Gesù & Gelato: Buon Ferragosto

piazza venezia

"Finding an italian to give a talk in August is like finding a missionary that's not from Utah" - our Bishop's opening line to his talk in sacrament meeting yesterday. So that gives you a good idea of the difficulty we are facing right now! All of the italians go.......huh where do they even go? And it seems like every new person we meet is going on vacation the next week or the next two weeks. But sempre avanti, we are moving forward with faith, trusting in the Lord and His plan!

Wednesday was the legendary "Ferragosto". Legendary because missionaries in this mission give it such an interesting reputation.....basically it's the day when everyone takes the day off, everything is closed, and everyone goes to the beach. So naturally, we did deep cleaning that day! Oh and apparently the holiday behind Ferragosto is to celebrate the ascension of Mary into heaven. Catholics sure love Mary! Ah there's nothing you can do but love this culture!!

This week Sorella Decker and I made a goal to work with members, to call them (we have the ward list broken up between the 4 companionships that are in our ward) and get the ball rolling on member missionary work! Well, after calling through our list and still having nothing set up, we weren't sure what to do. The next morning we planned out our day with a great giro and then after we prayed to know it was the right thing, I told Sorella Decker "hey maybe we should do some kind of something for the members... maybe heart attack them?"and she said "I was thinking the exact same thing while we were running this morning!" It was really cool so we got right to work cutting out hearts and got to do a few heart attacks this week! One of the families, immediately upon seeing us at church yesterday said "Sorelle, thank you for the hearts! we would love to have you over to our house for lunch!" (when they get home from vacation in a few weeks) hahahahah we just had to laugh about that last part. Slowly but surely we are going to get things going here in Roma 2.

We spent a majority of our week hitting the metro and the streets and just finding people to talk to! Plus I did a scambio with Sorella Harmon this week and we saw tons of miracles together! So here are a few of the cool contacts from this week:

-- Isabel. She's from Brazil but has lived in Italy for 10 years because she's married to an Italian! She remembered seeing missionaries in Brazil and lived close to the church there! She told us she's not catholic and would love to learn more about our church! Well, I got to pull out The Book of Mormon there on the metro, we read the introduction together and exchanged numbers! Only bummer was that when we tried to call her she had blocked our number. But I still have faith because she was so elect! Pray for her!!

-- Aurora. GANS age. Also met on the metro, she told us she was going to the mall Porta di Roma and I asked if she'd see the temple nearby, she said yes! And then she talked about how she'd love to see inside. I pulled out my tablet and showed her some temple pictures I had downloaded and got to tell her a little about why temples are so special! So we definitely got her number! She lives in Ladispoli so hopefully we will be able to pass her off to the sorelle there.

-- Eugenie. She is from Africa I think and is an ex-nun, she left the nunnery because she knows families are part of God's plan and wants one of her own (sound familiar?)! Her first language is french so we are going to meet up with her hopefully next week (she's busy this week) and give her a copy of The Book of Mormon in french! She is really excited to learn more about the other testament of Jesus Christ!

-- THE KOREAN COUPLE. I think this might've been the highlight of my mission...... yesterday we were on the way home and there were 2 seats open in front of this cute asian couple, Sorella Decker and I sat down. I asked where they were from... "South Korea"! They're here in Rome on vacation. I tried not to jump out of my seat. But explained to them that my brother was in korea (they spoke pretty good english!) and they tried to teach me a little korean (already forgot). They asked us if we knew any place they could go that didn't have so many tourists. Sorella Decker like a genius whips out a temple card and tells them the address! What made it even more perfect was that they just had to stay on the bus and they'd get there! Plus I happened to have a picture of the Korean temple downloaded and showed them a picture of it, they wanted the address of that too, we gave it to them! Then I referred them to mormon.org and explained how they could type in their address and find the church building closest to them! (they live on the opposite side of the country from Seoul). Plus they have a cute 3 month old baby that they showed us pictures of. Wow miracles.

has a picnic by the Colosseum

We had a great lesson with Flavia this week, she explained more of her story to us and just has this great desire to be baptized so we are excited to maybe go a little bit deeper into the lessons with her and just study all together! We gave her a 7 day Book of Mormon challenge for this week and we are going to do it together! She's been reading some so we hope she'll make it a daily thing this week.

Gioia and Giulia are doing well! Unfortunately, they too are out of town and they don't even know when they'll be coming back. But we had a great lesson with them this week on the Plan of Salvation! They just ate it up. And then they came to english course the next day so we met before it started and they had remembered the whole plan of salvation! Plus we followed up on if they were reading The Book of Mormon and Giulia said no. So Gioia sat there and explained the first 14 chapters (everything she's read) and basically taught the lesson for us. It was incredible.

And lastly, the best moment of the week was our lesson with Lina. I couldn't tell you exactly why, but it was just something special. I feel this like super special connection and love for her and she's just the greatest. We watched the 20 minute restoration film with her and afterwards asked how she felt. She couldn't even put it into words but she did say that "everyone needs to see this video and feel this way". We got to bear powerful testimony to her that those feelings were of the Holy Ghost confirming the truth of our message! I was crying the spirit was so strong but also because it felt so amazing after spending the whole week finding and finding and finding to just have someone listen and understand and feel of the truthfulness for themselves. I can't explain it to you but it was something I definitely needed this week and Lina is someone I definitely need in my life. I love her, I love these crazy Italians!! Lina is going to Sicily for a couple of weeks on vacation. But she's bringing us back cannoli so we can't be too upset with her hehe.

Quote of the week "you didn't come this far to only come this far",
Hey there's always room for improvement and that's exactly why we are here! I love the gospel!! I love being a missionary!!

think on that one for a little.
Love yall!!!
Buona settimana!!
XOXO