"siete mormone?"

Sorry in advance because this email is going to be really short! Not tons of time because we had a jam-packed pday full of fun in Ortigia!! We are just loving this city. Today we toured the huge, famous duomo (cathedral) in Ortigia! It was beautiful. Jaw dropping on the outside but the inside was awesome too!!

The Duomo of Ortigia square

Apologizing again because I left you all in suspense this last week regarding the baptism of Happy and Marvelous. We are learning tons about trusting in the Lord and His plan because unfortunately the baptism didn't happen this week. It was super heartbreaking! We met with them a couple times with the goal of having super testimony building lessons centered on faith. The Anziani also visited them a couple times this week to give things a shot with pretty good success! Turns out the reason they came up with excuses to avoid baptism was because they hadn't received an answer on whether it was the right thing for them. So we have been working with them on how to recognize answers to prayers and how to feel answers from God! So please keep them in your prayers because they are truly an elect family and we are ready for them to just take this leap of faith. Oh and they didn't make it to church yesterday so that was heartbreaking too.

The biggest highlight of the week was when Eveline came to church!! Eveline is one of the YSA in the ward she is so cute and fun but she's been less active recently because of work. We have been making really good friends with her and we go visit her at her work pretty often! She recently really opened up to us and we have become so close since. Yesterday we even started talking with her about serving a mission!!!

We met with Ivanna a couple of times this week....one of those times her daughter was visiting and turns out her daughter knows some members of the ward! She even said that her husband has been to our church a couple times!! We spent some time reading the introduction to The Book of Mormon with Ivanna because she has a hard time seeing, so we read it to her and explained it! She asked about the things that are different from our church, then said she would like to come to our church when she gets feeling better! Can't wait!!

with Mariangela at crochet course

Thursday was the last day of crochet course, they meet at our church building and only 1 of the ladies is a member. We've made great friends with several of the ladies so we are keeping in close contact with them on Facebook messenger and 1 lady, Marica, even asked us when we could meet up again! Hopefully this week!!

We've spent the majority of our week just going hard and doing some legit tracting. Street contacting and tons of casa in casa which led us to find what I want to call the miracle zone! It's a zone in Siracusa that we both just felt really good about going to.... when we got there it was like all the people who lived there had never seen missionaries or Jehovah's witnesses before! We couldn't believe it! Usually they've seen too much of us and send us away without even opening the door. Well in the miracle zone everyone at least opened their door. At least. And everyone was nice, a few people even told us we could come back at a different time! We also met Lina, got to show her a video and she invited us back so we will hopefully meet up with her on Wednesday!

Okay now I'm going to attempt to tell a story that probably won't make sense if you don't know Italian. Oh well. We were walking by this shop the other day, it was thundering, the shop owner was standing outside and said to us "siete mormone?" (Are you mormons?) And I said "wow how did you know?" And then he kind of mumbled something. Then I asked if he was believing to which he said si!! We got to give him a restoration pamphlet. Sorella Hope and I both walked away like "wow that was really cool!" Well, you know how sometimes after conversations are over you replay them in your mind? Maybe that's just me that does that..... anyways. I realized that he actually said "sentite rumore?" (Do you hear the noise? He was referring to the thunder) and then I asked "wow how did you know?" The part he mumbled I realized he said "I was in my shop and I heard something so I came outside!" To which I responded: are you believing??  Hahahahahaha sometimes you just gotta laugh. Still a really cool contact experience and he was really nice even though we probably seemed crazy! Eh, we always seem crazy who am I kidding.

at the tempio d'apollo

We had a really cool experience at English course this week that I'm really excited to share with y'all! After every English course we share a spiritual thought with the students. Well, Tuesday we really felt like we should talk about The Family: A Proclamation to the World, read a little part of it, and give everyone their own copy of the pamphlet. After it was over, the anziani told us that the family proclamation came up during their English course (they teach advanced group while we teach basic) and that they had explained it to some of their students but that it was so perfect we had chosen to do that for our spiritual thought. And now I want to share with you the part of the proclamation that we read at English course: "Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities." I know that we can have real happiness and joy in our family when we put Jesus Christ at the first place!

Vi voglio un mondo di bene
PS the temple scaffolding came off this week!!!!! Getting closer.

XOXO

Sorella Carley Neuberger 

Le Sorelle Missionarie
Via Polibio, 17
Siracusa, SR 96100
Italia