Fa Caldo

    Looks like you had SO much fun on the vacation! Thanks for sending me photos! Aw Jordan is getting so big haha!   Well it is HOTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are all dying here! All the Italians go to the sea everyday while I walk and swim in the humidity. :) yay August in Italy! Today for Pday we went to Amalfi! A beautiful city on the sea known for it's fried sea creatures in a cup. *see following picture. There's octopus, squid, clam, and lots of tentacles and things haha. 

Amalfi! 

Cup of fish

 This week has been great, but it definitely has had it's hard moments. Last week we had two baptismal dates, but this week we dropped both of them. One of them is our eternal investigator, Anna, who has had many baptismal dates, but has never showed up to any. She knows she needs to be baptized, but...thanks to some crazy dreams...she believes that if she gets baptized...the second coming will happen. She says “Io sono la donna” (I am the woman) in Revelations 12. So she is kind of crazy haha. Anyway we don't feel like she has changed at all since the missionaries have started teaching her and that she doesn't have real intent right now. 

Lots of mopeds. Typical Italy.

Another Catholic Church

The second one is Rosaria...who I've worked with my whole time here and who we've seen a lot of miracles with. Well teaching her has just been kind of difficult lately and she hasn't made any progress. Last night we asked her what her desires are and she confessed that she has never liked going to church and that she'll never want to come to church. She told us that she prays everynight the way that we taught her to, but then she has to pray to Maria or Padre Pio. She's still way catholic and at the moment does not want to change. So we're still going to keep in contact because we're friends, but in our minds...she is dropped. It is really sad to have to drop people after you have worked so hard trying to help them out. But that's the mission and we need to find other people who will accept the gospel. 

The Elders left their name tags in the church so we stole them and decorated them :) They loved them ahha

So we lost these two, but we saw some other big miracles! First, Irene (she's this old evanglist lady who is the mom of a couple members), has been reading the BOM and understands it beautifully. We went over there and she had read Nephi 13 (which talks all about the apostasy and restoration). She sat down the book, looked at us, and said “I know what abominable church is it talking about.” We're like that church? “The catholic church of Rome” We're like... “well it's just all churches that are against the church of god.” She's like “No. It has to be that church.” Anyway she understands the apostasy really well, which is always a good thing here in Italy. 

Yard work outside the church

 

Then there's Gerardo. He's the sweetest old man ever and when you come here...you HAVE to meet him! Last Sunday he asked us and the Elders to come to the hospital to give his dying brother a blessing. After a while we were talking, he mentioned how he actually has a big interest in our church. He has a lot of doubts about the catholic church and has searched a lot in life, but has kind of been disappointed in what he has found. He's reading the BOM, a bit slowly because he's kind of old though. Then one day he found out that his nephew is actually a mormon bishop in Milan! On Saturday morning, he called us up saying that his nephew is in town and that we have to meet him. We went to Gerardo's sister's house and met these two great member couples who came down to visit. It was such a great lesson!! It made a huge difference for Gerardo to actually see how his own family members have become converts to this church. There was a very strong spirit as we all taught him the gospel and bore our testimonies. After, he told us he's worried about his wife because she is super catholic and will not want him learning about this church. So we will see on that. Anyway then Sunday came around. At 9:30 am (when church starts here) Gerardo comes to church in a sweat saying he was so scared he was going to be late. Then all the rest of the members came at 940 haha. Anyway he stayed for all three hours of church and I think he really liked it! It really helped to have his family be there! And today we're doing an FHE with all of them! I have so much hope for Gerardo! He's such a nice man and really just wants to find the truth.

One last story hahah...last Sunday I found this cat on the side of the road that was very badly hurt and was dying. It layed on the ground, breathing really hard and I felt bad for it so I got out my Plan of Salvation pamphlet and petted it. Then it freaked out and died right before my eyes. It was so sad. But then we left because we had an appointment and I had no idea what to do with a dead cat. Well no one else knew what to do and it sat out in front of our church for four days in the hot sun and it stunk soooooooo bad. Seriously. So bad. Finally the city cleaned it up. But now knowing what dead cat smells like...I've realized Italy always smells like dead cat!

And I will leave you on that note :) Love you all!