I have so many old lady friends!

AHHHHHHHH!!! KELSEY is going into the MTC tomorrow!!!!!!! I’m so sad and happy for her!!! But I know she’ll do great!!!  Sorry I’m a day late…yesterday we had zone conference! So I hope you weren’t worried! Also…for your information…I never do Pdays with only these Elders here in this city, Anziano Scherbel always comes, but he is also the one who usually takes the pictures. Yeah one of the Elders knows Todd my cousin! And the other one is related to the Creighton’s. Small world! Us four here is my whole district! Usually districts are about ten people…but everyone else is kind of far away or already has districts…so it’s just us, the Elders, and the Scherbels haha hence why we spend a lot of time together! 

Some of our old lady friends

Okay well it has been a great week! I decided to do this email differently and go through every day…It will probably be more boring…but it kind of gives a better idea of my mission…idk.  Last Monday, after Pday we visited a less active named Rosa and she had her friend there named Carmela! Rosa has talked about Carmela a few times but we have never succeeded in getting an appointment with her—but she was there! We talked to her a lot about faith and set up an appointment for Wednesday! New investigator! Then we walked through a park, saw all these old ladies who gave us some recipes, and talked to them. Then comes this lady named Gabriele, who is Italian, but has lived in America most of her life and speaks perfect English. She told us how she as catholic, but doesn’t believe in it and now belongs to…she wouldn’t tell us, but it seemed like some type of a religious group. She seemed great and really understood the apostasy…but then she started going off about how she knows that the second coming is going to be soon and how she prays in languages…so we’re not so sure about her…

Maria Delia

Tuesday morning we made a lot of calls, went shopping, and did more finding (nothing interesting to report). Usually we have District meeting, but Anziano Sorensen had to go to Sicily to pick up his permesso (his permission to live in Italy). Then ate lunch and did language study (we always do language study in the afternoon because there’s this thing called Pranzo (lunch) here and Italians have to cook, eat, and nap…and there’s absolutely NO ONE out from the hours of 1 to 4 and it is impolite to knock on doors at that time so we try to finish everything inside that we can). We saw Rosaria in the afternoon, I gave her the stop smoking program for her to read and see if she would like to do it. Then we taught Martina! She is officially passed to us from the Elders which makes me so happy! She has been reading the BOM lately and we just kind of go over it and help her understand. This week she read the tree of life and was pretty confused. We talked about all the symbols and the four groups of people. I like how the difference between the group that reached the tree and fell away and the group that reached the tree and stayed is two words: costantement and cadero…in English I believe that is constantly and fell down. So in order to stay at the tree we have to do everything CONSTANTLY and we need to fall down on our knees and receive a testimony. Then we taught English course! Sorella Williams felt kind of sick so I taught everyone about the words used for cooking! Then this old lady got really upset because English is too hard.

Bad hair day.

Ikea

Wednesday we taught Giovanna in the morning! She promised us that she would read…and she didn’t do it L. But we had a good conversation about families. She says how the world is really wicked and she’s lucky to have a good husband, but she doesn’t even trust him because she hears so many bad things in the world. We talked about how strong families can be if they live the gospel and we promised her lots of blessings if she kept with us. We brought up baptism again and committed her to be baptized on October 4^th! She said yes!! So happy! We’ve been trying to get a hold of another investigator named Irene but she hasn’t been answering. We called her and she invited us over on the spot for lunch. We read the BOM together and then she made us eat pasta and fish (I usually like seafood, but EVERY single companion of mine does not like sea food so I’ve come to dislike it and hope they don’t serve it for them). In the afternoon we saw Rosa and Carmella! IT was a pretty good lesson…Rosa, the member, just kind of sat there, but Carmela was great! She has great faith and knows the Bible well enough to really understand the scriptures—and she’s humble enough to listen to us and learn more. We taught the Restoration and challenged her to read the BOM. Then we visited Rosaria for a bit and then did parco (park). Okay Sorella Williams and I have realized that we have a lot of old lady friends…and we love it! They are so funny and cute! We have all these old lady friends that just sit in the same spot everyday so we always say hi and ask them how they’re doing. They all love us and tell us how cute we are…but none of them want to take the lessons.

Thursday was more finding! Except everyone is busy in the morning so there’s not that many people out… Have I told you how there are a TON of Jehovah Witnesses here? They’re all over the place and everyone hates them.  So sometimes when I’m doing finding, I think to myself “how can I not look like a Jehovah Witness?” something I’ve learned is to be very natural in talking to people. Sometimes we’ll stop people asking for directions (when we’re not lost) and then start a conversation that way or sometimes we go to different stores and talk to the owners about the gospel. People are a lot more open and curious when you seem like a normal person. We were supposed to have a lesson in a less active in Salerno so we got on an hour long bus, called her, she wasn’t home, and we got on that bus back home. But Gerardo came into town for the afternoon (he’s gone on vacation) so we had a lesson with him and he read a lot!!! He had a problem with Nephi  4 about Nephi killing Laban. We talked more about faith and he still didn’t completely accept it by the end, but he promised to keep reading. Then Martina came and we read 1Nefi 13 together and talked about the Restoration and it went great! I love having people read the BOM and understand it. Then we had English course again!

On Friday we did planning in the morning then had a girls lunch with Sorella Scherbel (she’s the senior sister) I made fried rice J. We taught Carmela with Rosa again, Carmela was having a really bad day so we changed our lesson plans on the spot and read Mosiah 24 about how the Lord strengthens in times of burdens. We visited Teresa (finally!), but she talks a lot...my biggest weakness is having people talk too much and not listen…because I can’t talk over them. But we need to figure out some way to teach because we’re not getting anything done like this. Presidente Waddoups and his wife stopped by for the night so we went out to dinner with them! They are both incredible people!

Saturday (are you bored yet?)…was kind of funny…we had absolutely nothing planned so we made a 12 items to do list with the hopes that at least one would work out. We ended up planning an English course part with the Elders and then bought and made some things for the party. We also saw Rosaria, but she was out sitting on a bench and when she is sitting on the bench…it’s really hard to have a good lesson and she just ends up talking about random things. So we left and walked through a park, talking to people.

Sunday we had church in the morning at 9:30am. We called everyone the day before and no one could come…But Irene came for the Relief society. There’s a huge problem in the ward with its members making a huge deal of who takes the sacrament and telling each other to not take it because they’re not worthy. So Presidente Scherbel had a lesson about the sacrament and what is appropriate to do. He handled it very well. Also another German family visited so I had to translate! Maria Delia, a member, invited us over for lunch. Her food is really good…but she makes you eat SO much! She kept giving us more pasta and bread and fruit and meat and we are like “BASTA!!!” (stop!) I always feel so sick after I eat there. This ex investigator was there and she random started yelling at him for not being able to keep the commandments and how taking the God’s name in vain is the very first commandment and we’re like “hmmm….quasi (almost)” She’s funny though. We prepared stuff for English course and then taught Rosaria about the tree of life. 

Zone conference in NApoli. Typical.

Sorella Rost!

Zone confrerence.

 On Monday we drove out to Pozzuoli (where Paul, the apostle served) and had zone conference! I love zone conference and this one was especially good! Sorella Rost missed her zone conference again and came to this one and I was so happy to see her! We talked a lot of PMG and working with members. I really like how the best way to help people do missionary work is not to make them feel bad about not doing their duty but just loving/encouraging/inspiring/complimenting them to do better. Then we came home and visited a less active for her Birthday and met her whole family!! 9 brothers and sisters! They all were super nice and we have some contacts with them!

Whew. That was a lot. Okay well I’m so happy for Kelsey! Give her the biggest hug! Love you all!! 

Recipe Finding!

I can’t believe Kelsey is already leaving on her mission!!! I’m going to miss that face! Her pictures are so cute!!!Well this week was awesome!! Almost all of our investigators are reading the BOM right now! And not just reading here and there, but starting from the beginning and trying to read at least a chapter every day! It is really awesome! One of our investigators, Giovanna, hasn’t read at all, but this week she read!

But sadly…none of them came to sacrament. We had one investigator tell us that if it was sunny than she would have to go with her husband to the sea, but if it was bad weather then she would come to church. Then another investigator said that if it was sunny than her family would go to the sea and she could come to church. Either way we would have someone come to church! We prayed really hard that weather would work out well for both of them somehow… then at 9am on Sunday, they both called and cancelled…so that was sad. 

We are as tall as this vegetable

This week I figured out the best finding tactic in Italy. Last week during programming (I think the correct word in English is planning, but in Italian it’s programmare so it always comes out as programming in English) we were trying to think of something new we could do for finding. A couple months ago the mission came out with this long list of finding ideas and conversation starters. We read through the list and I read “asking for recipes”. We thought why not? We called up the Elders and challenged to a finding contest to see who could get the most recipes for the pasta by the end of the week. This was such a great finding idea!!! First, because it was really fun for us. Second, because hardly anyone rejected us! There were a lot of people that were a little standoffish and you could tell that they didn’t want to talk to us, but once we said “We are Americans and we want to learn how to cook Italian, do you know a recipe?” They immediately opened up and were willing to talk to us. Third, because all of these conversations ended with them asking about who we were and us sharing the gospel! And fourth, because I have so many awesome recipes!  

We asked these old ladies in the park for recipes and one of them was like, “I have a question…why do you do baptisms for the dead?” (which was kind of weird…no one knows who we are, and if they do…they usually don’t know we do that)Turns out this lady was an old investigator and went to church a lot and read a lot of the BOM. She also has a great knowledge of the Bible and was telling us everything she believes about baptism. She also talks in parables…which are really difficult to understand. We invited her to come to church and she came!  But had to leave before sacrament…and we haven’t been able to schedule a return appointment yet so next week she’ll be an investigator! 

Recipe count for the Elders: 6. Sisters: 24  They have to make us pasta this week and they’re begging for a rematch. 

These next four picture are from a hike behind my apartment area.  

Also, we got two new investigators this week! We live right next to this Carrefour (it’s a supermarket) and everyone there knows us missionaries. There are couple people who always asks what we are up to and last Monday I told them all about the lessons we teach and invited this girl named Giusy and a guy named Umberto to meet with us. They accepted, but also wanted to learn English. So we are teaching them both English and the gospel!

Besides that, we also got locked out of our house this week. The key just would not turn at all! Luckily the senior couple lives right next door to us so we got to stay with them for the night! Sleepover with the Scherbels! We then spent the whole next day calling all these guys to fix the door. The first guy came over and gave up. Then this other guy came and spent two hours drilling at our lock trying to break it. There were lots of sparks, it was cool. We finally got in and now we have a nice lock J. Also, I had strep throat this week, but it wasn’t too bad and now I’ll completely healed! 

The cake for Anziano Rasband. He likes Ferraris

Anziano Scherbels birthday

We celebrated two Birthdays this week: Anziano Rasband and Scherbel and everyone made cake. Cake count this week: 4. This week I’m having no sugar. 

Our name tags that the Elders stole. Mine is on the bottom.

Also, remember how a couple weeks ago I sent home a picture of the Elder’s name tags that we decorated? Well as payback…they came to DDM with a huge ice block…with our nametags inside…and they put stickers on them. Ours was cooler though.

And that’s about it folks…today the summer holiday ends, people are going back to work, and coming home from vacation, and it is getting colder outside!!! 

Ferragosto

So this week was FERRAGOSTO which is basically the biggest summer Italian holiday and everything in Italy shuts down (besides tourists places) and everyone goes on vacation. If you have to take a bus or train anywhere, you might as well forget it because they go on vacation too. Hey have I ever told you how Italy is known for being the least organized country in Europe. Well it is very true. Italians don’t care about anything but food and the sea. Agh gotta love these people. The official big holiday was on the 15^th (btw…people with Google access…anyone want to tell me why exactly they celebrate Ferragosto. I’ve asked people and they’re like “IDK we just all go to the beach on that day.”) And since everyone is gone, we did some DEEP cleaning in our apartment! More on that later…Anyway half of our investigators left town on vacation so we didn’t have a lot to do this week… BUT we still had some great lessons and saw some miracles. 

Small  ice cream cones

 We had a great lesson with our investigator Gerardo before he left on vacation to his summer home (sad we don’t get to see him as much, but he’s coming back once a week). He’s a really great guy, but for some reason he doesn’t believe in God. Most of his life he hasn’t cared, but right now he really envies believers and wants to know more for himself. We gave him the challenge to pray and read the BOM every day and to ask if God exists. I feel like he is so sincere and I’m sure he will find his answer. 

All the horrible patterns in my Italian apartment. 

We also had a great lesson with his sister Teresa, who we are also teaching. I don’t remember how much I told you about her, but she is kind of a miracle in herself. She has lived the past two years in Milan with her daughter and son in law—who are both Mormon, the son in law is this really great bishop from Milan. She has met with the missionaries a lot, has read the whole BOM, and now she lives in Battipaglia for us to teach J.  To a certain point, she believes the church is true, but she has a hard time leaving the catholic church behind. We want to explain that by coming to our church, we are only adding to her faith, not taking anything away.

We also saw Rosaria and had a really great lesson. She’s scared to come to church because she’s scared her dad will be really mad because there’s this member who the dad hates that comes to church. We promised her, as representatives of Christ,  that if she came to church, then everything would be OK. But then she still didn’t come to church. Some people take a bit more time. 

Martina helping us clean

Making pizza

-We’ve also seen huge miracles with Martina, who the Elders are teaching for now. Martina is one of my best friends in the mission! I can’t wait to have you meet her! She speaks really perfect English so there’s no language barrier (I can speak good Italian…but it’s hard to be really funny in Italian so sometimes it’s hard to really be yourself).  She has been coming to English course for 6 years,  loves the missionaries and has become really great friends with all of us. But she has never taken the lessons. Then our Anziano Rasband here invited her to take the lessons and she said yes. Later we were talking and she was like “Why has no one ever asked me to take the lessons before?” I just felt awful because I assumed she has been asked a million times, but has always rejected. I think all the other missionaries thought the same thing. But it’s better late than never! On Thursday we had a lesson with her and the Anziani (elders) . She comes in and was like “I quit smoking!” and we’re all like “WHAT?!?” We’ve been trying to get her to stop for a long time, and suddenly this week she decided to stop. She already had the program and planned out everything by herself and we were like …”but wait…we wanted to help you…with that..!” Haha but it’s better that she decided to do it by herself! This happened on Thursday and then we found out that on Friday she had NOTHING to do. Her family was all going to be gone and she was just going to be alone in her house where there are cigarettes. She needed something to keep her busy, but that was Ferragosto and we had to deep clean our house all day long. So we called up our Mission President and asked if she could spend the day inside our apartment to help us clean. He said yes. No one is allowed in missionary’s apartments besides missionaries, so it was so fun having a friend over! I felt bad making her clean, but I think it really helped her out having something to do, being around good people and away from all those cigarettes! It was actually a lot of fun and the Scherbels invited us over for lunch to have delicious Mexican food! But the best part is that she has not smoked since Thursday!!!!!!

Paestum

Planking

Paestum

Paestum

Sacrificing my companion

Besides that this week has actually been pretty fun! Martina and her mom taught us to make pizza, we saw Paestum today for PDAY! Paestum are the big roman temples and they are so beautiful! I couldn’t believe how well intact they were. They are most intact roman temples in the world and I live 30 minutes away from them. Crazy.

Anyway hope you all have a great week! I can’t believe school is starting! I swear it got out last week! 

Hiking and funerals

Have I mentioned HOW HOT IT IS? Well it is pretty hot here and humid. Walking to appointments...I just feel like I'm swimming! 

Hiking

Hiking

 This week we had a fun ward activity! We went to the mountains to go HIKING!!! Dream come true! The only part I was missing from home :P But turns out that Italians don't really like the outdoors so no one showed up...besides us missionaries, one family, and a couple English course students. We drove out to this city and hiked up this mountain. It was so hot, but it felt SO good to be in the outdoors and get some good exercise in! So we had this great hike, ate a sandwich and some snacks at the top, and then came back down...only to find that the relief society had a five course meal waiting for us!!! So after our great, refreshing hike where we all feel great...we were forced to eat for the next two hours and we all felt awful after that. I really love Italians and their food...but I can't wait till I get to control what I get to eat! Why do Italians have to be the most generous people? 
 

Hiking

Meal after hiking

  
So last week I told you about how we decided to drop Rosaria because she's still way catholic? Well this week she invited us over for lunch right after church because her dad wouldn't be there (which is always her excuse for not coming to church) so we're like “COME to church! And then we're come and eat!” and she's like “fine.” So she came! And loved it, but at the same time...complained about everything, and made a huge fight out of it. Also, she heard that some members are getting some money from the church and now she's really interested in that...sooooo idk what to do about her. We'll see. 

the mail man car haha so small.

Then do you remember Gerardo from last week? Well last week we gave his brother a blessing (the elders came and gave the blessing)...and this week...we had an appointment with Gerardo, but then he called and canceled because his brother was doing really bad. Then we talked to Gerardo's nephew and found out his brother died. We gave Gerardo and his sister Teresa (who we are also now teaching!!) a call and they were both pretty upset. They invited us to the funeral and we went the next day. The funeral was in a catholic church and we had to watch mass (their sacrament diciamo)...and that was interesting. It's just basically a priest reading from a book and everyone repeating prayers and lighting incense and things. Gerardo and Teresa were really touched that we came and Gerardo told us that we've been a really great comfort to him. Every time we go over to one of their houses...there's always a new family member that we get to meet therefore at this funeral...we knew a ton of people! We walked around and said hi to everyone and then they would introduce us to more people and by the end we knew almost everyone! The cool thing is that two members of this family are already members, two of them are now serious investigators and the rest of them at least know the missionaries! This family is prepared! I can feel it!

Also, Gerardo came to church again this Sunday for all three hours! At the end he told us that he felt rejuvenated and was glad he came! We are so excited for this family! 

Cute man. Real Mustache.

Cheese

  
I am doing really good! Battipaglia is growing and I'm grateful to be a part of it! Sorella Williams and I are working on studying Christ and trying to become more like him. Every morning I want to write something I learned from him in my study and try to apply it. Like yesterday I studied the temptations of Christ and how he didn't give in to any of the temptations because he knew who he was and he knew he had to complete his mission on earth. Today I know that many temptations come my way, but I am a missionary and I am here to complete my mission and help other people. 

And that's all folks. 

Sorella Knudsen 

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! 

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Week full of Miracles!

  It looks like you had so much fun in Snowbird!! The pictures are SO cute!! Aw my cute little niece and nephew! Ah I can’t believe Ashely Mecham is home already from her mission!!

Companion in Sorrento

Last week for P-day we went to Sorrento! Which is this beautiful city on the sea. We met this old man there who is famous for making these handmade music boxes. He loves the missionaries and he offers us a really good price. So I got the most special little music box ever! 

Sorrento

Music box

 Okay…you ready…this week was FULL of MIRACOLI! Last week we hardly taught any lessons at all (well we had zone conference and scambios), but this week was FULL of lessons! We taught over 16 lessons (this is an accomplishment here). All of our investigators were able to see us this week and we had so many great lessons with them, but mostly I want to tell you about the miracles we’ve seen Saturday and Sunday! 

me and a buffalo

a beautiful catholic church

But the biggest miracle of all is that we taught SEVENS LESS ACTIVES!! I have never ever taught that many in a week and all of these were really awesome people. I’m going to tell you about Saturday where we visited FOUR less actives in one day. The first one lives about an hour away (walking there’s no buses that go there…also…it’s getting SO hot here!). The daughter is active, but her mom…is stubborn you could say. But the mom loves indexing so now we’re going to start an indexing program and she wants to teach it! In the afternoon we were able to find this less active named Marishenka who is only about 21 years old and is the sweetest thing ever. She hasn’t accepted missionaries for almost 2  years, but we called her up and straight away she said yes and invited us over. We were also able to bring a member to that lesson and they became really great friends. Then we got on an hour bus to go to Salerno to find this other less active Elivera. She’s really nice, but just kind of old and doesn’t want to travel all the way to church, but she is interested in doing indexing!! One less active is going to activate the other. Then we did an hour of finding in Salerno! 

Then we tried to find this lady named Enza. I thought she lived close to Salerno, but turns out she lives 30 minutes away and we didn’t have a lot of time, but we decided to pray and try to go find her anyway. It took so long to find her house, but we finally did and it was well worth it! Her name is Enza who I just already love to death, she is so sweet. She doesn’t come to church because she has to take care of her sick mom and some other problem. She still has a testimony of the gospel and would like to change so she can prepare to go to the temple. She seems like she could be a really solid member so I’m excited to work with her! Because it took so long to find her house, we were scared we would be home late, but the minute we got to the bus stop… it came! Then we met the coolest lady on the bus named Giovanna! We gave her a BOM and we hope to meet with her this week! A day full of miracles!

THEN it was Sunday. Honestly, we didn’t think any investigators were going to come to church, then while we’re in relief society…in walks Irene who randomly decided to come! We were so happy! THEN in walks Rosa, this less active we’re been working with and has been refusing to come to church. THEN in walks another less active, Giovanna, who came with her little granddaughter, Melica (she used to be an investigator). It was such a miracle to have all these people come to church. During relief society a funny thing happened. So there’s this family that just moved in from Brazil and they can speak enough Italian to communicate, but not a lot yet. Well this family was teaching part of the lesson, but with a translator. Also, this random German lady showed us who could speak a little English. So the lesson was given in Portuguese which was translated into Italian which I translated into English for this German lady. Four languages in this one class.

During Gospel Principles, I heard a lot of noises going on upstairs, but I just kind of ignored it. Then when we went upstairs for sacrament meeting…the whole room was already FULL! With people I have never seen before! I looked at the Elders and they told me we have tourist from Norway, Germany, and Utah. Normally we have about 30 members who come to church (I’m working in a very small branch remember), but yesterday we had over 80 people in church!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was CRAZY! There was not enough room for everyone. All the members were freaking out and taking pictures of all the people!! Ahaha so funny! Sacrament was in both English and Italian. One of the families is actually from Highland! It was fun talking to them, and they promised to give you a call when they get home. It was so fun having that many people in church though! Reminded me of the church in Utah hahaha! After the relief society president asked if we could take a picture of everyone and everyone was like…why? And she was like “I have never seen this many people in church before!” It was funny having these families from Utah see how excited the members were here. Haha but hey it was a big deal for us Battipagli-ers. 

Tourist

Also, another funny culture thing. This guy named Brian came and visited the branch this week. He used to be the branch president from Salerno before that branch was closed down and he came back to visit people and try to bring them to church. So this guy’s parents are from England and Argentina, but he was born and raised in South Africa, he has the strong English accent you’ve ever heard, and he knows about ten languages fluently. He is so cool. Anyway it was just funny to listen to this guy from Africa speak in half English half Italian with a thick British accent in church!

Brian

One of the Elders here, Elder Rasband (his cousin is actually David Creighton!), had to get his military license renewed so he got to go to the navy base…and he brought us back Reeses, double stuff oreos, a muffin mix, KFC and TACO BELL! Who knew I would miss this stuff so much?!? 

Bacio! 

Sorella Knudsen