Stew, ken, spence, that subject line is for you. Whenever people refer
to Sicily as "the island", I always think of LOST and get an anxious
feeling haha.
Yep. Today I am back in Sicily...there was a mistake and I was tranferred back to Catania. Dangit.
PSYCH. Sor Viazzo and I are back in town for two days to take care of permesso stuff. So we took a flight at like 5am
this morning. EW. But we are back in good ole catania and plan to go
see Taormina again with the whole catania district! HAhA its so weird to
be back!
Great week. There is a LOT of work here in Pozzuoli. I am shocked!
People have baptismal dates- they exist! Haha. Last week we saw Roselyn,
the sweet wonderful african woman and taught her a post baptism lesson.
She is an amazing, inspiring woman! Wow really. She shared some
terrible stories of her past in Africa with us and it was definitely an
emotional experience. I am so amazed by the great faith that she has!
She is already giving us referrals and she has been baptized for two
weeks.
We had an old lady party with Sorella Tempesta. She invited us over
for pranzo and to teach her friend, Anna. We ended up teaching Titi
eating some yummy pesto pasta mm mmm and some other courses and then
took the trip over to Annas house where sorella Viazzo helped three old
ladies pick fruit from big lemon and orange trees for like 45 minutes.
The funniest part was that the old ladies were the ones carrying and
climbing the ladder (they refused to let us do so). So the pulled the
fruits and we caught them. Years of softball definitely came in handy:)
Sorella Viazzo and I translated for a marriage counseling
session last night. It was ridiculous and really uncomfortable. HAh! I
felt like I was in this italian soap opera...wanting to stay completely
neutral to the situation! I did no want to show ANY sign of agreement
with both sides. I am a missionary, okay!
We went to a last minute conference in Rome last week where Elder
Steven B Allen spoke. It was fantastic and inspirng! He totally gave us
the slap down for all the missionaires and started out by asking us "Do
you truly believe you found and taught every person ready for baptism
last month?" (the total for the mission last month was 16). It
definitely got everything thinking! Wow, there is a lot more that I
could have done!
He really talked about the WHY of the gospel. IT was awesome! He
said that we should go into our lessons EXPECTING to invite them to
baptism (unless the Spirit directs otherwise).
We received a
referral from some elders in Caserta of a woman named Amaglia. We didnt
know anything about this woman. She picked us up from the bus stop and
drove back to her house (which was a bit of a sketchy part of town).
Turns out, her house was really nice and she was just this kind, gentle,
middle aged woman. She really opened up to us and shared some hard
things of her past. It was clear that she was in search of some hope. We
shared the Plan of Salvation with her and she just ate it up. It was
clear she was feeling the Spirit. It was going really well and we
planned to take Elder Allens advice. Baptism. It was definitely feeling
right and so Sorella Viazzo went for it. She agreed to be baptized April 19.
Wow, this is good to be true! She seems golden and just asked what she
needs to do to make it happen. She closed the lesson with a prayer the
Spirit was definitely present. There is just something about having an
investigator pray in their own words (for possibly the first time), that
really brings the Spirit! We were so excited all night and obviously it
is important to keep a level head as a missionary:)
Had an awesome training with Brother Bonner again. He talked about
d&c 100:4-5 about the meaning of the effectual door. He talked about
how there are souls being prepared by other souls on the other side, so
that their ordinances can get done! It was such an interesting
perspective! It is encouraged that we bring family names, only to the
temple, so wouldnt it make sense to prepare posterity still living on
the earth. Then she shared a quote from Lorenzo Snow who was one of the
first missionaries of Italy who had promised that ancestors would
prepare people for the gospel by appearing to them in their dreams. Then
he challenged us: if all else fails when finding people and inviting
them to hear the gospel, ask them if they had ever had dreams of their
ancestors. So cool.
Love you all!!! Service is happiness.
Sorella Clyde
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