BUON NATALE! Can you even believe that christmas is here?! When in the world did that happen! We are so excited over here. It has been such a wonderful time of the year where we get to focus even more on the savior and sharing His message. Plus as missionaries we get a few christmas perks like watching movies, sleeping in, and of course making our skype calls! hooray! so excited to see all of you guys in a few days :)
Get ready everyone, I have so much to tell you about this week. People must be feeling the christmas spirit in the air over here because this week was just incredible! We'll start at the beginning :) Thanks for everyone for all your support about the specialized training. I'm happy to report that it went well! we decided to give a training about how we can magnify our callings as missionaries and focus more on bearing testimony of the savior, specifically in finding and in our first lessons with investigators. It was message we felt very strongly that the missionaries in our zone needed to hear, so i hope they were able to get something out of it.
Our work here is going really well. We were able to meet with Leonardo this week and we decided that we really just needed to take a step back in our lessons with him. In this lesson we just really wanted to focus on the idea of gods love. God loves us so he sent his son, god loves us so he restored the church, god loves us so he will answer our prayers. It went really well. And at the end of the lesson he FINALLY said a prayer! we have been pushing for him to pray with us for about a few weeks now, and he finally did it! it was such a beautiful prayer. His progress is very slow, but it is progress, and thats what is important :)
Also this week we were finally able to meet with luca again! He is still doing really well. Still reading in the book of mormon and saying his prayers, so you cant ask for much more! We taught him the plan of salvation and it went so well. It is a really neat experience to teach him - the doctrines just make sense to him and he really enjoys it. But greatest miracle of all - yesterday he came to church for the first time! he was finally in town during the weekend so he was able to make it for sacrament meeting. the members were so great. They all introduced themselves to him and he said he really enjoyed it. Quick story - our ward mission leader went up and introduced himself to luca saying that he was the leader of the missionaries. after luca turned to me and said so he's like the captain of the armies in the book of mormon? haha already crackin book of mormon jokes. who is this guy! Also while we are talking about church - quick shoutout to my awesome companion who gave a talk! can you believe that? second week in the mission field and she is already up there speakin in front of people. she's the coolest.
This week we also had great progress with our less actives, and i wanted to mention one in particular. Her name is Thelma and she is 17 years old. She is less active just because she has kind of lost sight of what is important. So we had a lesson with her about the sacrament and the atonement and told her about how she can feel the way she did on the day she was baptized. It went so well, and she was so touched by it. On sunday morning we got a text from her saying that she had woken up to come to church, but woke up with a fever so she wouldnt be able to come. Which is too bad, but she had intentions of coming! So we are thrilled about that.
Okay best news - remember that story i told you a few weeks ago about the boyfriend of the girl we met on the street who only spoke spanish?! We FINALLY got to meet him! His name is carlos and he is absolutely fantastic! His story is so incredible. So he knew the missionaries in peru. He lived right by the church there so he would see the missionaries all the time. They would always say hi to each other, but he never actually talked to them or knew what they were doing there. Now he is in Italy for school, but he cant go to school until he learns italian. so right now he isnt working or studying and has a lot of free time on his hands, which has left him with a lot of time to think about and pray to god. Right during this time is when we started calling to get ahold of francesca :) we taught him the restoration and he absolutely loved it. He wants so badly to be closer to God and was so eager and excited about reading in the book of mormon. So incredible! not to mention how amazing it is that we can actually talk to him. Haha when we were trying to set up the appointment he was speaking to me in 100% spanish. But somehow we understood eachother! gift of tongues is real.
We also got another new investigator this week! Her name is veronica. We actually met her a few weeks ago as well. We were at the train station and she needed help buying a ticket. We helped her figure it out, then as she was running to catch her train she gave us her phone numbers saying we could meet up again. We weren't 100% sure that she understood that we were missionaries...but we took the number anyway! haha we have been in touch with her over the past few weeks and then this week we were finally able to see her. sure enough, she had no idea that we were actually missionaries for our church. But when we got to sit down and talk to her about it for a little while she was really touched by our message. She has a lot of faith and believes in Christ, but not in the Catholic church. It was a really beautiful lesson. Not to mention we taught her on the spanish steps, so that was kinda cool. But more importantly she wants to see us again, and we are really excited to be meeting with her. God works in mysterious ways!
So needless to say we are seeing quite a few miracles over here! I feel so blessed to be over here doing this work, especially during this time of christmas! I feel so blessed to have a knowledge of our savior and the gift our heavenly father gave to us. And I am so grateful for the opportunity i have to share with these italian people who have stolen my heart. I love you all so much and I am so excited to see you this week!
Spero che abbiate un buon natale, e ci vediamo presto!
sorella marsh
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