My Investigators!

Me in front of the city Popoli.  

 

Me on top of the castle

Marcone family in front of the castel

Awkard picture of our district

We have to take water to our apartment like this.  It is very homeless of us. 

Wow today has been a crazy one! For P-day we visited one of our investigators in Popoli and hiked to visit a very old castle! It was so beautiful and fun! But our usual Internet point was completely busy so we've been running around the whole city trying to find another one. Luckily we found this one, but I'm a little bit frazzled so I hope I can still make this a good letter. Okay for today's letter I wanted to tell you about my SIMPATIZZANTI (investigators) that I love so much! 

1.Pamela! Pamela is this sweet lady that comes to English and French class, pinches my cheek (I actually don't like when she does that), and comes to church each Sunday. We've invited her to be baptized and she said yes, but she doesn't want a date yet because she wants to tell her parents first. So we're trying to help her out with that. 

2. Emilia! Emilia is a 19 year old single mom with the CUTEST daughter in the world! She's from Argentina and her mom is a convert and is the one who invited us over to teach. Emilia is great and is very interested, but with her baby it's hard for her to keep reading and they live far away (we take a train to visit them) so they can't come to church every Sunday. We also invited her to be baptized-she said yes, but she didn't want to choose a date yet. This week I'm sure we'll have one though!

3. Elena! Sometimes we've looked over Elena because she hardly has any time to meet with us and we haven't seen her in a while. But we saw her yesterday and taught her the Restoration. She was telling us that she doesn't like the Catholic church and doesn't think it's true (yes finally someone!). She hasn't prayed yet, but she already believes what we taught her and agreed to be baptized (although not till September because she's going to be gone a lot for work). 

4. Nana! There are a TON of Africans in this city and I just love them! They are so funny and nice. We met Nana on the street and so far we've taught her the Restoration and she seemed excited about it. She's cute and calls us her angels. Lessons with her are very different than our other investigators because she'll randomly go off on spirits and such. But she's great!

5. Vanessa! Vanessa is one of our miracles. We hand out hundreds of pass along cards and never hear anything from them. But Vanessa talked to Sorella Mistura on the bus for like two seconds and got a card from that. And just from that she gave us a call wanting to know more. We had a great lesson with her and she was just telling us about how she has looked into many church and she is very confused about God and religion and is hoping to find an answer. (The whole time I was screaming "we have it!" in my head). We've only taught one lesson to her so far, but we have so much hope because she seems so prepared!

6. Paolo! Okay I probably shouldn't have favorites, but I can't help it. Paolo is about 40 years old, single, and a lawyer.. He has read the Liahona, every pamphlet, the BOM FOUR times (no joke) and probably all of LDS.org in the past month! He believes and LOVES it all! It is so cute, because every time we go over, he gives us ice cream and then spends ten minutes describing what he has learned this week (this past week he told us about how beautiful the family is in the Proclamation to the World). But...he won't come to church. Seriously. We've tried everything--invited the Bishop over, had our lessons in the church (he cancelled that lesson), talked about church, had him meet all these members, etc. He has had some bad experiences with the people in church in the past and he doesn't believe in organized religion. But he has changed and improved a lot! At first he was refused to listen to anything about going to church, but now he knows he needs to come and he says he will one day...in September...maybe. I didn't think it was possible for someone to love the church so much, but not want to come to church. He's our hardest investigator to figure out and help, but at the same time we just love him because we pray so much all day long that he will come to church. I know he will one day and then three weeks later (in Italy you have to come to church three times before you can get baptized) he will be baptized!

7. Family Dintino! We got them through a member family (referrals from members are the best). This family was taught by the missionaries a while ago, but now I think they are ready to accept! There's the mom and dad with three kids. We've taught two lesson, both of which went so great! They're taking care of their sick grandmother at the moment so it's hard for them to come to church a lot. 

Ah I'm running out of time so I guess I can't tell you about Adamo or Luigi. But I just love these people that we're teaching. They seriously make my day every day. I love planning lessons, feeling the spirit when I teach, and seeing these people change and want to be better. It's great being a missionary!