Carissimi Miei,
Thank you all so much for all of the birthday wishes!! I seriously cant believe how lucky i am! It has been the greatest day. The other sorelle have been so good to me. I woke up to signs, balloons, and french toast for breakfast. Then I got to open up my birthday package with all the cute presents from mom! Then i got to talk to all of you, and now we are going to head out and go explore rome! Couldnt ask for a much better birthday :) I am definitely one very blessed sorella.
It was so great to hear from everyone! I am glad that you are all doing well. Looks like you all had a fun new years! New years as a missionary was a bit different. Haha we did wake up at midnight to blow some whistles though. We could only stay awake for about 10 seconds before we all crawled back to bed, but did celebrate the new year! Then the next day we had our deep cleaning, so that is always exciting. It has been a really great time of reflection though, especially with me coming up on my year mark so soon. It was a perfect time to look at the progress I've made and evaluate the areas that I still want to improve. So all in all it has been a great time of year!
It was a great week for us over here in Rome! Unfortunately with all of the holidays we haven't been able to see very many of our investigators. The holidays last a bit longer over here because they have an extra holiday called la epifania that is on the 6th of january. A witch comes and gives all the kids candy and its great. So we are hoping that with the holidays officially over this week we will be able to see a few more of our investigators. On top of that Leonardo has been sick so we werent able to meet with him, and luca's mom has been in the hospital so he has been extremely busy as well. We are hoping things will calm down a bit this week though. But that being said we saw TONS of progress with our less actives this week, which we are absolutely thrilled about!
First off we met with Mila Hernandez. I wrote about her a few weeks ago. She is a less active who left the church because she was offended, but really wants to be coming back. She is the SWEETEST lady. We got to her house and she instantly starts frying up eggs and cheese and making us a salad because she is concerned that we dont eat enough. I assured her that definitely was not a problem, but there was no stopping that woman. So we ate our eggs, then we sat down and taught the restoration to her. It was such a great lesson. We just really wanted to focus on helping her regain her testimony. At the end of the lesson we invited her to read the scriptures everyday and pray to ask for a reconfirmation of her testimony, and see agreed :) so we are excited to follow up on that.
This week we also met with la coppia navarro, and it was the most incredible lesson. We went in prepared to introduce them to geneology becaues we wanted to get them started so that they can have some names to take with them to the temple after the go through for themselves. We started off the lesson by asking them how they were, and sorella navarro just opened up to us about how she was hit so strongly by the spirit in church a few days earlier that they weren't living their lives in order. There was a speaker from the stake high coucil who talked about new years resolutions, and it just hit them so hard that they had lost track of the little things. So we sat down and made a new years resolution list with them. I asked her what she felt were things they needed to work on and she gave the most beautiful response. She said first, we need to be praying as a couple everyday. Second, we need to be reading the Book of Mormon everyday. Third, we need to be holding family home evening. And fourth, we need to be paying our tithing. Such an incredible moment to see that the spirit truly is the teacher, and can testify to each and every one of us the things that we need in our lives. So we quickly made the list and got started on helping them reach their new goals!
This week we were also able to see Rosa. She is a less active who is married and has 3 kids, but i dont think the husband or any of the children are members. She has a sweet testimony though, and wants to be coming to church. She just feels overwhelmed bringing all three kids to church on her own, especially because they are always sick. So we shared a spiritual thought with her about living the gospel joyfully. We read from president uchtdorfs talk from this last womens conference. It was a realy great lesson, and at the end we asked her what she felt like she could do to live the gospel more in her life. She told us that she wanted to start reading her scriptures and praying everyday. She is such a sweet lady and she has a lot of potential to be coming back to church, so we are really excited to be working with her.
This week we also saw a lot of progress with Thelma. She is 17 years old and has been less active for a few years now. She wants to be living the gospel, she just has a hard time motivating herself a lot of the time. She is so sweet though. We went to go visit her and she runs back to her room, comes back holding her personal progress and says that she has always wanted to do it and asked us if we could help her. So we got started with page one! We read a few scriptures on faith and talked about what it means to have faith and how we can develop more faith in our lives. In the end she agreed to say her prayers everyday this week to see if it helped her faith grow! She's so dang cute.
And last but surely not least, we were finally able to meet with Rosita again this week, the less active who absolutely adores Rachie. Greatest of all, she came back to church! She could only stay for relief society and sunday school, but she came! She is such a nut, but i love her so much. After church she asked us to help her move houses, so we packed up all her stuff and carried it all across town. While we were on the bus we were able to talk to her about her feelings at church, and she was so happy. She committed to making an appointment with the bishop to get a few other things in order so she can get back into full activity.
Overall this week I have just been so amazed at the love that our Heavenly Father has for each of his children. It strikes me over and over again as we work with all of these less actives that the Lords never forgets any of His sheep. It has also struck me over and over again as we have been helping these people try to get their lives back on track that it really is the little things that make the difference. It is our daily scripture study, prayers, service to others, and partaking of the sacrament each week that keeps our lives in order. I am so grateful for the simplicity of the gospel, and for the unending love that our Heavenly Father has for us.
I love you all so much and I hope you have the greatest week! Thank you again for all of the birthday wishes! It has definitely been a very special one :)
a la prossima!
sorella marsh
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