First week in Italy!

Hills around my home

What the city is like where I live

My companions, one of the anzioni, and 3 members of the Guisti family

Making Pizza with the YW. 

Handing out Book of Mormons

Kendra with Mission President Kelly and his wife

Ciao! Sono in Italia!!!

I have been assigned to the beautiful city of...PESCARA!   It,s on the other side of Italy from Rome and is right by the sea. There's the main city in the middle surrounded by hills filled with orchards and fields and then surrounded by mountains. I just love it here. I have two companions: Slla Spicq (pronounced like Speak) and Slla Mistura. Sorella Spicqhas been out here for over a year and is from France, and is my main trainer. Slla Mistura is from Italy (I am so lucky to have a native as my companion), has been  out for 3 months, and was the first 19 year old sister in Italy. Slla Mistura knows less English than I do Italian and Slla Spicq knows English pretty well, but not the best. Thus we have decided to only speak Italian. Seriously, I can count how many times I have spoken English (besides asking how to say something) in the last week and they have all been because we met someone who spoke English. It has been REALLY hard, but I have already felt a huge improvement and I think it's good. It has gotten easier, but man the first few days here--I couldn't understand anyone and I was confused all day long! Since Italian is Slla spicqs second language I can understand her the best, but Slla Mistura speaks so fast and with her accent--its very hard for me to understand. Its sad because shes my companion and I never know what she is talking about. But besides that, we get along great and have a lot of fun! Slla Spicq is a great trainer and will compliment me on everything I do, even when I know I just failed. I am very grateful for them.

Okay now about the work here: I feel like my area is very big. To visit one of our investigators (Emilia-a 19 year old single mom who's mom is a member) we have to take a train. The rest of our investigators are spread throughout the city so we are always walking or riding the bus to them. But buses are a great place to contact so it works out! We have lessons throughout the day and just contact along the way. The problem we;re having with out investigators right now is getting them to progress and come to church. One of our investigators is a 35 year old man named Paolo and he read the whole BOM in a week and believes it! But he has had a bad experience in the past with church so he will refuse to even let us talk about it (at least I think that's what is going on... haha I feel so helpless in lessons because I never know what is going on haha!). The members here are really great! I think there are about 70 people in the ward and we're in the middle of making a plan to get referrals from everyone.

Well this week has had a lot of scary and hard moments, but overall I love being here and learning more each day. I love missions because you get to experience all these crazy things that you never would otherwise! Such as trying to eat gross mushrooms from an old lady, having a lady ask us to heal her, and going up to random strangers and trying to talk to them. Oh three crazy experiences: We told this guy about the BOM and Mormon and the first thing he asked was "who are his parents?" Uh...I don't know. He got way upset that we were teaching about a prophet, but didn't even know who his parents were. Super random! Also we were teaching this other guy in the park and we couldn't go into his house because we were doing an exchange and it was only Slla Spicq and I. Well he was way upset that we couldn't come in (way sketch right?) and then he told us that he's an illegal immigrant and is hiding from the cops. Also, yesterday we were talking with this cute old lady and she randomly told us that her daughter is trying to sell her apartment if we know anyone who is looking. We took that as an excuse to get her number and didn't think too much about it. Then later last night we were talking with this girl, who you could tell has just been through a lot, and she said she was looking for a new apartment and asked if we knew of one. We were like yeah we actually do know of a place...We gave her the number.  Well I'm off to eat gelato on this very hot, humid day. Ciao!

Vi voglio bene.

Sorella Knudsen