Sorella Steph Serving Italian Style: September 2, 2014

Cari Miei,

So great to hear from you all this week! First things first - shout out to sonn and her farewell! I am SO proud of you bummie! I have already heard so many great things about how well you did, and who is surprised :) hope you know I was praying for you over here on this side of the pond. Can't wait for you to get over here with me!

Things here are going well! First great highlight of the week - we had a baptism! His name is Joseph and he was a member referral from our new convert Roselyn. It was such an awesome experience. My favorite thing though was just seeing how excited he was and how much joy his baptism had already brought him. Best ever:)

This week was a bit of a slower one for us over here because Sorella Baker got pretty sick this week. She caught a really nasty cold so we had to spend some time inside for her to rest and heal. She was a fighter though! Just a few days and we got through it. Plus on the bright side - because we spent a few days inside I ended up doing things like updating the area book and making phone calls and now I'm not afraid to talk on the phone any more. Haha blessings in disguise.

The time we did have was really great though! Unfortunately we weren't able to see any of our investigators, but we did have an awesome FHE with Rina and Sorella D'Onofrio, the relief society president. It honestly couldn't have gone better. Sorella D'Onofrio is a gem. Get this - so for our spiritual message we decided to share the Mosiah 18:8-10. We wanted to talk about how when we are baptised we covenant to love, serve and help one another so that Rina would know she always has a support system in the church. As soon as we finished reading the scriptures sorella D'Onofrio started to smile and said "how funny you decided to share these scriptures with us. It was when I read these scriptures for the first time that I decided to be baptized. I always wanted to help and serve other people so when I read these verses I knew I had found the right church." I mean if that doesnt tell you how amazing of a person this woman is I dont know what will. Anyway the night went really well, and now rina has another friend in church! She still has to watch her mom so she isn't able to come on sundays, but we are working on it :)

We also spent a lot of time visiting with the members this week. Recently I have been studying in Alma, and at the beginning of this week I came across the story of Alma and Amulek. As I read it I remembered a talk that I heard at the MTC that related the story of Alma and Amulek to member missionary work. We decided to share this with our members, which went great. It was such an awesome experience to get to know them a little better and to work with them a little more closely.

And to finish it off we had zone conference yesterday! Which was absolutely fantastic. Seriously just the perfect spiritual reboost. We had trainings from all the district leaders and sorella baker (the sister training leader) about how we can improve in our teaching, and a training from the zone leaders on how we can work better with the members. Then president waddoups gave us a training about how we can have more faith in our work. I learned so much and it was such a great opportunity to feel the spirit and get motivated again in our work! We are really excited to get started with the month of september :)

Thank you everyone for all of your love, support, and prayers. I love this gospel and love that as a missionary I get to see how much joy it brings to peoples lives. There is nothing greater. I hope you all have a great week and I'll talk to you soon!

Sorella Marsh

not a super great picture...but this was the COOLEST thing we got to do for pday! it was called napoli undergroud. we got to go through all these tunnels and and passageways that have been here since the greeks and romans. pretty neat, huh?