August 25, 2014

Cari Miei,

thanks everyone for all the great pictures and emails! So great to hear from all of you, I am glad you are doing well. Quick heads up before I forget - so next week we will be having zone conference on monday, which means pday will be tuesday. So when you don't hear from me on monday thats why.

Anyway, this week was another great one to be a missionary! The people we are working with are all making great progress, it is such an exciting work to be a part of. We'll start off with Peppe, one of our new converts. So this week we got to have two meal appointments with him and his family, which is HUGE. Peppe is 75 years old and his whole family is catholic and they were very against him being baptized and very against the church. So the fact that they are even letting us into their home now is awesome. Plus we got lots of great food, so I was a happy camper :) great story about peppe. So when we met with him at the beginning of the week we left him with commitment to read about the tree of life. We figured when we went back at the end of the week we could follow up and talk about the meaning of it, how it applies to him, all that stuff. So we go back at the end of the week and he says "listen. what you gave me wasnt enough. I read about the tree of life, but i didnt even know what it meant. I had to keep reading!" he then proceeds to pull out a notebook with a picture he drew of the tree of life, complete with a summary of what he learned. Haha sorella baker and I just looked at each other and said "welp, there goes our lesson plan." Peppe is the best ever.

We also saw some great progress with Rina the less active member we are working with. For the first time in 20 years she started to read the book of mormon! Can you believe it?! She is loving it too. She is such a great lady. She has so much faith and wants so badly to do what is right. We are continuing to work with her on how we can get her back to church. We have a few appointments set up for her to meet some of the members this week so we are really excited to see how that goes.

As for our investigators Amalia is doing well! She couldnt come to church yesterday, which we were bummed about, but we had a great lesson with her about prophets this week. We talked about how God works through prophets so we can know the things that he wants us to do in life and she loved it. The highlight though was when we showed her a mormon message from president monson about prayer. At the end she started tearing up and we asked her to describe what she was feeling. She said she just felt something strong inside of her, something peaceful. We told her that was the spirit testifying to her that the things we had said were true. It was such an incredible moment. Her progress is slow, but it is defintiely moving in the right direction. Which is all that matters :)

Unfortunately we weren't able to meet with Theresa or our other investigator Antonella this week. They were both out of town. But we did have a lesson with an old investigator! So her name is shirley and she has been in Rome for the past two months so that it why whe havent met with her. She is from the Philipeans and she is absolutley fantastic. I have never met a person so happy and just filled with pure joy. I love being around her. When we met with her this week we taught her the plan of salvation, which was great. She was recently diagnosed with cancer so she loved the idea of our resurrected glorified bodies. She goes back to rome this week so we wont be able to see her again for a few weeks, but I am excited to be working with her in the future.

Well I think that is about it from over here! I love you guys all so much, I wish I could thank you enough for all you do for me. Thank you for all the love, support, and prayers. I am such an incredibly blessed missionary. I hope you all have a great week and I will talk to you soon!

Vi voglio un MONDO di bene :)

sorella marsh

August 18, 2014

Cari miei, 

Thanks everyone for writing this week! No matter what crazy stuff we are out doing on p-days, the highlight is always hearing from all of you :) you guys are the greatest! It was another awesome week over here in Pozzuoli and I have tons to tell you guys about. So here we go!

So this week was a bit of a different one for us as far as our schedule goes. We had to go down to Napoli to pick up Sorella Baker's permesso on wednesday, and Friday was Fer D'Agosto. Which is basically the Italian equivalent of labor day. It's just a day where everyone takes of work. Anyway, because everyone is usually gone it isnt a very productive day for missionary work so we spend the day inside doing deep cleaning. So between both of those days our schedule got a little mixed up and we weren't able to stick to our usual schedule. Unfortunately because of that we weren't able to see Theresa this week. But when we talked to her on the phone she said that everything was going well and that she was still reading the Book of Mormon! So hopefully all is well there :)

We did get to see Amalia though! She is doing SO much better. As we have been working with her this week we have really been trying to help her grow her testimony. We talked about prayer and reading the scriptures, but she was still showing a little bit of doubts. So in our next lesson we talked about the commandment to be bapitzed. She still isnt completely sure, but we are definitely working in the right direction! She even came to church yesterday! That was the greatest ever. She said she loved the lessons and she just left church so much happier than she normally is. She is going through a pretty hard time right now, so it was so awesome to see how church could help her find some peace and happiness.

Speaking of church - the COOLEST thing happened this week! But first I gotta back up and give you the background. So after our appointment with Amalia on Saturday we were at the bus stop waiting to go home. The busses aren't very reliable here, so you never really know how long you will be there waiting. Anyway, this was right before lunch so needless to say I was really hoping that a bus would come soon. We ended up waiting for a while, when down the road we saw an old lady pushing a huge suitcase and a small cart. She seemed to be having a pretty hard time, then the suitcase fell and she tripped a little bit. Sorella Baker and I immediately turned to each other and decided we needed to go help her. So we ran down the stairs and picked up her luggage for her, and carried her stuff to the stop. When we got to the stop I stayed and talked with her, but a man pulled sorella baker to the side and said "where is your church? I saw you on the bus this morning, and I saw what you just did for that lady. There needs to be more people in the world who have Jesus in their lives like you do. I would like to come to your church." So that is how we met cornelius!

The next day we headed to church. Once we got there we pulled out the phone and saw that we had 5 missed calls from him. We called him back right away and turns out he was on the bus trying to get to church! The only problem is that he had no idea where it was. Cornelius is from Nigeria, and he has only been in Italy for about 2 months. So he doesnt speak Italian and he doesnt know the area very well. After trying to explain the address to him a few times, sorella baker finally just asked for him to pass the phone to someone  else that she could explain it to. So he passed the phone and this is how the conversation went - "what is the name of the church where this man needs to go?" "the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints" "Is it an american church?" "yes there are americans that come to church here" "great! I am going there too!" "what? what is your name??" It was Soloman, one of the members in our ward! Can you believe that?? Of all the buses he could have gotten on and of all the people he could have talked to, he found a member of our church. So they were able to come to church together, and now the elders have an appointment set up with cornelis this week!

Also, slight side note. Yesterday in church I taught the sunday school class and gave a talk in Italian. What in the world?! Who would have ever thought that would happen. Gift of tongues is real people.

Yikes this is getting long but there is one more story I want to share with you guys. So back to Ferr D'Agosto. We spent the day inside cleaning, but then went out in the night to do some finding. We couldn't decide if we wanted to stay in pozzuoli, or if we should head down to another city called Bacoli. While we were at the train station trying to make a decision, we kept feeling like we needed to go to Bacoli. But, being the indesicive (how on earth do you spell that word?) person that I am, we couldnt make a choice. Luckily Heavenly Father made it for us. He sent a train so we decided to get on. We got to Bacoli and ended up waiting for about 30 minutes for a bus. After that we decided to just call it and head back to Pozzuoli. We were both a little bummed because we felt like we had made the wrong choice, but then on the train back we met Elena. Elena is from Ukraine and was only in Napoli for vacation, so she didn't speak one word of italian or english. But somehow we were able to communicate the idea that we were missionaries from our church, and that missionaries could come visit her in Ukraine if she would like. She gave us her name and number to be sent off as a referral! It was the neatest experience. Just goes to show that it really isn't the things we say that have an effect on people, it's the way we make them feel.

Well I think that about sums it up for this week! I love you guys so much and I am so grateful for you! Until next week!

sorella marsh

meet arianna! one of our new converts :)

 Theresa :)

 this is silvana :)

 pozzuoli at night :)

 Castel St Elmo at the top of napoli!

August 11, 2014

cari miei,

hey everyone! sorry I dont have much time this week. We are going to see Mt Vesuvius for P day so we have to head out in a little bit to catch the train. Sorry I wont be able to respond to everyone personally this week, but thank you so much for writing! Luckily this internet point has a printer so I will be able to print off your emails and read them later this week!

This week was another great one to be a missionary! We had some incredible experiences. I dont remember if I told you guys about this, but last week we got a referal from our branch president and his wife. They brought a family to the activity at carney park, and they are incredible. We were able to meet with them this week and they seriously are such a great family. They have four kids, all of which are awesome. I mean the little two and a half year old was walking around offering us drinks when our classes were empty. Who does that! We watched the restoration film with them and after the little 9 year old was just pounding us with questions. It was so cool. The parents are obviously great as well. It was so fun to have the opportunity to teach them. Unfortunately they dont actually live in our area, they were just here on vacation. But we are working on getting more direct information of their adress so we can send them off as a referral.

As far as our work here in Pozzuoli goes things are just chugging along! We were able to see Amalia and Theresa this week, and I honestly could not be more thrilled. Lets talk about amalia first. So the first time we met with her this week we just had a much needed heart to heart. We talked to her about where her testimony is at, and how she was feeling about the church. She told us she didnt know if she believed that what we were teaching her is true. So we talked a little bit about prayer and what she has to do to recieve her answers. She admitted to us that she isnt putting in the work she needs to in order to recieve an answer. So that was really great that she realized that. She recommited to praying, reading the scriptures, and coming to chuch so we are thrilled with the progress she is making again. Later this week we met with her and watched the restoration. At the end she said she could feel her testimony growing of the truthfulness of the gospel. Greatest ever!

Our appointments with Theresa went really well also. She seriously is the most prepared person I have ever met to recieve the gospel. Every time we meet with her the Spirit is so strong. I wish I could think of the words to describe it better. She is just so sensitive to the spirit, and even recognized that it is the spirit that she is feeling. Earlier this week we met with her and taught her the restoration, and it went so incredibly well. At the beginning she said that she didn't believe that God would restore His church through a modern day prophet, but after we talked to her a bit more about it and testified of the necesity of prophets the spirit bore testimony to her and her whole idea completely changed. It was so incredible. At the end of the lesson we asked her to say the prayer, and it was one of the greatest experiences Ive had on my mission. We asked her if she would like to ask god if what we had told her was true, and she said yes. She started saying her prayer, and was so overcome by the spirit that she couldnt even continue. We sat there in silence for at least 5 minutes (you know I was just freaking out. never prayed so hard in my whole life) then when she could finally finish all she could say was this is too beautiful. There is nothing that is more beautiful than this. 

Later this week we met with her and taught her the plan of salvation. That went really well also. She accepted everything we taught and told us that she believed everyone. Unfortunately we did run into a bit of a problem with how to get her to church. She doesnt have a car and she literally lives out in the middle of nowhere. So we are going to have to work a little bit harder with that one. Please keep her in your prayers. She is so ready for the message of the gospel, I know it would bless her life so much. We just gotta work a little harder to find a way to make it happen!

All of our other people are also doing great! Rina is making progress towards coming back to church, and even told us this week that she wants to stop smoking. So we are excited to help her out with that. All of our new converts are doing great as well. We actually had lunch yesterday with Peppe and his wife, which was a huge step. His family was very against him getting baptized, so we are really grateful that they are at least opening up to the idea of having us in their home. 

Well I think that about sums it up for me! Thank you all so much for your love, support, and prayers. I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to be here as a missionary. I hope you all have a great week, cant wait to hear from you soon!

sorella marsh

August 4, 2014

Cari miei,

hey everyone! So great to hear from you all this week! I loved getting all the pictures and videos. Looks like the hike was fun down in rockville! blessed blessed rockville. I love all the pics and videos of all the little ones too. Keep those comin :) it was another great week to be a missionary here in Pozzuoli! We have a lot to cover from this week - buckle up :)

So remember that less active named Rina I told you about last week? We were able to meet with her again this week, but without her husband. At first we were really bummed out by it, but in the end I think it might have been better. That way we were really able to focus on her and her needs right now. We taught her the plan of salvation and it went really well! We went through the lesson, then at the end pulled out the pictures of our families to talk about how our families can be together forever. You guys really are such a huge part of the work that I do here. The spirit was so strong, and at the end of the lesson we asked her where she wants to go after this life. She said of course the celestial kingdom. Then we asked her what she needed to do to get there. She said she needed to come back to church. So we invited her to do so and she said she would! She has to take care of her mom for the next few weeks, but she said once her caretaker comes back from vacation she will come back to church. Such an incredible miracle! 

Our new converts are also doing well. I really enjoy doing lessons with them, it is one of my favorite parts of the work here. Haha it is just so awesome to see someone who was just recently baptized. Each of their testimonies are just on fire and they soak up everything they can get. It is such a neat experience to work with them. They are also all doing really well with adjusting into the branch here. This week we had a branch activity at Carney Park, which needless to say was fantastic! Our new converts fit in with all the members so well, it was so great to see. All the members got together and we basically just had a huge BBQ. The Americans brought all sorts of great stuff, and the italians did too. All of my favorite foods in one sitting - I was a happy camper. Haha not important. What was really great was all the people that our members brought! It was such an awesome opportunity to meet new people. One girl in particular that we met was named Elisabetta. She is the niece of one of the members here. She is about 15 and she is awesome. She has already started reading the book of mormon and wants to learn more, so we told her we would stop by and see her this week!

All our other work is going well! We are continuing to see miracles everyday. There was one I wanted to share with you guys realy quick. So, unfortunately we are having a little bit of a hard time with Amalia. Ever since she came to church she has been dodging our phone calls and canceling our appointments. Sorella Baker and I were getting really worried about her. We were nervous that church freaked her out and she didn't want anything to do with us anymore, so we decided to fast for her on Sunday. We fasted for help to know what her needs were and what we could be doing to help her, and that we would be able to meet with her to help her make progress again. After church we decided to stop by her house really quickly before our coordination meeting with our ward mission leader. We buzzed the citof and she was there! She let us in and we were able to have a lesson with her. She did have a few questions about church, but we were able to get everything straightened out and set up another appointment with her this week. Prayer and fasting works :)

Okay one more quick story! So this week we got a referral from Milan. They said there was a woman named Theresa who lived in our zone and she wanted to be visited from the missionaries. Great. So we headed out there, turns out she lives in the boonies. Haha we walked through fields for an hour before we got to her home. (Side note - got to see a tomato harvesting machine. That was pretty neat. Only in Italy) But it was totally worth it. We got to her home and started asking her questions to try and get to know her a little better. As we talked a little more about religion she told us that she loved to read, especially books about god and jesus. She said that she was just enthrawled by anything she could read to learn more about them. Umm okay could you ask for a better set up as a missionary?! So right on que we whipped out the book of mormon! As we started to explain the book and where it came from she silently started to cry. We asked her what she was feeling, and she just said she felt so much peace and warmth. We told her that was the Spirit testifying to her that what we were teaching was true. She promised to read the whole book, and invited us back so we could discuss what she read.

I know that this is God's work. There are people He has prepared who are waiting and wanting to recieve this message. I am just so grateful for the opportunity I have to be a part of the process. I love you guys so much and I am so grateful for each of you. I hope you all have a great week!

sorella marsh.

July 28, 2014

Ciao tutti!

so great to hear from you all this week! I know I start out every single letter this way, but I really am so grateful for all of you love and support. It means so much to me. And I love seeing all the pictures and vidoes too! I'm the luckiest sorella there is :)

Okay everyone get ready for it....biggest miracle of the week - AMALIA CAME TO CHURCH! Woot woot! after weeks and weeks we finally got her there! With the help of our awesome members, it was nothing short of a miracle. We had one member give her a ride, then others who offered to sit by her through every meeting to make sure that she was never alone. I actually only talked to her like one time throughout the whole day. Granted I was translating for primary again, but a big part of it was our members. It was so incredible! Church in and of itself was a little crazy...I hope she wasn't too overwhelmed. But she said we can come over and teach her on wednesday so we didn't scare her off too bad! 

Other than that we had a little bit of a slower week here in Pozzuoli. Unfortunately none of our investigators were able to meet with us, but we did get in with a lot of less actives, recent converts, and members! One really neat thing happened when we went to visit one less active, Rina. I don't remember if I have told you about her before, but she has been less active for about 20 years. This was our second time meeting with her. The first time we left her with a Book of Mormon and she said she would start reading it again. When we came back the second time we asked her if she had been reading. She said no, but that her husband (who is not a member) had started reading it. Wait...what? Next thing we know her husband comes in and is sitting in on our lesson about the restoration! Coolest ever! We have another appointment with them tomorrow so we are hoping that we will be able to start working with both of them!

Quick side note -  after our lesson with them we had english course. But the minute before we had to leave it started raining. Not just any rain, a complete DOWNPOUR. We debated waiting it out, but then the anziani called and said they weren't going to make it to English course, which meant all of our students would be waiting outside in the rain. To make a long story short, we decided to go for it - and got completely 100% soaked. Haha like I might as well have just jumped in the ocean. Turns out we got to English course and the other set of anziani were there with all our students, safe and sound and dry inside the church. Haha but at leat now they know how much we love them. Also they were super nice and insisted that we cancelled English course and went out for hot chocolate instead. So I tried my first italian hot chocolate in the middle of july! who would have thought. 

Another highlight of the week - Tofik wants to take the lessons! We had talked about it for a long time, but finally this week we talked to Roselyn about it in her lesson, and she said that she would ask him. Then when we saw her at church on sunday she said that Tofik agreed to see the missionaries! I honestly could not be more thrilled. It has been so incredible to see how this whole trial that Roselyn and Tofik have been going through has just been a way to draw them closer to God. Before his accident there is no way that Tofik would have agreed to meet with the missionaries. But because of all the love and kindess he saw from our members and the power of the priesthood that he experienced he wants to learn more. God is incredible. 

I wanted to share one other quick story about how awesome our new converts are. This one is about Peppe. We had our lesson with him this week, and as we were talking he turned to us and said "in church this week they talked about how we need to go visit the less active members and see if they need help. Well, there is a less active man who lives in that building over there, shall we go visit him?" Next thing you know we are headed over to visit fratello Di Orio, a man who has been a member for 40 ish years, but doesnt come very frequently because it is hard for him to get out in his old age. Gosh it was the cutest thing ever! We get in there and he welcomes us in, then starts to bring out these stacks and stacks and stacks of Liahonas that he has kept throughout the years. So neat. Then he gave us ice cream while we sat and talked with him a bit :) Peppe has even been back to visit him without us, and says he is doing well. So we were glad we got to stop in and help him a bit!

So because we didn't have a lot of appointments this week we spent a lot of time out and about finding. That can get a bit tedious after a while, so Sorella Baker and I wanted to switch it up a bit. At our last zone conferece President Waddoups gave us a book called Member Missionary work and encouraged us to read it. In there is some advice about tracting. It gives us a little activity type thing that we can do. First, we look at a map. Then we pick 10 streets and write them down on a list. Then from that list, we each pray and individually make a new list of 3-5 streets that we should go to. Then we compare lists. Sorella Baker and I decided to try it - and we came up with the exact same streets. So with that we decided to head out! We went to the first two, and nothing out of the ordinary happened. We talked to the people on the streets and even knocked on a few doors. Once we had gone through them all we decided to head to the last street. Once we got there we saw a lady standing outside her car, who looked up and said hi to us. That was a strange one - not very often do we get people actually initiating conversation with us. So we went over to talk to her when we saw that she was walking with a cane, and had some groceries to carry in so we offered to help. We walked them into the house with her and talked to her a little bit about the church. She said she wasn't interested right now, but it still felt really great to just do an act of service for someone. And now if she ever hears about our church again she will have a great memory of the two missionaries who helped her with her groceries! 

Woah. This turned into a novel real quick. Haha props to all of you who made it to the end and are still reading! Moral of the story: I love being a missionary. It is hard, but the most rewarding thing I have ever done. I love being here in Italy. I feel so incredibly blessing to be working with and learning from these people each day. I am learning so much from the Italians about just how to love people. For example, we went over to a members house this week for a meal appointment, her name is Rita. We sat down at the table when she came into the room with this tray filled with food and placed it down in front of me...it was all vegetarian. She had made an entire tray of food without meet just for me because she heard I didnt eat meat. I literally almost cried I was so touched by the gesture. Haha I absolutely love being a missionary in Italy!

I hope you guys have a great week! Thanks for all your love, support and prayers. I can't believe how blessed I am. Love you!

Sorella Marsh

ofik and roselyn in the hospital

 my festive district on the fourth of july!

 celebrating peppe's birthday!

 Amalfi Coast! don't judge the squinty eyes...it was real bright.

 Got tan lines?

 soaked.

 island of capri! happy p-day :) 

July 21, 2014

Cari miei,

Buon giorno tutti! So great to hear from you all this week :) thanks for all the pics of your trip in california! It was so fun to see everyone. I can't believe how big everyone has gotten! Little lydie has those long lovely locks of hair and wendy is up and moving on two legs! What the devil! You leave for 6 months and apparently everyone thinks its okay to keep growin up without you ;) but seriously, I am glad to hear you guys had a fun trip! The pictures all look beautiful. 

As for me things are just chuggin along here in Pozzuoli! This week I feel like the summer heat has come in full swing. I'm basically constantly covered in a layer of sweat, and I have to change my clothes at least two times a day. Haha so that has been a fun one. It really isn't so bad, except for that when it's hot like this it basically means two things. 1, everyone leaves and goes somewhere else where it isn't so hot. Or 2, they hide inside so they don't have to face the heat. Haha so that has taken a little blow to our work. But honestly it has been incredible to see that as we have continued to work hard and do our best, the Lord has continued to bless us. We had so many tender mercies this week, and we have a lot of great stuff to look forward to!

First little tender mercy this week - I got my package! I got the padded envelope that you sent in the mail. Everything in there is perfect, thank you so much! and I LOVE the scarf! It is absolutely beautiful. Thank you thank you thank you!

Sorry, had to put that little plug in there. One great tender mercy this week was that we finally got a lesson with a member! Member present lessons are kinda hard here just because our area is so big. Some of the members live over an hour away, so it can be hard to get people to come work with us. But this week we finally got a member to our lesson with Amalia! Gosh it was so great. It just made such a huge difference to have someone there that Amalia could relate to more easily. And best of all, Amalia agreed to come to church this sunday! Our member said she would go pick her up, so we have everything all set to get her to come to church for the first time! So so great :)

Another tender mercy from this week was that through all the summer heat, we got a new investigator! One day this week we headed out to a new part of our area to do a little exploring and to try to get to know it better. As we were walking around we walked past this lady who stopped us and asked us who we were. We told her that we were missionaries, and she said that she used to meet with missionaries like us a few years ago. She said she always loved meeting with the missionaries, so she invited us over for lunch. We went over to visit with her and ended up teaching her a little bit about the restoration. She accepted a book of mormon, said she would read it, and we have another appointment with her this week! She is such a sweet lady. Her name is Anna, and she is around 70 years old. She has so much faith and loves reading the scriptures. So we are really excited about that!

Also another not as important, but still really great tender mercy from this week was that all the American members here in our branch threw a little BBQ party for us on the base. Oh my gosh it was the BEST EVER. Hambugers, ruffels, rootbeer and homemade ice cream. I about cried I was so happy. Haha it's true that God knows each of us personally, and He knows the best way to motivate me to do this work is through my stomach. 

Another quick highlight for the week -  yesterday was my first day translating in church! I'll be honest I was a little freaked out, but it ended up being great! They stuck me in Primary to translate for some of the italian kids, and it was a blast. I absolutely loved it. I definitely didn't do it perfectly, there was a lot of stuff I missed here and there. But the two little girls I was translating for were so great. They helped me out with all the Italian I didn't know and we had a lot of fun doing it. So little by little I'm getting there!

So things over here are going great! We are getting into the dead of the summer, but honestly the work is moving forward and it is so exciting to be a part of it. We are so blessed to have these people to be working with. We have awesome new converts, investigators, and we are even making some progress with some less actives. Just goes to show that nothing can stop the work of the Lord -  not even the deathly Italian summer heat. Haha love you guys all so much! thanks for all your love and support. Until next week!

sorella marsh

July 14, 2014

Hey everyone!

Thanks for all the cute pictures of your trip out in SAN DIEGO! How fun! I am so glad to hear that you guys are having a good time :) You guys all look great out there in front of the temple - that honestly was my favorite thing to see! I'm glad you are all having fun, but not too much fun without me ;) This week was SUCH a great one here in Pozzuoli! Seriously just a week filled with miracles. We took a trip out to Sorrento today for P-day so I don't have a lot of time for e-mail, so I'm sorry that I dont have time to respond to everyone personally. But I wanted to make sure that I could fit everything in here!

So this week we had zone conference, which was the greatest! It was all about using the sciptures in our teaching, which was something I definitely needed. I learned a lot about how much more powerful our teaching can be when we use the scriptures. Also, I realized what little knowledge of the scriptures I actually have. Haha but that's the great thing about the gospel - with the help of our heavenly father and our savior jesus christ we can always improve. Also during this zone conference we got to have our personal interviews with president waddoups, which was really great. He is an inspired man and it is such an awesome experiece to have that one on one time with him. Also not nearly as important, but still pretty great - because there is an american base here in pozzuoli we got to have all sorts of american food for zone conference. Root beer, sunchips, chips ahoy. I about cried I was so happy. 

Anyway, the highlights from the week! First of all I want to tell you about the new investigators we got this week! The first one is a girl named Giuditta. Coolest story ever -  so the sorella from battipaglia came to do exchanges with us this week and one night while they were here sorella baker and sorella knudsen went out to do some finding. While they were out and about sorella baker stopped a lady on the phone, saying that we offer a free english course. The lady then gets back on the phone and says "I just met girls who do a free english course! Yeah, I'll pass you over!" So she passes the phone over to sorella baker, and the girl on the other line was Giuditta. She got on the phone and said "you'll  never believe this, but you are an answer to my prayers! Just this morning I got a job offer, but they told me I would have to learn english. 30 minutes ago I prayed to God to ask him to help me find an english course, and then you ran into my friend." Isn't that awesome?! Anyway, we met with her a few days later and she is the greatest. We met with her to tell her about english course, but turns out she is interested in the gospel too! Funny how God works sometimes :)

Okay the next miracle! this one is from one of our new converts Peppe, the one I told you about last week. So while sorella knudsen and I were on our scambie we went to meet with Peppe and teach him one of his new convert lessons. We meet with peppe in a park just by his house, and while we were in the middle of our lesson this man walks by and just stops and stares at us. I'll be honest, I started to feel a little uncomfortable when all of the sudden peppe turns to him and says "these are the sister missionaries from the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints! That is the church I go to now. Would you like to speak with them?" Turns out peppe has known this guy since he was a baby, and has watched him grow up his whole life. So next thing you know our new convert lesson turned into a lesson in the presence of a member! Peppe's friend is named Pasquale, and we were also able to meet with him again later this week. He is looking a lot to grow his faith right now, so we are excited to be working with him.

On to the next! So we recieved a call this week asking us to go visit one of our members who is in the hospital with lukemia. Her name is Lucia. We decided we would go there and teach her the plan of salvation. As we got there and started to teach she jumps in and says "no no no...I already know this. I don't need this. There is a woman down the hall - she is suffering and she needs to hear this." So in her cancer ridden body she hops up, puts on her robe, and walks us down the hall to visit this lady who she met in the hospital, her name was anna. We talked to her for a bit and got to know her a little better, then right as we were about to start the lesson when some of her family walked in the room. They looked at us and you could tell they had no idea who we were or what on earth we were doing there. Haha so lucia introduced us and said we were missionaries from our church. We ended up teaching a little bit of the restoration, and we have a return apointment with them for this week! There names are Mary and honestly I don't remember the other one...but we are excited to be working with them as well!

As for all the other work everything is going well! Our investigator Amalia is making is continuing to read the Book of Mormon and is progressing towards her baptismal date. The one thing we are struggling with for her is getting her to come to church...but we have some appoitments with members this week so we are hoping that will help. All of our new converts that we are working with are doing great. It honestly is the neatest thing to see these people who have just discovered the gospel and have such strong testimonies. I love it. 

Thank you all so much for all you do for me. I don't think I will ever be able to say how much it means to me, or how grateful I am to have such an incredible family at home. Side note for mom - i got the nelson news this week! Soaked up every word. Thanks for sending it each month, i love it. Thank you all so much for all of your love, support, and prayers. You guys are the greatest. I hope you have a great trip in san diego! Love you all so much!

sorella marsh