Staying in Ostia!!!

We got transfer calls, and I am staying in Ostia for another transfer with Sorella Kimball who is coming up from Sicily. :)  I hope, pray, and know that it will be a good transfer.  :)  I will really miss Sister Spicq though.  :(  I hope to see her in Francia after my mission!  That would be so great.

It just means that I will have been here for 6 months after this next transfer is over!  :D  HOLY COW!  It is kinda like Brinkerhoff in Clearlake! Lol, I think about that all the time.  He was such a good example to me. :)  

And I totally called that one: we all knew Brother Throop and Sister Cossel would get married!  Lol, so awesome.  I know they will be so happy together.  :)  Tell them that Sister Cherrington sends a grande abraccio and tanti auguri!  (A big hug and congratulations) :D

OH!  And our golden investigator, Fabrizzio, is getting baptized on the 2nd of November!  (Aka-Dad's Birthday!!  :D)  I am so excited for him!  And when President and Sorella Waddoups came to our ward for church yesterday, President talked to Fabrizzio and Fabrizzio told him that us missionaries could write President a couple days before Fabrizzios baptism to invite Pres!  :D  I am sooo excited for all of this!  Yay, Fabrizzio!

Rene is progressing a bit slower now adays, and we are not sure if he is still interested in joining the church.  We have tried to determine the purpose of our teaching him, but he just agrees with everything and... yah, lol.  He came to church yesterday though, so that is a grande step!  :D

SOOOO, Fabrizzio also told us that October is the most beautiful time of the year in Roma.  :)  I am very excited to be here for it and also excited that I fulfilled my promise to Alessandra that I would stay in Roma for the whole Summer!  :D  And I am so glad that I did.  I really love Rome, and Ostia feels like my second home now.  And, I'm telling you guys, (famiglia) we've gotta get out here after my mission so I can show you around Ostia and you can meet my fantastic member friends!  :) 

WHICH...  everyone was so happy to hear that I am staying!  :D  Man, I love the members here...  They are just the coolest!  :)  Especially Teresa was happy that I am staying here.  :)  I really love her.

well, sorry for the brevity of this week's email; I am hoping that the pictures will say it all for this week.  :)  Ciao for now!  :)

Love,

Sorella Corey Cherrington

October 2, 2013 Blog post

Hello, famiglia!  :)

We had such a great week this week!  I just don’t know where to start.  Well, yesterday there was a sciopero (strike), which is when the metro shuts down and a lot of the buses shut down with it for several hours during the day.  It was really interesting because we did a scambio during the strike, and me and Sister Fuller had to take a blue bus from Lido Centro to Fiumicino Airport to then take the train that would take us nearest to Laurentina.  It was actually lots of fun to have to figure out an alternative route.  I really enjoyed it.  :)  And our scambio went great!  We almost didn’t do it because of the strike, but we persevered and went ahead anyways. I am glad we did too because when Sister Fuller and I went to the park to do some finding, we ran into this lady that Sister Fuller met the last time she had come to Ostia!  Meraviglioso!  And afterwards, Sister Fuller was able to give spot on advice to one of the people we saw later that night.  The Sorella to whom she gave advice said many times, "It was not by mistake that you came here on this scambio.  It was really cool to see this happen.  

PLUS!  We ate at Angela’s house (one of the members here) after we practiced a plan of Salvation lesson on her and Angelo! (It was really a miracle because Angelo never agrees to hear the lessons, but this time, he stayed!)  Her husband, who is not a member but knows tons about the church, and has a butcher shop in Laurentina, cooked for us some really cool Roman dishes.  I am not sure what it was called, but he made this really amazing plate from cow’s tail that was kind of like a stew.  He said he got the cow tail from an old lady and he cooked the soup for several hours just so we could try it!  He and Angela are so cool.  And Angelo calls me "amica" sempre because we are buddies. :)  I love their family.  And Sofia!  She is just the coolest.  I played this game with her that kids play here (not sure of the name)  and she beat me four times!  Che brava!  ;)  I love her.  

Annnnd, the weather has been soooo good lately.  :)  But I am soooo tired!  Lol.  But I just have to remember that, when I show Heavenly Father that I have the desire to work hard and to do His will, I get the strength that I thought I didn’t have before.  It is really amazing.  

Then, there is RENE!  Che grande!  He speaks French and Italian, and he is originally from the Dem. Rep. of Congo, but has lived in Italy for several years now.  He says "Oo-la-la!" A lot and has a really strong testimony of God's love for him.  He had a baptismal date before Sister Spicq and I were in Ostia, and he said the other night that he would still like to get baptized.  He just says that he wants to be 100% ready for it.  And I completely agree; we just need to show him how to prepare and let him find for himself when or if he wants to make the necessary changes in life to be baptized.  He is a really awesome person, and I can’t wait to see him again!

OOOOOHHH!!  Then there is our lovely bar Siciliano.  :)  We went after English course to get some p-day eve Gelato and to say hi to Alfonzo and Marco.  It was all good and we even got to give a short English lesson to Alfonzo!  It was really nice.

I have sooooo much else I could say, but I lack the time to tell you.  :)  Love you guys, have a great week!

Con cuore,

Sorella Cherrington

Another great week with my new companion!!!

Hello Everyone!  :D 

I love you all!  I am sooo happy in Ostia!  I know the city soooo well now, and we have been seeing so many miracles!  Most of them have to do with changes in the daily plans that we make.

We had a nice day in Laurentina last week where we visited a new convert si chiama "Roxana"  :)  I love her!  She is Peruvian and has a year old son named Dorian.  They are just the coolest.  So we visited them, and were planning on going home right after because Laurentina is pretty far away from the Mainland of Ostia.  (Our area is HUGE!!! and goes from Rome to all of the coastal area, stopping at Ladispoli and right before the Napoli Zone.  It is pretty amazing).  THEN, I felt inspired to call Teresa and go over to her house, so my companion and I decided to follow the Spirit and go over to see Teresa.  (I LOVE Teresa btw!)  We will be bffs after the mission!  She served a mission in Missouri in the 80s and is one of the coolest, funniest people I have ever met!  (She is the one with the really curly hair in the pictures).  She made us lunch and then made plans for us to see her brother and his friend (neither of whom are members!)  We got to talk to them for a while and we are planning to give her brothers friend a Libra did Mormon in Serbian because it is her native language.  We are really excited!  :D  

POI, we were inspired to go see the Torres Family.  We went over to their house and, as I was trying to tune Juans guitar, Raquel told us that she wants us to start teaching a bible class at her house!  She said she will invite friends too, so it will be a great experience.  THEN, we went over to the Battistinis house, and they told us if the missionary successes that they started having after we invited them to Pray for missionary opportunities every day!  Sister Battistini is on fire!  She has talked to a plumber who is interested, and gave us a referral for a man who wants to meet the missionaries!  :D  Every member a missionary!  Ostia ward is sooo great!  

After that day ended, I seriously felt like ever step that we had taken was inspired.  WOW; it was sooooo cool.  

Then, we had another day where we went over to Ardea (2 hours away!  Holy cow, our Zone is too big...)  to see a former investigator named Odile.  She is really great!  She is evangelist, but had a baptismal date before and really wants us to start having a church service closer to her!  (Which we can totally do!) She also said that she wants to come out and do finding with us!  She is so cool!  She is originally from Africa, and Speaks French, so Sister Spicq and her got to read some scriptures out loud for us in French the other day!  It was really cool!  :)  

Annnd, yesterday, we had a plan to go teach Alessandra and Massimo with Sorella Alicino, but they ended up cancelling, so we had nada to do!  So, we tried to make appointments, nothing was working, so we decided to get on a bus for Piazza Gaspari to go see Tina Frau.  I called Carmello to see if Tina (his mom) would be there.  Lol, he said "Non lo so, ma venite!"  Haha, sooo we went over to Carmellos and Sorella Alicino (our ward missionary) shared a really nice thought with Carmello (because Tina ended up not being there) from Job 22.  We also talked with Carmello about his goal to go to the Temple around Christmas this year!  We are so excited for his goal and we know that he can accomplish it!  

Oh!  One more thing before I go:  Lately, for English course, I have gotten to be the "Facilitator" and I love it!  This means that I get to lead the English lessons that we have, and help the students learn the new words and practice their conversational skills.  It is ssoooooooo cool!!!  XD I love it.  

Welp, that’s all I’ve got for now!  Until next week!

Con tutto il mio cuore, 

Sorella Corey Cherrington

Inizio con un nuovo compagno e molte benedizioni dal nostro Padre celeste!!!

This week was sooo fantastic!  :D  We saw miracles every day, and I love emy new companion sooo much!  She actually reminds me a lot of Shelby! lol.  She is the best!  We always cook together, and she has all sorts of cool French recipes because she is from France.  She also speaks English and Italian like a Pro, and is a really hard worker.  I am just sad that we won’t be together for two transfers because she is "dying" this transfer.  (Here, "dying" means finishing her mission.  It is one of those crazy missionary terms in the field.  :)  We have set so many goals for the transfer and are hoping to see five baptisms!  We have lots of faith!  But we know that the possibilities we have to baptize the people we are seeing are the work of God- we just facilitate the teaching of these people so they can become closer to their Heavenly father and grow a testimony of their own.  It is truly a blessing to be an instrument in the Lords hands.  Sorella Spicq always says that we have to enjoy everything we do on our missions because each thing we do as missionaries is a privilege.  I truly believe that and I love being a missionary!

So, I should tell you all about the lovely people we are teaching.  :) There is Giuliani who is from Romania and works as a cook.  I stopped him last transfer when we were in a rush. 

He has a really special spirit, and his family is extremely Orthodox.  (He got really excited when I told him I have a friend from Serbia btw!  :D  DORA!!  I hope you read this!  ;)  And his father and brother are priests.  He was going to be a priest himself, but he decided against it.  And he has a sincere desire to seek the truth, has loved our message, and believes that Joseph Smith was, indeed, chosen ("scelto") for the work that he did.  It is sooo cool to see Giuleano smile when he hears our words and to hear how he believes it is true.  He just wants to read the Book of Mormon before being baptized because he wants to know that it is all true.  Which is awesome, because that is what we want!  We want people to search things out for themselves so they can gain their own testimony.  We are just here to explain things by the Spirit so people can learn more.

THEN!  There is Francesco!  XD I love that guy!  Okay, we met Francesco last transfer on the metro because he was wearing a Pink FLOYD Shirt and I freaked out a little bit and said, "Hey!  Pink Floyd!   I love them!"  We then started a conversation and became buddies!  Then we started teaching him the lessons.  He is really genuine and kind of shy.  He wants a bit of time to think about being baptized, so we gave him a calendar of things he can do to gain a testimony before a date we have set for a possible battesimo for him.  He also prayed at the end of our lesson yesterday, so he is making great progress!  Also, my lovely companion, Sorella Spicq, asked him how he met the missionaries, and he recounted the same story that I just told you!  It was really cool to hear his perspective.  Lol, "Lei ha visto la mia camicia di Pink Floyd, abbiamo parlato, e poi abbiamo fatto amicizia!"  Francesco is quite lovely.  :)  He is older (50s) and comes from Sardegna (lui é Sardo).  It is the best!

Now, about English course!  :D  So, last week, we had only one student and two students the time before.  BUT yesterday, we saw miracles when (after making some phone calls to old eng course students, we had 6 students!  Our class is growing, you guys!  XD They are all really great, and we had lots of fun learning/teaching English together!  We have a new program from the church too, and we are the first LDS mission outside of the US to use it!  :D  So, we fantastic English teachers in the Italy Rome Mission are the pilot program for this English course!  I really love it, and how well-organized it is.  I really hope the church continues to use it!  Also, people are really excited that they get a certificate of participation at the end!  AND, when we went to gelato afterwards at our fantastic Bar Siciliano, we talked to our buddy, Alfredo (runs the store) and he wants us to come and teach a course of English there too!  He said that we would come by on a week night and just teach in his Bar Siciliano!  Soooo cool!  We also left a Book of Mormon on his shelf of "Bring a Book, Take a Book" books.  (Lol, hope that makes sense... ;).

OH!  And I can’t forget: We taught a lesson with Barbara and Carmello, which went great!  Lol, when Sister Spicq era per disegnare un immagine del Vangelo di Gesu Cristo, Carmello got up and said, "I will draw it!  What are we drawing, the plan of Salvation?"  He is so funny and so cool!  He and Barbara have really strong testimonies and we are thankful that they were there with us.  Family Home evening at Carmellos was really great too.  Emiliano taught us a lesson about the Book of Mormon, we gave a Triple combo set of Scriptures to Giorgia (a 12 year old cousin of Emilianos who was baptized a year ago, but is not really interested in church anymore), and Carmello cooked a crab pasta for us (XD) with TONS of tiny crabs in it.  He was impressed that I have no fear, and said "Yeah!  That’s right, you like fishing!"  Because he saw my photo album with an old pic of me and Buster with a fishing pole.  :)  It was soooo fun.  He also cooked whole fishes for us.  It is really cool!  Him and Emiliano really do fish the whole ocean!  

Well, that is all for now! I love my companion, I love the miracles we see every day, and I thank my Heavenly Father for the many blessings that we recieve every day here in Ostia.  Ciao!  Until next week!