I went on a boat!

Beautiful Italy!

 I can't believe Ashley and Lizzie are home. Give them the biggest hugs from me!  Okay so today for Pday we got special permission...to go on a BOAT!! We drove out to this city and took a small boat tour around the coast to visit all these caves. It was SO beautiful!! It was pretty funny though when they stopped the boat and said “okay now we'll stop and everyone can go swimming.” So everyone swam while us missionaries sat in the boat. But then Anziano Scherbel (the senior couple who took us) wanted to take a short cut home which actually took a lot of time so now I'll a little behind time purtroppo.

Boat Ride

Boat Ride

Anyway this week was great! We had another busy week filled with so many lessons! Man I love having my days full of lessons every hour (okay it's not quite like that) and feeling like you've accomplished so much! We had a lot of great lessons...but most of them aren't too interesting to report. I'll just tell you about a few. Do you remember Brian from my last letter? The English/ South Africa guy who used to live here in Salerno. Well he is so awesome. He comes to Italy every year just to visit all his friends and invite them to get baptized. He has one of the strongest testimonies I have ever see. He also taught us some African. He took us to see a less active family. The husband actually just passed a couple of months ago and he told her straight out that she needs to start coming back to church so she can be sealed  to her husband. She said I know, but that she’s not quite ready yet. But she said we could come visit her everyweek and help her come back! Hopefully we’ll see some success here!

This week we made actual chocolate chip cookies (like with BROWN SUGAR—doesn’t exist here, but Sorella Scherbel has a lot bunch!) with two of my favorite people..Martina and Federica (they are sisters and come to English course every week). 

Chocolate chip cookies!

We also have another baptismal date!! (Our first one is Rosaria! She’s still doing great with reading the BOM, but she has some family problems that are getting pretty pesante (heavy as they say here) so prayers for her). Anyway there's this lady named Anna who is an eternal investigator and comes to church every week and has been taught many times. Her scheda (oh…what do they call that in English? The paper where we write about the lessons we have and how it went) is 19 pages long!! She knows EVERYTHING and has a testimony of everything…but she has this mental block that I don’t quite understand. We decided to visit her and I felt impressed that we should pray and have her chose another date. We did it and she chose September 27. I don’t want to do what all the other missionaries have done by just reteaching her all the lessons, but really trying to figure out what her problems is. It will take a lot of prayer and trying to receive revelation I think. Speriamo bene.

Fhe. We tried our best teaching these four crazy boys. and crazy sister missionary.

Now a story about how I’m very unchristian like. Jk. So there’s this man named Giulio here who owns a gas station and also a ton of super awesome cars. He’s a nice old man, but the sisters in the past decided it was okay to let old harmless men kiss them (I don’t mean the actually kissing on the lips, but the two kisses on the cheeks thing). Well I didn’t want to kiss (again, just two kisses on the cheeks. I felt like emphasizing that twice) him and he got all offended. Then another day he tried to pull me into his shop alone without my companion. So I’ve been avoiding him all transfer long. He keeps asking the Elders why we don’t stop by. Anyway on Friday we were running late and had to get to the bus stop…the closest bus stop is right by his gas station so we had to go there. He is also a chatter so I knew if we stopped by, we would have to talk to him and miss our bus. So what do we do? We ran. We ran right past him to get to the bus stop. He got up and started screaming and yelling at us. I have to admit, this moment was so funny! Us two sister missionaries running for our lives while this man was in shock that we ran past him instead of talking. This was probably one of those “you had to be there moments”. Anyway it was really funny and then I felt really bad so we brought him a piece of cake the next day (we took the Elders with us for protection just in case). He’s a really nice guy afterall (although he still wants to kiss us) and then he took us in to sit in his Cinquecento (a very small car that Italians drive all over the place), a Porsche, and a FERRARI! We got to touch and sit inside of them!  

Cinquecento

Me and a Ferrari.

Cinquecento

Anyway transfers are this week! How does the time go by so fast?! Can I just tell you how grateful I am for the gospel? Every day I meet the saddest people in the world who don’t know that God exists and loves them or that families are important or that life can be better. The gospel is not easy to live, but it is the easier path after all! Praying, reading the scriptures, going to church, repenting are the little things that can give us the greatest joy that we can experience. I know that the gospel makes families eternal, gives us better health, makes us happier, helps us with money, etc. all we need to do is be obedient. I love this gospel! I am so grateful it has changed my life!

Vi voglio bene!!!!!!!!!!!!!!