Sorella Cherrington's Italy Rome Mission Blog! :D: Il momento clou della mia settimana sta leggendo le mie figlie blog! BUONA!

Ciao! :D

What to say? This week was fantastic! :D It was a little rough, but great all the same. We were able to do quite a bit of work in Chieti, and we met with Sorella Ricci and Slla Ciccone who are really nice, and they want to help us with the missionary work in Christ so that we can get it going and get the group started up there. We are really excited from all of the help members are offering us. Our investigators' progress has been really slow lately, however, because either 1- they are not answering our phone calls or 2- they don’t want to make progress... Oh well, though. I suppose that gives us room for a brand new start! Which is really good! Of course we will still try to help the investigators we have, but I think some of them just need a little more time to ponder.

AND! Haha, okay, we had the most hilarious day of our lives the other day because it was just a complete and utter failure... Okay, so we begin the day planning which ex-investigators without a phone number we want to see, and we found them all on the map. We then went out into the world to make our plans reality when I suddenly realize that the info that Missionaries wrote in the past was not as specific or accurate as I would have liked it to be. Soo, we went out to Francavilla, looking for this lady on a street that didn't exist, following the instructions that missionaries from the past wrote, "Get off at the bus stop at the School. Her house is a five minute walk from the stop above a restaurant." So, there were 2 restaurants at about a 1 minute walk away and none anywhere else. It was then that Sorella Kippen said, "Okay, what pace were those missionaries walking? Because if this is the restaurant, then they must've been some really out of shape missionaries!" We discovered that her house was nowhere to be found (hey, at least we found the school!) and we laughed it off as we headed back to Pescara. (This is important: on the way to the bus, Sorella Kipper found a surf-board wax!) We get on the bus, and Sister Kippen and I sit apart from each other so as to talk to more people. THEN, the Testimoni di Geova get on the bus (usually they approach us and give us a really hard time... ) I was scared out of my mind, alone, trying to look in the other direction, when this really skinny, tall man with a beard and glasses says in English, "Hey, Sister, do ya think you could scoot over one seat so I can hang onto my suitcase?" What?! English! I move seats and he responds "good girl." It was then that this man started a conversation with me, telling me that he lived in Florida for a long time and he learned English there and in Southern California (you could tell because he said "yeah man" every other word!) And he even met the missionaries in the past! It was particularly cool because he looked over at the TJs and said, "they probably give you a hard time, huh? Well, let me at 'em I'll take them!" This man was easily one of the most charismatic people I have met in my entire life! It was so fun. We were only able to leave him with a biglietto though because he was on his way to Paris where he will live there for a few months. (PS- Charismatic guy was also a doctor in Anthropology and spoke 3 other languages! So cool!)

Then, Sorella Kippen and I go back to Pescara, looking for the 2nd address we had written down. I was looking at the map and Sorella Kippen was pondering, helping me plan out where to go, while waxing the concrete bench she was sitting on with her surf board wax. And (we both laughed the rest of the day after this) as I was ready to go, I said in a sarcastic/joking tone of voice, "Hey, Sister Kippen.... You wanna go find this address or do you want to keep waxing that piece of concrete there?" Neither of us knows why, but it was soooo funny! We have laughed about it every day since as well! It's hard to convey all of what happened through e-mail, but it was hilarious.

POI! One of my other favorite experiences this week was yesterday when we were able to meet with Shake and Matt (our friends from Senegal) and share an English lesson with them! We brought the new Anziani and included them as much as possible so that we could pass our friends off to the Anziani who have close to nobody to teach. It was a really cool experience because, on the way to the appointment, we met three people who we could potentially teach in the future! I really think that Heavenly Father knew that we would be passing our friends to the Anziani, and He wanted to give us more buddies who we could share the gospel message with in the future! :D Communiqué, though this week was a fail in some ways, we were able to laugh through it all, and to learn from our hard experiences. Lol, I really love being companions with Sorella Kippen! XD There is never a dull moment. I love you all, and I hope that you all have a fantastic week! :D

Love,

Sorella Cherrington