Thursday, June 27, 2013

6/26/2013 - Week Two in Italy!!! :)




Ciao!  

Had a great week this week, and we did sooooo much!  We went to St. Peters Basilica (the Vatican) last pday.  It was sooo beautiful.  We went in the prayer room as well and prayed for a few minutes.  It was really special to be with so many other people who want God in their lives and desire to have His Spirit to be with them.  Pretty cool :)
And, I HAVE to tell you this first because I do not want to run out of time for this one:
So, we take weekly trips to this beautiful town called Latina which is about two hours away.  (Ostia is a HUGE area, and includes many surrounding cities that are quite a ways off.)  We are currently trying to establish a ward there because there once was a ward, but it was dissolved into the Ostia/Rome 4 Ward.  Crazy stuff.  So, last week we saw this really nice nun.  I said, "Hello, Sister" and smiled at her, and she smiled back at me, nodded her head and said "hello."  That opened the door for my very chatty comp, Sister Lovell to ask her questions about her order that she is in and a little about what she believes.  Well, this past week when we went to Latina again, we saw the Nun on the bus in the morning on the way from the train station and again on the way back from the station.  SO CRAZY.  I was thinking, "Okay, there has to be a reason why we are coincidentally seeing her so much."  My comps told me, "Go talk to your Nun friend!"  I was a bit apprehensive at first because I felt a bit awk, but it ended up going really well, and we really got to know her better.  Her name is Natali and she is from Burkina Faso.  The first time we talked to her, she said, "I can tell that you are all servants of Christ because you are kind.  Most people here won’t talk to black people so I can tell you are kind because you cared to speak with me."  (She said this all in Italian, of course :)  Buuut she came all the way from Africa to learn skills here to share with people in Burkina Faso.  Long story short- she is way cool.  Communiqué, we were talking with her on the way home on the train (because we sat together there too!) and we got on the topic of religion when I had asked her about the ring she was wearing.  She told me it was a "Rosario" and asked me if we say prayers to Mary in our church.  It was crazy because she was surprised that I did not know what her ring meant.  Wellllll, after this, she started asking questions about our religion, and Sister Lovell, being the awesome missionary that she is, changed it into a short lesson about the Restoration. 
 CHE FORTE!   It was sooooo powerful!  The nun listened sincerely to what we had to say.  Wow, and a little after this, THE FANTASTIC NUN SAID SHE WANTS TO LEARN MORE!  She even offered to have us come over to her house and teach her the lessons!!  It was a really special experience and, veramente, un miracolo!  Wow!

Other stories really quick:
We found this ancient (from 2009...lol) binder with Schedas from members from the old Latina Ward.  It was sooooo cool!  And we only found it when our shelf broke!  ahaha.  Again, un miracolo!  Because we were able to find information that saved possibly hours of pointless relapping work.  I called it the "Libro D"oro in District meeting, and erryone thought it was funny.  Love this stuff! 
Andrew!  (My Brother!) You would love Carmellos son, Emiliano!  He goes fishing every day, and is wayyyy funny!!!  Lol, I talk to him in >English sometimes, and we have a good laugh talking about penguins.  Seriously though, dude, you would be buds!  Please learn Italian now so you can be his friend in the near future!  ;D  Haha, so fun! 
I don’t really know what else to say except that miracles do happen, but we need to be willing to let them happen.
OH!   Almost forgot!!!  lol, so our investigator, Mario, we invited to church last Sunday.  But, he did not come.  haha, we found out today, however, that he had come to the Metrop station by the church, stood there for a minute, decided that his stomach hurt, and he went home....  Lol, so crazy.  We have another appt with him after exams are finally over, but it is really cool to see his progress. 

ANDREW, AVRI, AND MEGAN
Wow, I love you guys!!!  You rock for going on Trek!  Lemme just say, It changed my life, and I hope it had the same impact on you all.  Write me about your experiences and send pics if you can!  Email me if that is best.  Also, my Ma can show yall how to <dear elder if you want, but email is wayyy cool too.  :)  Love you guys.
Andrew!  I have to hear all about your Trek family!  Please tell me all about it!  Gahhhhh, soooooo coool!  And dude, we might baptize a nun!!!  This Church is sooooo true!!!  I can’t say baptize yet because we still need to teach her and have a specific return appt.... lol, but it is looking way awesome.

CRAZY FHE the other night.  So, Carmello cancelled on us, so we ended up just getting pizza with the Anziani that night.  Well, whilst we were in the Pizza place, a member, Barbara passed by.  We were already planning on visiting with her, so Sister Lovell went to go stop her.  Soon after, we went with Barbara, ran into Carmello and his son Emiliano, went to Barbaras house, and had FHE there.  Anz. Smith gave a Spiritual thought, and we thought, "Okay, awesome, we shared our thought so now we can show Barbara some Genealogy stuff and get home on time.  wellllll, after that, we ended up having a wayyyy heated way long discussion about Temple Prep because Carmello thought that people who are not worthy should not go to the Temple, and he thought that his wife should not be able to go because of something she had done.  WOA it got crazy because he kept repeating certain points he did not understand and it took Sister Lovell telling her divorce story a second time (because he did not understand that the story was about her and not someone else the first time) to get him on good grounds with prepping for the temple.  ANNNND when I tried to share a scripture in the middle of all this, he went bizzerk and said, "NO! Missionariers should be like Christ and only listen!  That is not appropriate right now!"  Shortly after, Elder Smith wanted to read a scripture, but thought twice because of how Carmello reacted to me...  Oh well, the point is that we acted on our promptings according to the agency of the people who we were teaching. 
About our investigator, Mario:
Also, he accepted our challenge to pray for the first time ever, and he said that he "even closed his eyes once."
Altre cose:
I really love and miss you all soooo much... I was thinking about you guys yesterday because I was this young girl on the train calling her Dad, and I said, "I wish I could call my parents..."  But it’s cool because we are soooooo busy here.  Which I like because it is a good kind of busy in which we get to help people feel peace in their lives and invite them to come unto Christ in a variety of ways.  Missionary work truly is a labor of love, and is 100% not what people make it sound like.  It is 100% good, and if we follow our promptings and the rules, we will have success and we will be happy.  I know this with all my heart.  I really wish everyone could serve a mission because they would learn so much about how to just love people and not let selfishness get in the way of anything.  I know that Christ would do the same types of things we are doing (lol, of course he would proooobably do it better, but we try ;) and I know that he will strengthen us.  I also thought today, as I was praying, that it is selfish to think "what is my impact here?  Shouldn’t I be having a more major impact?" because we may not know now nor in this life the impact that we truly have on people and situations.  We may not, at times, think that we have any impact.  But I know this: when we live the gospel and stand by Jesus Christ, we do and always will have an impact that we may not even know about.  Know this, and live the way Christ would live.  Follow the examples of the Prophets of old in praying always and having a heart full of Charity for people all around us.  I love yyou guys soooo much.  Nel nome di Gesù Cristo, Amen.

DAD (and Mom if you think this is cool too!  I think you will.) 
Start reading Jesus the Christ!!!  Seriously sooo great  :)  You will find the origin of the name of Christ and a whole new perspective will be opened to you (ch4)  Love you guys!  Have a great week!!!  Email and write me!!  I want to hear about your lives! 
Con tutto il mio cuore,
Sorella Corey Anne Cherrington


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