The end of January is now coming to a close!!! Ahhhhhh!!!! But I still have over half of my mission to go so we're fine haha.
We had a great week!! Every week is such a great week. I feel truly blessed that maybe if there literally is not one person on the street for us to talk to or if we only have two investigators to work with, WE STILL HAVE TWO INVESTIGATORS TO WORK WITH! So I'm ok with that. And we always have stuff to do! So I feel very very blessed and watched over.
Our missionary schedules are all different!! I am sure you will hear this from every missionary, but now we don't do comp study in the morning and we have planning for a 1/2 hour in the morning for the day, not when we get home at night. The missionaries now have more freedom to pick what time they would like to do their studies so they can be the most efficient that they can. It will be interesting!! And might take a little bit of time to adjust to everything new but I am excited. We can now go to bed at nine if we want to!!!! Haha
Here's a fun story:
At the very end of November we stopped a woman on the street and she said no to all of our invitations and kindly said she is a practicing Catholic.
I gave it one last shot and asked if she would like to learn more about what we believed in and she said yes. But call me after January 15. Both sorella demann and I both thought, "that's in like two months!!!!" But we were both still going to be here so we came in contact with her and set up a meeting. We went over to her house and she started off the meeting saying she is not going to convert or even do anything, she just wanted to know what we believe in, so we began teaching the first lesson. She seemed to be understanding everything pretty well. (One thing I need to make sure I always do is tell the members we take to lessons what we would like to have them share because if not sometimes they jump ahead and it is a lot more difficult to understand.) We began talking about the Book of Mormon and had her read Moroni 10:3-5 and began inviting her to read and ask Heavenly Father if this book is true when she mentioned that she thought she had one so I asked her if she could find it. She pulled out this Book of Mormon and there were two elders, Anziano Vandyke and Anziano Clark who had written a dedica to this woman and left her some things to read (the introduction, Alma 32, and Moroni 10:3-5). They had invited her in this note to ask in prayer if these things are true and as she was reading it she said, "ok. I'm going to read this and pray to know if it's true."
I gave it one last shot and asked if she would like to learn more about what we believed in and she said yes. But call me after January 15. Both sorella demann and I both thought, "that's in like two months!!!!" But we were both still going to be here so we came in contact with her and set up a meeting. We went over to her house and she started off the meeting saying she is not going to convert or even do anything, she just wanted to know what we believe in, so we began teaching the first lesson. She seemed to be understanding everything pretty well. (One thing I need to make sure I always do is tell the members we take to lessons what we would like to have them share because if not sometimes they jump ahead and it is a lot more difficult to understand.) We began talking about the Book of Mormon and had her read Moroni 10:3-5 and began inviting her to read and ask Heavenly Father if this book is true when she mentioned that she thought she had one so I asked her if she could find it. She pulled out this Book of Mormon and there were two elders, Anziano Vandyke and Anziano Clark who had written a dedica to this woman and left her some things to read (the introduction, Alma 32, and Moroni 10:3-5). They had invited her in this note to ask in prayer if these things are true and as she was reading it she said, "ok. I'm going to read this and pray to know if it's true."
It was such an incredible testimony to me of how our efforts are never wasted and sometimes we don't understand the timing of everything, but it always works out!! Heavenly Father knows. We have since followed up with her and asked if she has read or prayed or if we could return, but she has declined and said she hasn't had time to read. But it was still a really incredible experience and we will keep trying with her!
We also had a very HUGE miracle in church yesterday. Anziano Cox and I had the opportunity to play "if you could hie to kolob" in sacrament meeting and we had told a few less actives that we are working with that we were playing. It turns out that there were 11 people in church more than usually come. It was an incredible sacrament meeting and was really great to be able to see all of those people in church. Simone, the recent convert in Ragusa, gave his very first talk and his parents came! Who are both non members and are not interested but they came and felt the spirit! We also had Maurizio and Marcella in church with their daughter Asia!! They unfortunately missed all but ten minutes of sacrament meeting, but they were in church which is a huge step and we had a great gospel principles class about agency!!
I just wanted to talk for a little bit about how much I love music. We went to a less actives house to teach a lesson and she asked if I played the piano. Which I don't really but I went over to the piano and played- I believe in Christ and God be with you till we meet again, because those are the two hymns that I memorized before I came on my mission haha. And it turned out that it really brought the spirit to the lesson. And her non-member husband came into the room to listen to the music and stayed for the lesson, which I'm not sure he would have come if I hadn't played the piano. Also, I will never be grateful enough for bringing my violin on my mission. Anziano cox and I were practicing the musical number before correlation and our ward mission leader walked in and listened to the song. Afterwards he was brought to tears because of the spirit that he felt and he managed to get out the words, "spero che capite il dono che avete" "I hope you guys understand the gift that you have"
Overall it was a great week. In church yesterday as I was watching all of these people pour in I felt such a joy. It was a little hard to wipe a smile off my face/close my mouth. Our ward mission leader who also serves as a counselor in the bishopric kept looking at me very confused because I just kept opening my mouth every time I saw these people walk in. It truly is hard to describe the joy that one feels as they see the people they love making steps to bring themselves closer to Christ and their Heavenly Father. I was able to experience a tiny fleck of the joy that Ammon and Alma and all of those great missionaries felt and because of that I am forever grateful.
I love you all and hope you have a great week!!!
Love
Sorella g 
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