May 26, 2014

Hey everyone :)

So great to hear from you all this week! Your trip looked so great! I'm sure it wasn't nearly as much fun without me and sonn...but I hope you could still enjoy it ;) but seriously thanks for all the pictures and videos! It was so fun to see everyone. From the pictures it looks like a beautiful place. I'm glad you all had such a great time! As for me it was an awesome week in Palermo! I have lots to tell you guys about and not a lot of time to do it... so I apologize in advance for the crazy mess that is about to be this e-mail.

First of all I want to share with you guys the training that my district leader gave to us in district meeting this week. It was on faith and setting goals. The two scriptures he used were Hebrews 11:1 and James 2:17. In Hebrews 11 it says that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. In James it says faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone. So he used these two scriptures to create a faith cycle. First, as we see in Hebrews, faith starts with hope. A belief in something that we would like to be true. But in Hebrews it also says that faith is evidence of things not seen. So how does our hope turn to evidence? That is where the scripture in James comes in. Through action. It is through the trial of our faith that we move from hope to evidence. Afterall, faith without action is just another belief. So after we have hope, we act, and we recieve the evidence, what happens? Our testimonies are strengthened through the process. We gain more hope, and the process starts all over again.

My district leader then related this cycle to our goals. First we have to hope. We have to believe in these things that we want to be true. Then we have to act. Then we will see the results and the progress. This was something that really touched both me and sorella Mitsvotai. We talking about it later and decided that we wanted to put this into action and make a goal as a companionship. We were looking at our work for the past few days and realized that everyday we had gotten at least one number from a new contact. We decided that our goal would be to keep that up, so that at the end of the week we would have recieved at least one new number of someone to contact each day.

For a few days it was going really well! We have found a lot of potential investigators and it looked like we were going to reach our goal. Then we went out yesterday. We had been out contacting for hours and we just were not having any success. Who knows why, but people were just a titch more grumpy than usual. Haha what can ya do. Anyway, it was getting towards the end of the night and it looked like we weren't going to reach our goal. I was a little discouraged, so I did the only thing you can really do as a missionary - say a prayer. I remember thinking "Heavenly Father I want so badly to fulfill our goals. I want to be able to meet someone that we can share the gospel with. But how are we going to do that if no one will  listen to us??" Next thing you know, we see one of our members, Alex, riding his bike down the street. He pulls up to us and says that he has a friend who wanted to learn English, and who was willing to listen to our message about the gospel. So he gave us her number and said to give her a call.  And there it was. The last number we needed to reach our goal. I know when we put our trust in the Lord and do everything we possibly can, He will make up for the rest.

Things here in Palermo are going great. Sorella Mitsvotai and I have been working hard this week, and the Lord has definitely blessed us. We picked up 3 new investigators this week, which we are thrilled about! Their names are Vincenzo, Lila, and Pasqualino. Vincenzo and Lila are married and they have a son who is about 10. Lila actually has 2 sisters who were baptized about 20 years ago, so she knows a lot about the church. We have had one lesson with them so far, and it went really well. They said they would come to church this week so we are super excited about that! Pasqualion is a man we met on the street. He says he is curious in what makes our religion different from others. We have only met with him once as well, but he has already started reading in the Book of Mormon and agreed to continue meeting with us! So overall there is lots of exciting stuff going on over here :)

It has been really neat to see how much more I can participate in these lessons with our new investigators than I was able to in lessons I had when I first got here. My language and teaching skills both still need a lot of work, but it is really great to feel like I can contribute more. Slowly but surely it is all coming along!

I love you guys all so much! I hope you have a great week. Can't wait to hear from you all soon! Thanks for all your love, support, and prayers. It means the world.

love you!

sorella marsh.

hi. sorry i cant send pictures this week. the computer i am at is dumb and wont show me a preview of the pictures so i have no idea what i am sending. ill try again next week!

love you!