Sorella Steph Serving Italian Style: February 2, 2015

Carissimi Miei,

Hello everyone! Buon Febbraio :) what in the world where did January go?! Seriously can't even believe it. Thanks everyone for all of the emails and pictures this week! So great to hear from all of you. I don't think I can ever say it enough, but I am one blessed Sorella. Thank you Thank you.

Okay first things first...I have wonderful news for you all. Last week on P-day we found a blessed little filipino shop that sells ROOTBEER. There is Mug Rootbeer in rome!!! That's when you know that God looks out for his missionaries. Haha it was a great start to a great week! One of the highlights of this week was definitely Capi conference. I always learn so much and it's just so great to get guidance on areas where we can improve. Also President Waddoups spoiled us and let us watch a tid-bit of meet the mormons! So so great. I absolutely loved it. So that was a rare treat for us :)

Alright so here is an update on how things are going over here in my neck of the woodson my side of the pond! The work here is moving forward and we are so excited about it. Right now our main focus is getting Leonardo ready for his baptism! We saw such great progress with him this week. We were a bit concerned that the only reason he was wanting to get baptized was just to make Ala happy, so we decided to do a lesson just on baptism. We wanted to focus on the idea that at baptism we make a covenant with God, so it should be a decision we make between us and Him. The lesson went really well, and Leonardo understood the importance of what we were saying. He is concerned about knowing if he is doing the right thing by being baptized before he feels absolutely certain that what we have taught is true. So we went through and read the baptismal questions with him so he could know what is expected of him and all of that. He was able to respond to all of the questions saying that he believes that it is true, he still just doesn't feel like he has recieved that confirmation. So in our next lesson with him we focused on fasting and how that can be a way he can recieve that confirmation from the Spirit. He agreed to do the fast so we are excited to follow up with him on that. It has been a pretty incredible process to work with him. He still doesn't feel absolutely certain that what we've taught is true, he says that he would like to be able to say "io so" like the rest of us do. But he says that with or without that confirmation he wants to be baptized on the 21st. So we are going to move forward with faith and do all we can to help him recognize and strengthen his testimony. Keep him in your prayers!

Our other investigators are also doing well. We were finally able to see Luca this week, which was great. We taught him about the commandments to read, pray, and come to church. We really just wanted to emphasize that through doing these things he will be able to recieve an answer that what we are teaching him is true. The lesson went really well, and he recommited to reading the book of mormon from the beginning. If anything it was just a really good lesson because it gave us the opportunity to understand what is holding him back a bit more. He is having a hard time understanding why he has to make a choice between the catholic and the LDS church, especially when all of his family is catholic and it means he would have to completely change his lifestyle. In the end he did agree to be more dedicated in his reading and prayers so that he can recieve an answer from God about what he has to do. So we're back on track and moving forward!

We also saw an incredible miracle this week with our less active Rosa. As we were planning for her lesson we got the feeling that we just needed to share a message of encouragement with her. We decided that we wanted to just take a minute and point out all the blessings she has already recieved from her efforts to come back to church, and promise her more blessings if she continues to do so. Before we even start the lesson she says sorelle i have to tell you about all of these things that are happening! Then continues to tell us about all her prayers that God has answered, and how many blessing she has seen in her life lately. So we jumped right in and helped her to make the connection that those blessings are coming from her obedience. It was incredible. We then started talking about her husband, Mauro, who is not a member. We asked her if it would be alright if we started including him in our visits and started teaching him, and she quickly agreed! So this week we will start meeting with the whole family :)

This we we also got a few new investigators! First I'll tell you about Antonello. One day he just showed up to the church after english course asking about family history. Turns out he has been doing his geneology work for years and absolutely loves it. So we quickly introduced him to the members working in the family history center and got everything set up. We asked him if it would be alright if we explained a little bit about why family history work was important to our church and he quickly agreed! So we taught him the plan of salvation, and he was really interested in it. He isn't an extremely religious person, his main belief is that God is too far away from man for us to be able to understand who He is. But he agreed to meet with us again so we could talk about it more! So we are excited to see what happens there.

Our other new investigators are a father and daughter, their names are Sixio and Ilenia (no idea how to spell that one) and they are so dang cute! We actually met them on the bus about a month ago, but just between the holidays and conflicting schedules we were never able to meet with them. But just goes to show that persistence pays off as a missionary! Sixio is from Peru. He is Catholic, but very open to hearing about other religions. Ilenia is 11 years old, and she is the sweetest girl I have ever known. She is super shy, but just soaked up every word we were saying during our lesson. We decided to just go through an introduction to the book of mormon with them, and they loved it. They agreed to start reading and we are going to see them this week to see how it went!

I seriously feel so blessed to be serving these people here as a missionary. I feel like I learn more from them than I could ever teach. Thank you for all of your love, support, and prayers. I couldn't be out here doing this work without your guys rooting me on back home. Love you all so much! Have a great week and talk to you soon :)

sorella marsh

capi conference!