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!

Baptism of Sara and visiting the Basilica!

In front of the Basilica

Inside the Basilica--Kinda blurry

Companions in front of the Basilica

Battismo di Sara!

Visiting a New Member family

Grand prize--This picture is for Dad

  Looks like you guys had a lot of fun this week with the 4th! No, I didn't really get to celebrate it...except my companions and I bought some chocolate and then watched the part of the Restoration movie which it mentions the fourth of July. Haha yeah we know how to party! Well this week was  really awesome! We saw so many miracles with our investigators and random people we talk to. I love going to places and randomly finding people who want the BOM and ask if they want to come to church. Like the other day I was doing my permesso and I was talking to this African guy and he said that he went to the Mormon church in Nigeria and was wondering if there was church here. 

          Last week we had our Pday in Rome and we got to see the Basilica! That place is huge!! I've studied it in school and I thought I would recognize all the art, but it is so huge and filled with art...I've probably only seen like a tenth of the art in it before. Man it was so beautiful I can't believe I got the chance to see it. My companions were making fun of me, because I couldn't believe that I was there and there were points where I was seriously giggling because I was so happy to be there. Ah so beautiful. I'll have to take you guys there. 

          Okay I've realized that I haven't really said much about my companions, city, Italia, etc. so I decided to talk more about that for a second. It is really hot and humid here--I am always wet. It's fine. Although we have had some cloudy/rainy days which have been so nice. Everyone does the kiss-both-cheeks thing as hello/goodbye here and I'm getting quite good at it. In fact, I like it and I don't plan on losing this habit when I come home...so prepare to be kissed...a lot :). Haha. In addition to the language...I am learning sign language. Italians are very expressive with their hands and it always cracks me up! It's funny when we get a ride with a member and we'll be talking to them while they're driving. There has been a couple times that I have been scared for my life because their hands spend more time in the air than on the wheel. But somehow they are still have good drivers. Maybe we should talk to them less...haha! My apartment is VERY nice, like seriously. I think maybe even the best in the mission. The thing I love about apartments here is that everyone has a balcony (usually filled with plants and flowers). Ours has an extra mattress on it and we love eating, praying, and talking outside on it, especially late at night. Honestly, this city to me (maybe this is only because I went to crazy China) just feels like a normal city in the US...except everyone speaks Italian. For me, it's not a great cultural experience to be here...maybe if I get to go more south... oh well I really do love it here! I feel like I have been here forever. My companions are really great! There are actually a lot of threesomes of sister in Italia right now and I think that is only because there are more sisters than cities. Once they open up more, they'll move us around, I think. I thought it would be more difficult to be with two companions, but we work really well together. It's fun having three languages-English, Italian, French so together we can talk to almost everyone! 

         This week was really great because we had a baptism! Except not exactly ours. Her name is Sara, she's about 14 years old (but acts so much older), and she's just great. She has actually been waiting a LONG time to be baptized, but since she is a minor and there's some issues with her mom...I don't know all the details, but she has just been waiting on permission from a judge to get baptized. She's practically already a member and has come to lessons with us all the time. She and I have become good friends and two weeks ago I was talking to her about her baptism. I told her she was going to be baptized while I was here and she didn't believe me because she has been waiting so long and it was a supposed to take longer. Then two days later she called me screaming that she just got permission to be baptized! Moral of the story: I can tell the future. Haha just kidding. But her baptism was beautiful and we had a great turnout for it. The "baptismal font" that we have is actually just a small stand up pool. Her brother baptized her and it was so sad because he hit her head on the back bar of the pool! But he redid it and she's okay! Haha...maybe next baptism we'll do it in the ocean! 

Okay I'm running out of time so I guess I'll just tell you about the rest of my investigators next week. Love you guys! Vi voglio bene (by the way this means "I want you well" but it basically means "I love you" in Italian in a non romantic way.)

Con amore, Sorella Knudsen 

Zone Conference in Rome

Tracking in Rome

The new temple being built

The Rome Temple

Best Pizza ever

My Zone

Exchanges with Sorella Fuller and Gelato

Ciao Famiglia!

Come va? Ah this week has been so good! We have made such great progress with our investigators and I am so excited for them! It's so sad when appointments get cancelled, but it is so great when you get to see their faith grow. We have a few investigators that have accepted to be baptized (although no dates yet due to some problems). I'll tell you more about that in my next letter though. So this week is Zone Conference...in ROME!! We left Pescara on Monday morning, had interviews with the Mission President, then did some exchanges with the sisters from Rome 2. This week is our first week with the new Mission President, President Waddoups! E troppo bravo (he is really great) and I'm excited for him to be our President. It was fun doing tracting in Rome, although to me it looks just like Pescara, and learning new ways to contact. While we were tracking, the Rome 2 sisters led us down this empty street...to see the Rome temple!! Yay I finally got to see it! It looks great, but it still has a long way to go. Actually there has been some speculation that it won't be done till 2015, but I'm praying that it's not true so I can see it! After we got some delicious pizzas and slept over at Rome 2. 

Yesterday (Tuesday) we had zone conference! I really like zone conference because you learn a lot, meet a lot of new missionaries, and see some you already know. Also, guess what! So I'm with two fluent speakers of Italian (one native) and I feel like I'm always making mistakes and failing at Italian. Well I think all that suffering has paid off a bit, because I was complimented so many times on how good my Italian is already. I'm definitely not the best, but I'm doing better than most people at this time! I think the difference is just that I've studied Italian longer, we only speak Italian in my companionship (while other Greenies speak some English), and of course I have a native speaker as my companion. A couple people said they were surprised to find out I was a Greenie and even the President told me he was impressed. Yay for not failing! Oh funny story...one of the Elders was trying to pull a joke on me by saying (in Italian) that he could say whatever he wanted about me and I wouldn't understand what he was saying because he spoke so fast...except somehow I totally understood! Ha in that Elder's face! 

After zone conference, we got to do another exchange and sleepover, but this time with the sisters from Ladispoli! I went with Sorella Fuller (who also happens to be the cousin of my Italian teacher at BYU and I'm friends with her brother) and we did corso d'inglese (English class) and a little finding. Then we went back to their apartment and has a big sleepover. So right now I am in Ladispoli writing you this letter and then we are going to ROME for P-day!! There's not too much to do in Pescara for P-days (besides go to the beach) so I'm excited for today. Last night I asked Sorella Spicq what we were going to do in Rome and she said, very casually, "I think maybe just see the Basilica or something." Then I died of excitement. So I'm sorry to tell you this...but I'm just about to go see The BASILICA!! Non che credo!! 

Well I love you guys a lot!!! Vi voglio bene! I'm so happy to be here and I love being a missionary! My faith has grown so much everyday and I love everything that I am learning. This church is definitely true peeps! haha. 

Vi voglio bene!

Sorella Knudsen

Aspettiamoci Miracoli! (Expect Miracles!)

My companions and I by the beach

Dinner with the Bishop and his wife

A Beautiful Sunset

Streets in Italy--a lot like California

My companion and I in the rain.

Ciao! Ah this week was so great! A lot better than last week! I'm still confused a lot, but no longer sempre (always). In fact, I have followed full conversations this week! I feel like my Italian improves so much each day. The nice thing about not speaking much is everyone is so nice to me and will just let me bear my testimony. While sometimes people will ask hard questions to my companions about our religion. Oh and I am not a fan of Jehovah Witnesses, not because we have really met any, but because they create a bad name for us. Most people I ask have never met Mormon missionaries before and they don't want to listen to us because they think we're Jehovah witnesses. But most people here are very nice and will listen to our message. We meet so many people everyday that I feel like are so prepared for the gospel and sometimes it works out for us to teach them, but sometimes it doesn't, so I just hope we planted a good seed.
        One thing I love about this mission is that the mission President emphasizes how we are able to bring about miracles. Expect Miracles--Aspettiamoci Miracoli! My companionship likes to emphasize this too and everyday we pray for a miracle. Last week I was thinking why don't we pray for a specific miracle to happen. At the time we were only teaching single people and we wanted to be able to teach and baptize a whole family, especially one with younger kids. So that's what we've been praying for and last week one of the member families named Guisti (oh and their daughter Ludovica went to Pleasant Grove with Kyle and Todd!) invited us over to eat and...to teach a family! The family is very interested and the dad especially is so prepared! IDK if anything will happen yet, but I believe it will. Also, Paolo (the guy who read the BOM in one week, but won't come to church) is a very proud guy and even though he believed everything--he did not want to change and was almost rude about it last week. Well...we've been praying for the Lord to soften his heart and when we went back--he was completely changed! His faith has grown a lot and now he wants to repent. Oh we just love Paolo! He is so funny; every lesson we give him a pamphlet and the next time we come back it is COVERED in notes and questions. I've never seen anybody study a pamphlet so hard. Also, last time he showed us Alma 12:29 and said we were his angels (aw!). Also, we had two more investigators come to church this week! Miracles!
This week we did an activity with the YW where they were missionaries for a day with us. We gave them (the two of them) BOMs and pass along cards and we did finding with them. It was actually really fun and we got a lot of potential investigators from it. In the middle of it, it started raining so hard, but it was still fun trying to talk to everyone soaking wet. Oh that reminds me of a funny story...I debated about telling this, but it's just too funny. And mom, this city that I am in is pretty safe--there are people everything and we are always trying to be safe so please don't worry! Okay so we had some extra time one day so we went casa in casa and we went into this one complex and started knocking on all the doors. We knocked on this one door and five guys from Banglrdesa (sp?) answered, wearing...only towels. So sketch! So we hurried and told them we were missionaries and ran! But as we were trying to get out the door of the building it wouldn't open. There was a guy on the other side trying to get in and, of course, his friends were the five guys. They came down (this time dressed in more clothes) and we spent a while trying to open the door. It was just too funny and we were like ah we need to get out of here. I knew that is wasn't going to happen until we prayed or taught a lesson or something. So we asked the guys if we could say a prayer, most of them just ignored us, but one guy kind of joined in. A minutes after the prayer this other guy comes by, tries his key, and somehow it worked. The one guy kept saying "prayer works! prayer works!" Haha I guess the Lord works in mysterious ways! Too funny!
Well there's a bit for this week. Love you guys! Miss you! Vi voglio bene!
Sorella Knudsen

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

Kendra is in Italy!

We have not yet received our first letter from Kendra but we found this picture on the Italy Rome Mission Blog so we know she made it safe to Italy.  This is a picture of all the new missionaries arriving in Italy.

Horton Hears a Who...gone Wrong...

Ciao famiglia! In uno settimana saro in Italia! Che pazzo! Sono molto molto MOLTO emotionata! (In one week I will be in Italy! Crazy! I am so so SO excited!). Well things are getting serious! I have my travel plans and soon I will be out of this country again! SO EXCITED.

My friend Cass

My companion and I by the temple

Okay I have some funny stories. First off, in the lunchroom there are these huge containers full of cereal and the Elders in my District decided last week to eat an entire container. Us sisters thought "why not?" so we joined the challenge. As a District (10 people) we ate 53 bowls of Coco puffs! Gross huh? Hahah! Here's the count for each of the Elders: 10, 8, 7, 6, 3, and 2; and the sisters: 5, 5, 3, and I ate 4! We felt so awful after that, but it was a lot of fun! Also, turns out you're not a supposed to do the "tower challenge" as I guess it is called. We got in a bit of trouble (more like our President just thought we were dumb), but it was fun anyway. 

Classic flying picture in MTC

This week my companion got the flu (BTW so far *knock on wood* I haven't gotten sick--quite the accomplishment at the MTC (I would say I haven't gained weight, but maybe cereal challenge might've pushed me over)) so we had to be in our room for a couple of days. It's an odd thing to have your companion be sick, because you can't leave her so you just have to sit in the room allllll dayyy longgg and study. One of the days I got really bored of studying so I decided to take a break while my companion was in the shower. I "stole" some sheets and I made our room into one huge blanket fort! It was great and we spent the rest of the afternoon studying in it. 

My companion and I in our fort

The blanket fort I made

My roommates and I in blanket fort

Also I got a little bored and decided to play a joke on my companion. Remember that little device I have that plays "Hey can you hear me?" in a man's voice every four minutes? Well I turned it on, put it under the bed, and waited. She was talking the first time it went off, said "what was that?", then just ignored it. The second time it came in clear--"Hey can you hear me?" and my companion starts freaking out wondering what it was! Okay you have to be so proud of me, because I played along so well. I acted freaked out and we spent the next twenty minutes waiting, listening, screaming, and trying to find it. Finally we found it and I confessed that it was mine. Luckily, Perkins just laughed and thought it was a great joke. Oh but I got her good! Then we decided to play it on our other roommates. We tried it two nights and they NEVER heard it and we didn't want to stay up forever so I turned it off. For Pday today we decided to do it again when two of our roommates were in the room. They were so scared and we searched everywhere (vents, windows, closets, etc.) for it. They got ten other girls to come in to hear it and look for it. We seriously looked for it for an hour and the whole time Slla Perkins and I are trying hard not to laugh. They kept thinking there was a man hiding somewhere or an evil spirit in our room. My favorite was when one of the girls said "this is like Horton hears a Who--but from the DEVIL!" One girl started trying to look under the carpet and another was going to go tell the front desk...so Slla Perkins and I decided it was time to find it. We helped them find it and they realized it was us and were so mad. But now they think it's funny. Hahaha I wish I could do this story more justice, but just know that it was really funny in person.

Girls that took part in the "Hey can you hear me?" 

 Well on a different note...I really have been working hard this week too! We met with our "investigator", Luigi, again yesterday and he has finally tried to pray and he felt that there is a God (yay!). We were so happy for him and now he's doing so great! But since we are leaving next week, we had to tell him goodbye...and it was really sad! I know he's not real, but he kind of feels like it. Also, he was so upset that we were leaving that he took the mission president's number and said he would call him to make him let us stay. What a cute, old man. Also yesterday I got to teach my first Italian in Italy...over skype! One of the teachers set us up to call some of his friends and teach them a gospel message. We had this 18 year old black girl who was born in Italy, but her family is from Gana. Her name was Pearl and she was so much fun to teach! It just made me really excited to teach an Italian and I will be doing that in a week from now!

Well can't wait to talk to you guys in the airport on Tuesday! Vi voglio bene (literally translates to I want you well, but it means I love you!)!!!

Love Sorella Knudsen