Hope everyone enjoyed general conference weekend as much as we did!! Although I'm looking forward to going back and listening to it all again in English haha!
As far as general conference miracles, we had a handful!
To start: Nancy, Daniela, and fam.
So I told y'all last week about Daniela. (she, her mom, and her sister are english course students). Well on Monday night we went by to see Daniela and turns out the family had prepared dinner for us! We got to stay and get to know them better, they have been friends of the church for the while. And the dad, Santiago used to be a member back in Equador!! (they're from equador and cousins with Sofia). We invited them to come to general conference and when Saturday night rolled around, Nancy and Daniela came! They brought Daniela's sister too!! We were super pumped and went inside to watch conference. A good way into the conference, I started thinking about Santiago. He told us the reason he can't come to english group is because he works pretty late into the night. So I figured it was the same situation for general conference. Next thing I knew, he walks into the chapel!! I did a double take and it took me a second to connect the dots and realize it was Santiago, even wearing a white shirt! THEIR WHOLE FAMILY CAME. General conference really does bring miracles!
Plus Saturday morning we had a beautiful lesson with Daniela. We decided to watch The Restoration and it couldn't have gone better... she really understood!! At the end she talked about how she always thought prophets were some faraway thing but now she realizes they are real people and sometimes they have doubts too! And she said the same thing about God, sometimes she thinks He is so far away, but she has noticed through prayer that He is always close she just has to ask! We asked if God had answered her prayers and she said that she'd had the opportunity to serve some classmates throughout the week and thought that might be an answer-- God allowing her to serve! She's still looking, but mamma mia che brava questa ragazza! She just really gets it and it's cool to see how religion is starting to fill in the gaps in her life that she didn't know she had! We invited her to do the 21 day Book of Mormon challenge and she said "lo faro!"
Sofia came to ALL of the sessions of general conference, at the church!!!! (not very many people come to the church for conference, guess it's probably the same in america). She loved it. We had a lesson with her on Thursday and talked about the importance of following the prophet and how we can come to conference with questions and find the answers through their words! She said "wow I didn't know it worked like that! or that you could do that!" So she was really excited to listen to everything they had to say to her :)
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| Sorella Guymon picking pomegranates |
We had another lesson with her during the week, while I was on scambio with Sorella Neff! We talked about the importance of missionary work and sharing the gospel with our family and friends, set up her lds.org account, and showed her how to send the missionaries to her friends using the referral manager on lds.org! She got really excited and said she would talk with her mom. The next day we got a phone call from Sofia, she told us that her mom accepted the invite to have the missionaries come teach her! Now just gotta get that referral sent off....!
Laura came to general conference yesterday too!! She is still doing the 21 day challenge and texting us her daily updates! If you didn't know, you'd think she was a member... she is such good friends with all of them and just does her own thing, she is so great!! And we are about to go have a lesson with her.. one of the days of the 21 day challenge references infant baptisms and she didn't understand it (she's catholic.....) hahaha so we are going to have a nice discussion about the age of accountability!
We had a lesson with Izlane this week, she is one of our investigators, I got to meet her for the first time and she is a really cute, young mom! She is originally from Morocco and doesn't have a Christian background so right now we are working on teaching her about who Jesus Christ is and how she can have a relationship with Him! She is praying, plus we invited her to do the 21 day challenge quindi speriamo bene!
Another person we are working with is Enrica, she's a recent convert of more than a year preparing to go to the temple! So we are going to teach her the temple prep lessons and help her get ready!! She is so excited. This week we talked about The Plan of Salvation, just kind of taught it to her which turned out to be good because she had lots of questions that we were able to talk through! Plus she just really opened up to us in general. We left her with the invite to read the plan of salvation pamphlet. The next day we got a text from her, she had read the plan of salvation pamphlet and wanted another one to give to a friend she felt prompted need to read it!!!!!!!!!!! YAY!
We ate pranzo with Sorella Ciccone this week, she is the only member in her family and the young womens president and SO cute!!!! When we got to her house, her daughter in law was there and ate with us! Her name is Manuel and is really cute too! I think she's an ex-investigator so we invited her to do the 21 day challenge and Sorella Ciccone is going to help her with it!
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| a view of the mountains near by |
Finding miracle of the week: we were in centro going hard on our finding and then walked past this guy who kind of double taked when he saw us then pointed to our nametags and asked who we were!!!!!!! WHAT?! He stopped us! Plot twist. So we were just so taken by suprise we didn't even know what to say but hoepfully we said something right! The question we were asking that night was "according to you, what is a prophet?" so we asked him, talked about general conference, he said he was really interested in coming! His name is Iaro, he's from Russia, we exchanged numbers and sent him the information! Unfortunately he wasn't able to make it but we are hoping to stay in contact with him this week!
Public transport miracle of the week: met Anita and her cute kids! Funny how public transport finding is a lot more enjoyable outside of Rome haha no idea why. But we got to talking, she is from Nigeria but has lived in italy for like 15 years. I showed her pictures of the african food i've eaten (fufu, jalaf rice, etc) thank, Happy! Thats something with Nigerians, your credibility with them goes way up if you have picture evidence you've eaten fufu! Hahahah! I told them about how we do an english group if they know anyone that wants to learn! Then I started talking with them about the church, The Book of Mormon, tried to give her the Italian copy I had but she wanted an english one. We exchanged numbers then got off the bus. Then......they came to english group!!! All 3 of them! Anita speaks english perfectly (her 1st language) but she wants to help her kids learn. It was amazing because one of the first things she said to me was "Do you remember that book you were trying to give me in Italian? My son was so sad I didn't take it because he wanted to read it!" So we gave Anita an english copy and her son (I think he's like 10 or 12 years old) an italian copy and he was reading it throughout english course!!!!
PS english course is still my favorite part of the week. I love teaching english group so much, the students are always such a blast and ah it's a good time. This week we taught them head, shoulders, knees, and toes and then tricked them on Simon Says! Such a blast!!
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| making sand castles |
There were so many great things said this conference but I wanted to share just a tiny thought with yall.... Elder Uchtdorf mentioned the promise in Doctrine and Covenants 88:63 "Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me; ask, and ye shall receive; knock, and it shall be opened unto you" If we strive to grow closer to Christ, He will draw near unto us! It's a promise! I know that's something I will be working on after this amazing general conference! I invite you to do the same.
And now that conference is over.......we can go to the beach! It's like a 10 minute walk from our house and so we went today for pday and built sand castles---- so much fun! I love Pescara!!!!!!!!!!!
Congrats if you made it to the end.
Love you!!!
XOXO
Sorella Carley Neuberger
Vecchi M.L. , Pieri A.
Via Arapietra 61/5
Pescara, PE 65124
Italia
Vecchi M.L. , Pieri A.
Via Arapietra 61/5
Pescara, PE 65124
Italia
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| Sister Guymon can do it all. Making sushi. |
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| lasagna |
