CIAO MIO SOLE!!!!! HELLO MY SUNSHINE!!! ANOTHER AMAZING WEEK'S EMAIL FROM COREY

This week has been great!!!  :D  We went to Latina yesterday again (the place where we are trying to start a ward) with Sister Anderson, who exchanged with Sister Lovell for our Scambi.  Sister Anderson is wayy cool!  Oh!!  And the night when she first got here (the Day before Latina) she came with me, Sister Hibbert, and the Anziani to la casa della famiglia Blas for Pietros bday party.  That was tooootally fun!  We got to have a dance party with all the kids there for Pietros 9th birthday.  All the kids there really thought I was cool because I like Pokemon a ton!  One of the boys gave me a Pokemon card on the bus that I will officially keep forever!  XD  Lol, it is awesome.  and, at the party, one of Pietros friends lead us all in some dances that he knew (Gangam Style, Afrika by Shakira, and a couple other really good songs.  Was probably one of my funniest days in the mission yet!!!  :D  annnd it was super cool being around all them because they are basically all from Peru!  So we got to sing happy b-day in Italian AND Spanish!!!  Sooo cool! 
I think my friend, Elder Jiminez would totally serve here at some point slash would love it!!  :D  PS- if Jiminez reads this; Sister Anderson knows your trainer!!!  Lol, Buuuut after that, we got to go give this guy at a Pizza place a book of Mormon in Arabic, and he agreed to meet with us this Thurs so we can explain it!  :D  Unfortunately, I will not be here because I am doing another scambi with the Roma 2 Sorelle today and tomorrow.  They are both from Italy, so I will be speaking lots of Italian for the next 24 hours.  Wish me luck!!  And definitely pray for me! 

Dopo quello, we went to the Agomeris house with Fabrizio (an RM in the area who is Sorella Agomeris grandson).  The lesson was reeeeeally cool because we went barely prepared at all, and ended up sharing a really encouraging message about how Sister A can stop smoking and can make it to the temple with her family.  (She is the one from Sicilia and has a thick accent).  Buuuut, she is really cool :) and is one of my favorite people here.  She was crying at the end of it, and said she was crying happy tears.  I will be praying for her to have the strength to quit smoking and drinking coffee. It was also really cool because she said that my Italian is doing really well!!  :D  And I got to lead the lesson too, and it was just awesome all around!  And Fabrizio helped sooooooooo much!!!  I am so thankful that he was there to help us and be a missionary again for a short time. :)  (he went to Milan)

Soooooo!  Latina!!  Lol.  I LOVED Latina yesterday for a variety of reasons:  1- Sister Anderson is way fun to be around and she brought so much optimism and light to our companionship. 2- I was the most fluent Italian speaker, so I got to try the waters a TON, and I really loved that!  :D  3- Sister Andersons boldness allowed us to be able to teach a short lesson to this Romanian man in the park who wants us to come back and teach him!  XD  3- Doing work with the Elders is SO fun!  Especially because one of the Elders reminds me sooooo much of Andrew!  :D  4- Latina is just awesome!  It is way close to Napoli and is WOW beautiful! :)  5- We met Osvaldo, a hair-cutter who wants people to accept the fact that animals have spirits. He also talked a lot about the idea of, "God created all men, so why do we have Saints instead of just worshipping God?"  He was very passionate about this subject, and agreed to meet with us next week!  :D  He is soooo cool!  I look forward to meeting with him again. 6- We touched bases with a ton of people who have stuff to do the next couple of weeks, but will be able to meet soon.  DUDE!  The work is on FIRE in Latina!  I just wish we had more than one day a week there... the goal is to get a branch going so we can get a bishop and some Elders there. Sisters too please!  XD)

Welp, today was fantastic as well!  :D  We visited soooo many cool sites in Rome!  (Spanish stairs in Roman Holiday, the Roman Forum, we saw the Coloseo for a sec, and went into a couple of churches and the Vittorio e Manuelle which is this MASSIVE building that has the tomb of the unknown soldiers in it! Andrew would love it :)  I think of Andy a lot...  I miss my little bro...

Communque, grazie per tutto, e....

ciao for now!!  :D

-Sorella Corey Cherrington

PS-sorry for possibly no pics this week!  D:  Constantly having a photo uploading problem... 

Getting Through a Tough Week!!! :) 7/3/2013

Ciao!  :D

I am soooo excited to be writing you all this week!  I really have been having a rough time here because we are having some difficulties.  I feel it is necessary for future missionaries out there to know that things are not 100% peachy all the time.  I will tell you also, though, that even though this week was rough, we have seen many miracles.  Here is my favorite story from the week:

Our trainer, Sister Lovell, went to Rome a day early for Zone conference because she is a "Sister Training Leader", which people have compared to the role of a Zone Leader that is a girl.  SO, when she went to Rome that left me and Sister Hibbert (the two greenies ;) to figure things out for ourselves.  I LOVED IT!!!  We started off by getting lunch at the big station in Rome, called Termini.  Theeeen, we headed home on the Metro and successfully arrived at our station (Lido Nord) without getting lost.  Lol, I do have to say though that one lady on the train got a tiny bit upset with me because she asked me, "Arriva a Acilia."  Me, not knowing that this meant, "Does this train go to Acilia", answered "Arriva a Torre De Valle" because I thought she was asking where we currently were...  Haha, she got upset for a moment, turned to the man in front of me, and asked the same question again...  Lol, 1st transfer moment of love, you know ;)

Soooo!  We got home, went to a members house to help install an indexing program for family history, and on the way we ran into Carmello (who I love, and he totally reminds me of Dad!  :D).  It was a miracle that we ran into him, because he had cancelled FHE earlier that day, and we were able to talk to him a bit about things.  Then, after we were done at Barbara’s House (the member we were helping out) me and Sister Hibbert prayed to know what to do next.  As we were praying, an image of the walking path by the beach came into mind.  So, we went finding near the beach to see what we could do.  We were hanging out flyers; met some really cool people, and then we ran into our investigator, Mario, who had been skipping out on lessons for the past week because he has exams coming up.  We were able to check in with him, and set up a date for a next appointment.  So that was good.  

THEN, we met this nice old man, who said that he did not want our info cards because he is "too old to change" and "all there is" for him now is "(he) and his wife".  Then, we ran into this really cool guy, who I think may be homeless, and he has two fingers on one of his hands.  He was pretty funny too.  :)  And he told us, "I can tell you two are sent from Jesus Christ, because your faces, you can see it there.  And when else would you have come to talk to me?  You are definitely from Jesus Christ."  It was a really cool experience, and now he will be coming to English course on Fridays!  :D  He is also hoping that we can talk to our "brothers" in America about getting prosthetic fingers.  As missionaries, were not sure what to do for that, but we will try to help him out.  :)  

After meeting that really nice man, me and Hibbert started to say stuff like, "Finding is good, and it really shows faith when we don’t know what else to do."  annnnnd BAM!  We walk straight into Alessandro, who we have not seen for a week because he has been on vacation.  We were able to share a nice spiritual thought with him and a prayer too.  It was really nice.  Then, we were able to set up another appointment with him for later this week.  Veramente, quello goirno era un giorno di miracoli!  And it felt soooo good to learn things more independently for a while with someone else who is learning.  I really loved being a duo companionship with Hibbert for a while :)

Other than that, Zone conference was yesterday, and it was pretty awesome.  I really enjoyed hearing from the new Mission President and his awesome wife, Sorella Waddoups.  It was sooo cool!  They gave us all lunch, and we played Gospel Bingo with smarties!!!  :D  It was sooo fun.  I also got to see Sister Wiltbank and Pancheri, two of the girls from my MTC District, and it was really nice to talk with them for a while.  :)  I really like the people in my Zone, and the Zone next to us :)  They are all pretty fantastic people and outstanding Missionaries.  

I think that is it for now, because I have tons of photos to upload!  Ciao for  now!  Vi voglio bene!  :D

-Sorella Corey Cherrington

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

FIRST LETTER FROM SORELLA COREY ANNE CHERRINGTON IN ITALY!!!!! :) :) :) JUNE 19, 2013

Ciao tutti!  

I am officially in Italia and in my first area here.  It is this city called Ostia that is about 30 to 45 minutes outside of Rome.  It is right on the coast, so we get to see the beach and the coast a lot.  It is also cooler here because of the breezes from the sea.  Lol, does not mean that it is not hot, but it is more mild.  Seriously though, this place reminds me of Stockton and California in general.  It feels like I am at home climate wise, and just the overall feeling reminds me of CA.  It is really cool, and I feel used to it here already.  I adjusted well to the time change too because I prefer to live on the time zones here; it feels more natural for me for some reason.  BUT enough about me!  I need to tell you all about the people we have been meeting with here and how awesome they all are.  :)

Hmmmm... I will start with Fratello Mangiacotti.  So, each week, the Missionaries in Ostia go to lunch at Fllo. Mangiacottis house where he feeds us wayyyyy too much, and makes fun of you if you don’t finish all of the food (lol, trust me, I experienced it first hand, haha :)  He is really funny, lives on his own, is in his late 60s has many cats.  He is awesome! 

Then, there is "Mama" who is this really nice lady in our apartments who says, "I am always the Mama here (for the missionaries)!  You are my daughters!"  She "bocces" us when we see her, and she is fantastic!  (Note: We basically :"bocc." (boch) aka kiss people on each cheek, all the time!  Only if they are female of course, because we are mission approps, but yah!  It is pretty cool.) 

Sooo, there is also the Family Blas who is a less active part-member family.  Sister Blas is so great, she is studying to be a nurse and she fixed up my knee for me after Calcio (SOCCER!!!  :D).  Her kids are way funny too, and one of them is basically my new bff ;) He kept acting like my scraped knee scared him, lol, and I tried to keep him quiet during the lesson, so we had fun whilst I was distracting him :)  PS the Blas family is Peruvian but they speak Italian. 

Same with the Padilla family, who I also love!  :D  We went over to their place the other day to make Pizza, and had tons of fun!  Then, we played Calcio with Brother Padilla and some of his sons friends so we could help them invite some friends to church.  Seriously, it was soooo fun to play soccer with them!  I loved it.  I was scared at first, but I actually ended up being able to play pretty well!  Not the best, lol, but I was really in the game!  FUN!!!  :D  It was really great too because practically all the people we played Calc. with spoke Spanish and were talking in Span. a ton whilst we were playing.  Lol, it was so great!  There was also this really nice young man, Mike, who is Andrews’s age and would totally be good friends with Andrew if you guys lived here!  Also, there is another young man who is Andy’s age who is tons of fun.  His name is Emiliano.  He is the son of Carmello who wrote a famous church song in Italy called "I Missionari del Mondo" (The Missionaries of the World).  Their family is SO great and wayyy hilarious!  We go over to their house once a week too for Family Home Evening.  This last time, Carmello made us this STELLAR pasta with crab in it.  But it was still in the shell, so we had to crack it.  Lol, it was not an issue for me, but Sister Hibbert (one of my lovely Missionary companions) was sooooo funny about it, and was scared to touch the crab for a while.  They were tiny crabs, so she kept saying "I am afraid they will crawl off my plate!!!  Lol, she is very jumpy too, so she would freak out every time she heard a cracking noise near her.  She is great :)  Sister Lovell (my trainer and other comp) is really fantastic too!  She gets us going and always has a Plan A, B, and C.  She is pretty cool :)

(PS we get to play guitar at Carmellos house because he is really big on music!  Love it!)

SO!  What else to say....  :)  Well, we are going to the Colosseum today and the Roma forum!  :D  Pretty stoked for that.  And OH!  I forgot to tell you about the Agomeri family!!!  I love them sooooo much!  They are a less active fam, and we often go to visit Sister Agomeri (the grandma, who I LOVE and is Sicilian!  :D) and her lovely granddaughter, Evylin.  Sister Agomeri is really great though, and we have a special bond.  Gah!  I just love these people here!

OH!  And here are some more details about my city:

There are so many people here from around the world, and we get to give out books of Mormon in diff. languages.  We are giving an Arabic Book of Mormon to this one man in a Kebab shop in the next couple days, and we are trying to get a German Book of Mormon for one of our investigators, Mario, who is a German student here on Study Abroad. 

There is also Giorgiana who is Romanian, speaks Italian also, and has a really cool little daughter named Isabella who is also my new bff  haha.  I played with her in the park and wrote "secret messages" of flowers and apples with glasses.  It was pretty  fun.  I also learned a bit of Italian from her!  I bambini sono molto bene con aiutando le altre persone di diventare meglio con la lingua!  It is pretty cool how that works out.

Allora, I am basically out of time for e-mail, but I will write again next week, and I would be delighted to hear from you! 

Sinceramente,

Con Amore,

Sorella Corey Anne Cherrington