Gesù & Gelato: Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate

I'm just gonna shake shake shake shake shake it off🎶

That's been my theme song this week! Haha just kidding. But mamma mia it has been quite the week!! Pescara is unbelievable and so beautiful, I'm loving learning my way around this place. Plus there are tons of cute paesini all around to go exploring in on pdays! Couldn't imagine a better place to be a missionary.

Pescara and mountains in the distance

Well I'm going to be honest, our week was full of searching for the Lord's elect! We did finding pretty much all day every day, hence my new theme song hahaha. We faced mostly rejection, but it's okay, that's what I needed this week! There is nothing that strengthens your testimony more than having people deny it all day. We did a gesso last night on lungomare and got all kinds of reactions from "God isn't real, you made him up" to "have a nice life without electricity" hahahah lot's of italians get us confused with the amish because apparently a movie came out about the amish and it's called 'the mormons'??? boh!

We had a lesson with a potential named Lara, and it was also quite the testimony builder. I've never had a lesson quite like that my whole mission. Basically she would ask us questions like "do members of your faith participate in military service?" to which we would respond "yes" and then she broke our boxes on how we are commanded not to kill, and broke our boxes on several other things which I probably should leave out of this email, ha! In reality, I probably got the most out of that meeting with her than lots of other incontri I've done... because she helped me reflect on my testimony. Do I know undoubtedly that The Book of Mormon is true? That God speaks to us today through a living prophet and personal revelation? I can honestly say that yes, I do know these things. And I'm really thankful for that knowledge and the light it brings to my life-- that I don't have to live in darkness and that God loves me and all of His children.

This week we also had a great lesson with Sofia (she is a recent convert of a few weeks, from english group, and originally from Ecuador) and is just so in gamba! We were planning on reteaching the plan of salvation and so when we sat down with her and told her we wanted to talk about the plan of salvation she said "oh the plan where ....." and literally taught us the whole thing word for word. Then drew a perfect diagram on the board emphasizing the importance of having faith, repenting, and being baptized while on the earth. I was blown away! She has incredible strength and the ward just absolutely loves her!

On Wednesday morning we decided to switch up the norm of doing gesso at night and decided to do one in the morning since neither us nor the anziani had solid plans! It turned out really well, we got to talk to lots of cool people! It started off kind of rough, being my first gesso in Pescara (and my first gesso in a while..) people would cut you off after just saying "excuse me". But then a beautiful thing happened. The next person I stopped actually let me ask her a question. (the theme of the gesso was the 21 day book of mormon challenge). So we were stopping people by asking them to choose a number between 1 and 21 and then asking them the coordinating question! She chose number 15: "How does God communicate with us today?" So we got to talking about it and then the scripture coordinated with that question is 2 Nephi 32:1-9. The beautiful thing was that the very same morning during personal study I had studied 2 Nephi 32 and 33. I couldn't believe it!! I know that God had His hand in that! And grazie a quello I was able to bear powerful testimony of the reality of revelation and the truthfulness of The Book of Mormon. I don't know... this experience probably doesn't seem like a super big deal to y'all but it was a huge lift I needed this week and a reminder that Heavenly Father prepares us to share the gospel if we ask for His help!❤

Sorella Guymon making something yummy.

Miracle of the week was finding a euro and taking it as a sign to treat ourselves to gelato. !

Oh also Sorella Guymon.. she is literally so perfect at everything and so humble about it! She is such a power finder, bears her testimony to everyone and I have tons to learn from her. Also, she's really good at cooking and just way too nice hahah I got so lucky this transfer! 💕

Laura: She has been a sorelle investigator for over a year now, she comes to church every single week, is really good friends with the members and just ultra forte! We had a lesson with her this week, started the 21 day sfida together and every day she sends us at least a paragraph-long text of what she learned and things she is going to apply from the verses!!!!!!!!!!!! The only thing that's holding her back is that her husband and kids are really against her joining the church. So please keep them in your prayers that their hearts can be open to her being baptized!

And our biggest miracle of the week is Daniela! She's an english course student and like our age! Well, she just started university this week and has been traveling back and forth for classes (2 hours each way) in Ancona (milano mission). So her mom told us at english group to try and set up an appointment with her! We did. It was amazing. She came to the church Saturday morning and she told us about how her week was super hard and she was about to just give up one night and looked up and saw The Book of Mormon on her shelf. So she opened it and read some verses that really comforted and encouraged her!! It was cool to just relate with her, we all cried a little together, and talked about the restoration too. And we get to se her again tonight so I'm really excited for that. 💗

Another fun thing from this week, we decided to have a little get-together with some of the GANS in the ward and use social media to share the gospel! We had a little spiritual thought and then invited them to start scrolling through their list of facebook friends and share a thought with those they felt prompted to do so. We did the same! It was scary and fun all together! We ate snacks and helped each other get creative inviting people to watch a video, tune into general conference next week, etc....

Speaking of general conference!! On Saturday and Sunday (Oct 6 & 7) the leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints will speak to the world! I am so excited to learn and grow and recieve answers to my questions from the prophet of God, Russell M. Nelson and his apostles! It is going to be a very special experience and can be for you, too. You can find times and watch it live on lds.org! Can't wait to hear about the inspiration you get! I love you all and hope yall have a great week.

PS you know you're in Italy when.... you pday = making lasagna. If you know how to really make lasagna, you know it's an all day activity.

Gotta go it just came out of the oven!

Alla prossima! Vi voglio una lasgna di bene!!!!!

XOXO