Il mio pacco è arrivato, non dovete preoccuparvi. Grazie!! Love the shoes, love my PENS love it all... and Ian, that necklace is beautiful! I put it right on and we went to teach a lesson where our lovely Rocio came to teach with us and she was telling me how cool it was and I was like mio fratello l'ha fatto per me, so she told me, puo dire a lui, se vuole che c'è anche una brava sorella che si chiama Rocio e a lei piacerebbe tanto... moral of the story you're a hit over here, little bro.
Birthday ended up pretty normal. A nice day that at the end didn't feel like my birthday, but I made a DELICOUS cake, nice and moist and sweet, very unitalian. We ate everything fresh you can think of at our Capelli dinner and Sorella Capelli gave me some pretty rad, slightly ridiculous monster earrings. They're the size of my face but green so I love them. We were both crazing hamburgers so bad but didn't plan well enough and were dying of hunger so ended up eating kebab, but then a new convert heard and made us hamburgers on Friday for lunch!
Thursday we headed to Verona, I can never get sick of riding on trains, even when it is blazing. Training with Prez Wolfgramm was really awesome. He talked a lot about the gospel of Christ in connection with the plan of salvation and the tools we've been given as children of God, to recognize the truth so we can return to Him, and how we as missionaries can utilize these tools, aka help peeps feel the spirit. But he connected it back to the Natural (wo)man vs. the spiritual and our mission of fighting off the natural man and graphed our spiritual vs. natural selves in different stages of the plan of salvation, which I really loved. Have I told you guys that I'm obsessed with this idea of fighting the natural man? I just love the idea of being stronger than our natural selves and really crushing our weaknesses to become the peeps God knows we can become. So good. Which reminds me, I did some examining of the Christlike attributes in Preach my Gospel and totally am lacking in the patience still, well shoot. Studying back up on that. One thing I really loved was a phrase that said waiting for the blessings the Lord has promised. Sometimes I feel out of control of too many things, but I need to remember that God can't lie. The scriptures, and my life, are full of His promises, so if I do my part I know He will do his, we just don't know when.
Last week was really just a magical week, and ended with our first baby branch meeting. We were in 36 (there were 36 people at the meeting). I said the first official prayer in the Bergamo 3rd Branch. Pretty cool. We're starting to work on tons of reactivation along with our normal finding, teaching shiz. Things are happening here in Bergamo. We met with our Branch Prez and he told me I have to stay here longer, there's too much for me to do. Didn't really now how to tell him that I'm for sure leaving in two weeks. But I'll do my part up until I'm on the train heading out. It was kind of great to work all morning and then go to church. We did some casa, helped these people move who told us they would come to English class and want to buy us gelato for our help. Then we found a cool Brazilian dude with lots of crazy piercings that is trying to find time when he doesn't work light years away that he can meet with us. There was one funny moment when Sorella Simkins was mid testimony bearing and he looks up at me, over at her and says, ma che belle voi siete...ha.
A couple highlights. Our El Salvadorian cousins, Deysi and Fatima. I love them! We found Deysi one day after we had been doing casa and I was unlocking our bikes. She was on the other side of the road and we kept looking at each other and finally we crossed over to talk to her. Chatted for a few minutes, got her info, turns out she lives in a palazzo we had just knocked, told us when we could come back. We try calling a few times but nothing (she tells us later she lost her phone) stop by once and she's not there but her cousin comes down to talks to us because Deysi had told her about is. Got Fatima's number, tries to see them for a week and a half and finally went last Monday. I already told you how they inderstood so well. Well we went back Thursday, even though both our trains from Verona were late. We got back at about 9, when we should be getting home, but instead raced up (literally uphill all the way) to where they live and had a great lesson on the Book of Mormon. They asked good questions, which is always refreshing. We called them on the train to tell them in would probably be too late to come and they were like no, fa niente! Venite pure! So we went. We can't see them this week because of crazy work schedule but we've dropped notes in their post a few times and they love it. Then we decided to do a bit of parco before an appoitment we had with Rosemary and her fam and found this beautiful little family, he's Bolivian and she's from El Salvador. Turns out she's cousins to Deysi and Fatima too. They have a beautiful little girl and our conversation turned to families and temples at the end and she loved looking at the different pictures we had. They're in the middle of crazy moving so they can't really see is for a week and a bit, but we biked by them yesterday, stopped and said hi. I love how many times we see people again and again after meeting them once, like God is saying, Hey listen to these sorelle, what have you got to lose?
Monday night we got to see our beautfiul inactive return missionary Patrizia. We've left her some different General Conference talks in her mail. She's working like crazy right now because her sister is home in Bolivia so she has to stay with the old peeps they work for pretty much 24-7. But we had a nice little lesson with her and Rocio becuase they're besties. She made us eat RIDICULOUS amounts of Haagen Dazs, it's her fav ice cream. And it made me think about Grandma Sandi. I told them about how it was my Grandma's favorite too. Patrizia's getting closer and she promised us this week she would read the Book of Mormon. We're going to eat Bolivian food with them tomorrow night. Pian piano. I'm still confident she'll come back. Not the normal just me trying to be optimistic about everyone, but I have this feeling and I am positive.
Both of our huge Bolivian families are coming along nicely. We had lunch with Lilianna's family on Sunday with Elcia Calvachi, Samuel's mom. Lilianna was a referral from Elcia and we had a family home evening type thing together months ago. When they first got to Elcia's they were almost cold and told us firmly that they were catholic, but by the end they wanted us to come do something with their kids too. We finally did a week and a half ago and had a really great restoration lesson. Went back Sunday and talked about the Book of Mormon. They seem really well prepared to listen and learn. The oldest daughter is finishing up her crazy end of high school exams and her friend who's Chinese and Buddhist is always there studying with her and this time they both were part of the lesson and were both really engaged and said they would start reading the Book of Mormon after exams finish.
There are little miracles happening constantly, I just need to keep keeping my eyes open for them. Saturday night there was an activity in the Church for folk dancing. Super funny. And Bishop Botta told us we could do this kind of dancing, which usually included everyone standing in a circle and taking certain steps in different directions. Bishop actually insisted that we dance. It was so so fun. The elders brought their investigator who is an African refugee and doesn't speak Italian yet who is so nice. One of the elders was like, "Sorella Bush, feel free to ask Jonathan to dance." I told him I wasn't sure that was really allowed but I would anyways. So I got Jonathan to dance towards the end, poor kid when we had to change dance partners kept trying to go the other directions and didn't get what the Italians were explaining to him, but he finally got it all figured out and enjoyed himself. After this funny line dance we used the same music to teach everyone the Cotton-Eyed Joe, too funny. Someone recorded it on his phone and said he was putting it right up on Facebook. Yikes. Ha.
Okay, love you all, time for some breakfast. I would kill a man to go stand up boarding today, it is still blazing here and I'm coming to terms with the fact that I will not be submerged in water for another year. Oh well. Take advantage of the gym Ian, tell me how you like Inner Fire mom, I've always wanted to try it out.
Love love love love love
Love love love love love
sorella bush
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