actually Sister Urban) and Luigi (Brother Mortensen again). It's funny how even though they're our teachers--they feel like real investigators to us! We only met with Angella for ten minutes so we don't know much about her yet, but we got a long lesson with Luigi yesterday. Luigi is a 60 year old man with two daughters and two grandchildren and he doesn't believe in God. It was a really awesome experience teaching him yesterday! At first we were just talking about normal things--family, where we're from, etc--when we asked him if he believed in God. He said that he used to be Catholic, but now doesn't believe in God because he doesn't like how other churches get so much money, never do what they teach, and there's so much bad in the world. We read some scriptures and we started bearing our testimonies and suddenly the spirit completely changed. In our broken Italian we told him that we know there is a God and that he loves Luigi and that is why we left our families for so long to teach others. Sorella Perkin's testimony was so strong (she later told me that in the lesson she felt like she was teaching her brother who doesn't believe in God) and that made all the difference. I feel like we really touched Luigi's heart and he invited us over for dinner and to meet his family. It was so sad to walk out of the room and realize that wasn't going to happen because...well...Luigi doesn't quite exist haha. But anyway the spirit is awesome and I Love being here and I really love teaching now! Wow I'm such a cheesy person now. Haha the mission will do that to you!

At the MTC there's a ton of devotionals and speakers and this week we got to hear two great ones!  Elder Russel M Nelson came and spoke to us yesterday about missionary work and the influence of the people on the other side of the veil praying for our success--It was so great and just great to have an apostle speak to us. Also on Sunday we had Janice Kapp Perry (the lady who wrote "I am a Child of God", "I love to see the Temple", etc) come speak to us for relief society and told us about some of the stories behind the songs and we got to sang a melody of all the songs which was really great! She also introduced us to her newest song: "The Sisters Of  Zion", which is basically a remake of "As Sisters in Zion", but it's all about this new wave of sister missionaries. It was a great song--see if you can look it up--and we got to be the first group to ever sing it! It was so cool and powerful!

Well thanks for everything and I'll leave you with a language mistake: instead of saying "Atonement of Jesus Christ" I said "The fat lady of Jesus Christ."  Haha yeah...

Con Amour, Sorella Knudsen.

p.s. I've seen my cousin Ashley (I mean Sister Naylor) a few times! We haven't really got a chance to talk but she seems like she's doing good!