English class and more Pescara

A bit of our party we had yesterday

Me in front of the city Chieti

A member family we are teaching Italian to.

Famiglia Rosselo! Emilia is in the front.

Aw the baptism of Brooklyn and Eric looked so cute! Well this week has been so great! Seriously we have seen so many miracles this week and suddenly we have so many potentials and all these people are wanting to make appointments with us! I don't know why the last few weeks we didn't have anything and now we have a ton, I guess sometimes we just need to go through a tough patch. Also, this week we got our transfers...and...I'm staying in Pescara!!!! This is Spicq's last transfer so I thought for sure she would stay and I would go, but it's actually the opposite. It feels really right to stay because there is so much more that I want to do here! I'm getting a new companion tomorrow--Sorella Mckenna! She has only been out here for one more transfer than me...so together we are way young in the mission and hardly know the language! I'm a little nervous to not have Slla Spicq to rely on when I can't understand anyone, but I'm sure we can do it! I've heard that young couples like us always see more miracles so I'm excited for her to come and to work hard! 

This week Slla Spicq and I set some mete pazze (crazy goals) to keep us more motivated each day, like call someone to repentance or ask for 50 referrals (we got to 28 without receiving any--but then the next day we got six without hardly asking). Anyway one day we decided to give away a BOM in a different language--we chose Russian and Spanish! We went the whole day without meeting anyone who spoke one of these languages and at the end of the day we ended up having some an extra hour. An hour to do finding and find someone to give these books to. We sat down to pray to know the direction we should go and immediately Spicq said we need to go visit this member Sara in her shop, which I thought was a little strange because we visited her the day before. We went anyway and asked Sara if she knew anyone of these lanuages that we could give a BOM to. Immediately she knew two people so we wrote a note inside and she gave them to her. She gave the book to her spanish friend already and she is reading and loving it (hopefully more on this next week)! Then while we were talking with Sara, her friend came in and started talking to us. Her friend loves Sara and was very interested in our religion so we got to tell her all about what we believe and bear our testimonies. She took a BOM, promised to read it, and then meet up with us to talk about it. One of the best parts of being a missionary is getting to see moments like this where you have nothing, you follow the spirit, and suddenly you find miracles and people who want to listen. 

Also, in Italy most baptisms come from referrals from members and then from English class. Because of this, the church has established a whole program with lessons and advertising for us to use for English Class. Yesterday was the first class of the year and we decided to start it off explaining the program and having a party. This week Spicq and I have been working really hard to get everything set up and make it into a success. And it definitely worked! We had SO many members, friends of members, and random people from the street show up! We played all these games, I made delicious brownies (I found out Italians LOVE brownies so I've learned how to make them and now I am every one's favorite :) ), and we had so much fun! We had all these people asking questions about the church and we made so many friends. Ah it was so good and I'm sure we're going to get so many investigators from it!  

This fast Sunday almost all the testimonies from the members were about missionary work! It wasn't like this for the last two fast Sundays that I have been here, but lately we have really been working with visiting members, inviting them to work, and involving them in our work and I think it has really paid off because now all these members are talking about all these experiences they have had on their own and encouraging others to open their mouth. Really members are the key to missionary work because they can share the gospel more naturally than us missionaries sometimes. This (how to work with members) is something that Slla Spicq has really learned on her mission and I'm excited to keep applying it!

Ti abbrachio! 

Sorella Knudsen