RAINNNNNNNN

IT IS POURING RAIN RIGHT NOW.

This week the weather has been so nice!! It has been pretty rainy which makes everything a little more interesting and more fun, in my opinion.

This past week was so jam packed full of things that I will do my best to make sense of it all. And it will not be in chronological order and it is super scattered so if you can comprehend it and all of my run on sentences then that's good. First off, we didn't make food at our own house once this week. So that mixes everything up a little bit. And this week we had to say goodbye to two more of our friends here in Taranto.

Tanya (I'm not sure if I've ever given a description on her. She is 16 and her family is from Sri Lanka. They have been in Italy for about 9 years. Her family is less active, but she is a super strong member missionary. So we would go visit them like once a week to try to meet with her mom and get her to come to church.) So their dad has found work in Bologna which is up north and so they are moving. We celebrated her two years of being baptized and then we had to say goodbye to her so that was sad.

Then we also said goodbye to Matteo this week!!!! So heartbreaking. But we were also able to see miracles. We had a going away meal at their house on Tuesday and his mom made the best lasagna I have ever tasted. She calls us all by our first names because she doesn't like the whole Anziano/Sorella thing I guess. After lunch we had an incredible lesson with Matteo about faith. He has been struggling with prayer and receiving an answer to his prayers. We talked to him about having the faith and believing that you will receive an answer because that is so essential. First we have to ask, but if we ask and don't think we will receive an answer or have the faith that Heavenly Father will answer our prayers, He is not as willing to answer them. We committed him to pray that night and ask specifically if there was a God. And he agreed. After the lesson he asked is what faith meant to each of us. I loved that he asked that because faith really is so different for every single person. Sometimes it comes easy, sometimes it is more difficult to work for. A lot of times we can lost our faith very easily if we are not working to build or develop it, but if we do, it will grow and grow until it turns into a knowledge of things.

The next morning he called the Anziani and told them he didn't really feel anything, but right before he went to bed he felt like he needed to pray again. (We kind of wished he would have prayed right then, but no one is perfect and we all miss promptings from the spirit.) So then he said he was going to try again that night. When it came time for us to say goodbye to him on Thursday he told the Anziani he had to talk to them about something. So after English course we went to go get panzerotti to say goodbye to him and it was actually really sad. He will be in Scotland for the next four years studying at a university there. But after we said goodbye he told the Anziani that he had prayed again to see if there was a god. And he said after the prayer he got an overwhelmingly good feeling that he couldn't describe. He said his thoughts went straight to the church and everything that he had been taught. He told them he wants to see if he feels the same thing in church in Scotland that he feels here, and if he does then he wants to get baptized. Which is the coolest thing ever!!!!!! And the good news is that the gospel is the same wherever you go around the world. So we hope to keep in touch with him. He will be greatly missed.

Another really cool thing that happened was Matteo's mom thought it was really interesting how we live our religion. She said she was amazed at how every time before we eat, we say a prayer haha. I think it is really incredible that she recognized that. A lot of people say to us when we tell them what our church is, "oh so you're like the Jehovah's witnesses or like the baptists or the evangelical church" and every time we kindly respond, no we are different from them. (Just because we don't cross ourselves doesn't mean that we are the same as all the other churches that don't cross themselves) We are different from every church. Our church isn't something you go to once a week and listen to someone talk to you and then go home and go about your life. It is a way of living. It requires ACTION.

On Friday we found ourselves waiting at a bus stop in the rain and we only had one umbrella because Sorella flansberg forgot hers. So we are just waiting and after about forty five minutes this guy comes over to us and asks if we are waiting for the bus and we said yes and he told us that the bus doesn't come to this stop anymore haha. So that was fun!!! Then he gave Sorella flansberg an umbrella. That was so nice of him because who knows how long we would have been waiting in the rain if he hadn't told us. We ended up just walking all the way to our appointment because we were a little tired of waiting for the bus haha. And that next appointment was a really interesting meeting with an older couple named the Oliva's. They are both less active and recently Fratello Oliva started coming to church and he asked us if we could come over sometime to visit his wife, so we said we would. We get over there and Fratello Oliva just started telling us all of these stories about his baptism and what not. His wife was in the kitchen making us a cake and then when she finally came in,he wanted to tell us all about how they met, which ended up turning into them contradicting everything, not to mention the interruptions every five minutes to check the cake. They argue quite a bit, but it's not like they were mad at each other arguing. I don't know. I can't describe it. Eventually the cake is almost done and he offers for us to watch his sons wedding video!!! Which we decline, but he puts it in anyway. The video consisted of reallllllllly cheesy filming of their son and his wife kissing and walking around and getting ready for their wedding day. Probably the worst wedding video I have ever seen, not trying to be rude. And I was also doing my best to not look at the tv because I didn't want to watch it, but when they are staring at you watching your reaction, it's kind of hard to not be looking at the tv. Then the cake came out and let me tell you it was not the best cake I have ever tasted. She put more olive oil in it than sugar and also yogurt. Haha Fratello Oliva out a piece of cake on the floor for the cat, who wanted nothing to do with it and then his wife accidentally stepped on it hahaha. Oh man. I was trying SOOO HARD not to bust out laughing. Eventually we got to the spiritual thought and got out of there. His wife wants nothing to do with the church and it's safe to say we will not be visiting them anytime soon again hahahahaha. But it was good to visit with them.

On Saturday we went and visited this old widow in our ward, Sorella Panunzio, and she taught us how to make orecchiette! It was so much fun and she is such a pro at making pasta. I think it was fun for her to have us over. She started crying during the prayer telling Heavenly Father how she was grateful to have us over. She is so cute. I'm sure it's so hard. She can't leave her house because she has terrible eye sight and also Parkinson's, but she doesn't want to live with her sons because she wants her own space and she also doesn't want to be a burden to them. She is super embarrassed at how her hands shake, but she is an incredible woman. It was fun to be able to spend some time with her and learn how to make pasta!! And something else fun was when we were walking home, the rain had stopped and it was sunny, but there were still huge puddles on the road. As we were walking this car comes up behind us driving so fast and hits this huge puddle and we were just drenched!!!!! It was so funny.

On Sunday Anziano Friedman taught our gospel principles class about faith. It was a great lesson and at the end he made all three of our students (Giusy, a less active, Maria Grazia, the Anziani's investigator, and Cristina, our investigator) start crying because of the powerful testimony that he bore and of the spirit that was felt. After Cristina told him that when he was saying those words it was like Christ had come down and instead of Anziano Friedman talking, it was Christ. So that was cool and also interesting. She is so ready for baptism, we are just still working on the whole companion thing.

This week the Zone Leaders were here in Taranto for a scambio and they had promised our district that if we all got investigators in church, they would let us throw pies in their face. And luckily we did so that was pretty funny. I'm glad it wasn't me though. Yay for having investigators in church!!!!!!

We had a really great district meeting this past week. We read the story about Pilate and also the story about the young man who couldn't give up his possessions to have eternal life. Those are two examples of people that we shouldn't follow. We talked about owning your actions. Whether they be right or wrong. We talked about how we need to serve a mission to BECOME SOMETHING. Not just so we can check it off a list as something that we've done. These experiences that we are having will help build us into becoming the people that Heavenly Father wants us to become.

This week we will be in Rome on Wednesday and Thursday. President Pickerd chose some people to play the musical number and I was asked to play along with them as they sing Joseph Smith's First Prayer. So we'll see how that goes. I love playing my violin at any chance I can get.

We were asked to read the talks that President Kearon gave in past general conferences and there was something that I loved that he said about Jesus Christ being our healer. He said, "Our Savior is the Prince of Peace, the Great Healer, the only One who can truly cleanse us from the sting of sin and the poison of pride and change our rebellious hearts into converted, covenant hearts." That is something that I truly wanted. I want the pride and the sin to be taken away from my heart so that it can change into one that is converted. And this is something that only happens through Jesus Christ. In 3 Nephi Jesus says to the Nephites:

7 Have ye any that are sick among you? Bring them hither. Have ye any that are lame, or blind, or halt, or maimed, or leprous, or that are withered, or that are deaf, or that are afflicted in any manner? Bring them hither and I will heal them, for I have compassion upon you; my bowels are filled with mercy.

If anyone is afflicted in any manner, Jesus Christ invites us to come unto Him so that He can heal us. He WANTS to heal us. That is an amount of mercy that I will never fully be able to comprehend. He loves us so much and I am incredibly grateful to be able to feel of that love and be here trying to help others feel of it too.

#missionsareawesome

#goUTES

I LOVE AND MISS YOU ALL!!!!

Con amore,

Sorella Lucy Ann Gochnour

Ps I'm sorry if I just ramble on and on.......