March 16, 2015

Carissimi Miei,

Hello everyone! I can't believe another week has come and gone and I am already here at the computer again. But so great to hear from you all this week. Come sempre :) I'm glad to hear that all is well with everyone! Thanks for all of the pictures and emails - they truly are the highlight of every p-day. Also thank you so much for the st patricks day package!! The new sister that i am serving with is from Colombia, and the caramel brownies literally changed her life. Haha you're a miracle worker mom. 

We had a great week over here in Roma 1! Definitely got the new transfer started off right :) we saw so many miracles and we are already seeing our work start to grow again. Fist off I want to tell you guys about James and Anna. So, a few weeks ago Sorella Jones and I were waiting at a bus stop to go to the church. It was a new bus stop so we weren't quite sure what busses we could take, so we just got on one of the first ones that came and figured it would be fine. Once we got on we saw two people kinda pointing at us and talking in spanish. We had no idea what they were saying until they mumbled the word "mormones." We quickly jumped in and said si! Siamo noi! Haha turns out Anna is a member! She was baptized in Equador about 15 years ago, but lost contact with the church when she moved to Italy. Here she met her husband james who is from El Salvador and he isn't a member. Anna said she wanted to start coming to church again so we exchanged numbers and said we would be in contact. Well it took a few weeks, but yesterday we were finally able to get them to come to church! Anna loved it, she was so thrilled to be back. And james came with her! They agreed to let us come over this week to start teaching james more about our church :) 

This week we were also got a new investigator! His name is George and he is fantastic. Crazily enough he is from Egypt, but has been living in Italy for about 20 years. He is a student from our English course and just one day after class he came up to us and asked us if we could explain to him more about our church. Of course we quickly agreed. I can't remeber if I already told you this, but he actually ended up coming to a baptism that we held in our building last week and he really enjoyed it. We were only to meet with him shortly this week, but the lesson went really well! He is a Christian and he said he loves coming to our church and listening to us talk about Christ during our spiritual thoughts. Such an incredible tender mercy! 

Okay next - get this. So last week at english course one of our students who is an ex-investigator came up to us and said that she wanted to have gospel discussions again. We weren't quite sure what she wanted to be talking about but we agreed to meet with her again. So this week we had an appointment and it was a really great experience. She has been having some personal problems with her work right now and she said she wasn't really sure where to turn to try and find help. She remembered what the other sisters had taught her and decided to try and find help in the Book of Mormon and that is what she wanted to talk to us about. Isnt that incredible! You never know what good will come out of the things you do. She didn't agree to start taking the lessons again, but she said she would read the chapters in the book of mormon that we gave her and she would talk about it with us. 

So as you can see we had some pretty incredible things going on this week :) and our other people are still doing great as well! We met with Anna this week and she is still continuing to progress. She asked us why we end our prayers in the name of Jesus Christ, so this week we did a lesson on the role of the Savior. It was so neat to see her understanding of the importance of Christ increase. This week she agreed to come to the church so we can show her around a bit in hopes that she will feel more comfortable coming to church with us. So we are hoping all goes well with that!

Our new converts are still going strong! We met with Moses this week and did a lesson on the sacrament to try and help him understand the importance of coming to church everyweek. During the lesson we asked him how he felt the day of his baptism and he just smiles and says "i felt so good. It was like paradise." I love the man! We then told him that he can feel that way everyweek when he comes to take the sacrament. He told us that right now he is signed up to be in a choir in another church, but after that he will make sure he comes to church everyweek :) and leonardo is still doing great as well! This week we got him started on his geneology work and he should be recieving the priesthood soon. I don't remember if I've told you abou this, but we are still also working with the new convert who lives in Egypt. Her name is Safaa. She is having a lot of difficulties with the situation she is living in right now. She can't talk much about her religious life and she is under a lot of stress trying to raise her two boys. We wanted to try and help her so this week we did a lesson on the Savior and how she should try and think of Him and what He would do and then try to follow his example. She absolutely loved it. It just brought be back to how simple and beautiful the gospel is. We literally did a whole lesson on the concept of "what would jesus do" and it was everything that she needed to hear.

So needless to say we've been seeing lots of miracles over here. We're definitely starting to see the work grow, and I am so excited to be a part of it. I love being a missionary here in this area at this time. Thank you so much for all of your love, support, and prayers. I am so grateful for each and everyone of you. I hope you have a great week and I'll talk to you soon!

sorella marsh