Aspettiamoci Miracoli! (Expect Miracles!)

My companions and I by the beach

Dinner with the Bishop and his wife

A Beautiful Sunset

Streets in Italy--a lot like California

My companion and I in the rain.

Ciao! Ah this week was so great! A lot better than last week! I'm still confused a lot, but no longer sempre (always). In fact, I have followed full conversations this week! I feel like my Italian improves so much each day. The nice thing about not speaking much is everyone is so nice to me and will just let me bear my testimony. While sometimes people will ask hard questions to my companions about our religion. Oh and I am not a fan of Jehovah Witnesses, not because we have really met any, but because they create a bad name for us. Most people I ask have never met Mormon missionaries before and they don't want to listen to us because they think we're Jehovah witnesses. But most people here are very nice and will listen to our message. We meet so many people everyday that I feel like are so prepared for the gospel and sometimes it works out for us to teach them, but sometimes it doesn't, so I just hope we planted a good seed.
        One thing I love about this mission is that the mission President emphasizes how we are able to bring about miracles. Expect Miracles--Aspettiamoci Miracoli! My companionship likes to emphasize this too and everyday we pray for a miracle. Last week I was thinking why don't we pray for a specific miracle to happen. At the time we were only teaching single people and we wanted to be able to teach and baptize a whole family, especially one with younger kids. So that's what we've been praying for and last week one of the member families named Guisti (oh and their daughter Ludovica went to Pleasant Grove with Kyle and Todd!) invited us over to eat and...to teach a family! The family is very interested and the dad especially is so prepared! IDK if anything will happen yet, but I believe it will. Also, Paolo (the guy who read the BOM in one week, but won't come to church) is a very proud guy and even though he believed everything--he did not want to change and was almost rude about it last week. Well...we've been praying for the Lord to soften his heart and when we went back--he was completely changed! His faith has grown a lot and now he wants to repent. Oh we just love Paolo! He is so funny; every lesson we give him a pamphlet and the next time we come back it is COVERED in notes and questions. I've never seen anybody study a pamphlet so hard. Also, last time he showed us Alma 12:29 and said we were his angels (aw!). Also, we had two more investigators come to church this week! Miracles!
This week we did an activity with the YW where they were missionaries for a day with us. We gave them (the two of them) BOMs and pass along cards and we did finding with them. It was actually really fun and we got a lot of potential investigators from it. In the middle of it, it started raining so hard, but it was still fun trying to talk to everyone soaking wet. Oh that reminds me of a funny story...I debated about telling this, but it's just too funny. And mom, this city that I am in is pretty safe--there are people everything and we are always trying to be safe so please don't worry! Okay so we had some extra time one day so we went casa in casa and we went into this one complex and started knocking on all the doors. We knocked on this one door and five guys from Banglrdesa (sp?) answered, wearing...only towels. So sketch! So we hurried and told them we were missionaries and ran! But as we were trying to get out the door of the building it wouldn't open. There was a guy on the other side trying to get in and, of course, his friends were the five guys. They came down (this time dressed in more clothes) and we spent a while trying to open the door. It was just too funny and we were like ah we need to get out of here. I knew that is wasn't going to happen until we prayed or taught a lesson or something. So we asked the guys if we could say a prayer, most of them just ignored us, but one guy kind of joined in. A minutes after the prayer this other guy comes by, tries his key, and somehow it worked. The one guy kept saying "prayer works! prayer works!" Haha I guess the Lord works in mysterious ways! Too funny!
Well there's a bit for this week. Love you guys! Miss you! Vi voglio bene!
Sorella Knudsen