Unprofitable Servants

Hey family!!!

How was your week??? Mine was probably the hottest week of my life. Meno male we have air conditioning in our bedroom or I wouldn't have slept for the past week and a half. It's SO HOT!!!! And so humid. It's like when you step outside you can hardly breathe because the air is suffocating you haha. I actually kind of like it. The sweat is pretty gross but once you get past the fact that you are dripping sweat 24/7, the heat is quite enjoyable, in my opinion. I despise getting in the shower sweaty and getting out of the shower still sweaty though. It's like you don't even get to enjoy being clean for one second!!!!

Other than the heat it has been a good week. We still haven't been able to see any luck with the missionary work. I met our one investigator, Valeria. She talked for a little bit about how small her house is, how hot it is, how she's sick of doing all of the chores for her and her boyfriend, and then we finally got to the point of being able to share a message and her estetista showed up to do her nails!!! PEOPLE. Haha so we had to leave unfortunately and she gave us a bidone (by setting up an appointment and then wasn't home) the other time we
tried to see her.

We have some really great recent converts though we have had a couple of lessons with. Monica and massimo are this darling couple and they love the gospel and have the strongest testimonies I have ever seen. They really don't seem like new converts. Then there is a new convert named Valeria and she gained a testimony of the law of chastity before she even knew our church existed and hen she searched something about it and found our church. These are not normal occurrences people!! So hopefully Sorella James and I can find our own miracles.

This week we reached our goal of giving out bigliettini!! Which was super happy for us. We had quite a few really good conversations with some really great people, but no one really interested yet in the gospel. Sorella James and I had a really great weekly planning session where we planned out that we are going to try to do at least 9 hours of finding this week. That's roughly an hour and a half daily, not including Monday's. Which is like a minimum. Then we planned to
hopefully see four members this week and then made a list of ten ex-investigators to call. We have a goal to get two new investigators from our own finding, two from members, and two from ex investigators. So we'll see how it goes!!

I also got to see Mariella from Taranto this week again!!! Her daughters boyfriend is from Bari and so they came to pick her up and said hello!! She was so sad she couldn't bring me tiramisu or food so she bought us like three packages of food for us to take home and then bought us waffles to eat right then. She's the nicest lady ever.

This week was really humbling for me. I read a quote about parenting that I thought goes not just for parenting. It says,

"A sweet and obedient child will enroll a father or mother only in

Parenting 101. If you are blessed with a child who tests your patience

to the nth degree, you will be enrolled in Parenting 505. Rather than

wonder what you might have done wrong in the premortal life to be so

deserving, you might consider the more challenging child a blessing

and opportunity to become more godlike yourself. With which child will

your patience, long-suffering, and other Christlike virtues most

likely be tested, developed, and refined? Could it be possible that

you need this child as much as this child needs you?"

In Mosiah 2:20-22 he talks about how we are unprofitable servants. I was pondering on that and thinking, "well I agree, we are all and always will be unprofitable servants.....so WHY DO WE EVEN TRY????" Haha. 

There is something super important that we need to understand. Kind Benjamin is commanded to say that ALL THAT IS REQUIRED OF US IS TO KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS. That's all we have to do. And in return He promises to bless us. And He will never break that promise. In verse 24 it says, "....therefore he hath paid you. And he are still indebted to him, and are, and will be forever and ever." He loves us. He doesn't ask much of us. And for that which He does ask, He promises to bless us. SO MUCH LOVE!!!

I hope you all have a great week!!!

Con affetto,

Sorella G ❤️🇮🇹