It's been a beautiful week. Probs the coolest thing was that we had six rad investigators in church on Sunday, which is pretty noticeable in a branch of 36 peeps. The woman Tati who we found doing casa a few weeks ago came for the first time with her Albanian compagno and the really liked it. After sacrament meeting I said, "Sooo, how was it?" and she started telling me how peaceful and good she felt and I was like hello? It was the spirit! She's been kind of caught up on Saturday vs. Sunday being the Sabbath because in Santo Domingo she used to go to the 7th day adventist church, is that what it's called in English?
Anyway I studied up a bit and we had a beautiful lesson with her yesterday where we watched the restoration film and then talked about all the questions she still had and I talked about when the shift to Sunday happened in the New Testament and it's kind of connected with the move from the Law of Moses to Christ, and at the end she laughed and was like "okay, I get it."
And you can see it in her eyes, that she really is in that 'I get it' phase. She's super into reading Nephi right now and we gave her a BOM in Italian yesterday so she could read it out loud to Eddie, her partner, because he doesn't know how to read. Basically she's beautiful and I love everything about her.
Sorella Beutler is learning to be patient with herself and getting better everyday. It really is beautiful to watch, because you never really notice when it's happening to you. The Ortiz family is as beautiful as ever. We taught the word of wisdom this week and it went really well. Alfonso already had decided he wanted to quit smoking and has cut back form 2 to 1 packs a day. Senia was a little iffy about wine, they don't drink very much she just wasn't convinced, and the member we brought was like I felt the same way, I had already decided I wanted to stop smoking and drinking coffee before I met the missionaries and wine just didn't make sense to me, but I tried it and now I get it, and that's the only way you can gain a testimony. So they were like why not. Alfonso, said a beautiful prayer at the end and thanked God for the things he was learning and asked for help to continue trying to be better everyday than he was the day before. That's what the gospel is about people. Awesome.
Since I've been without a companion that really speaks Italian it's really pushed me to talk to way more peeps everywhere we go. It's still something I have to decide to try and want to do everyday, but it's getting better and easier. And I know that it makes me happier. Even when people aren't super interested we've had some really great conversations with really interesting people and I have to just hope that now they're a little closer to being ready someday for the gospel.
And I have to tell you every time we 'teach' Luca there is the most incredible spirit. The Lord has big plans for that man. One of the most beautiful things about being a missionary is the moments where you look at someone and are flooded with the love Heavenly Father has for them and you just get a glimpse of every good thing He wants for them. I literally can't wait for Luca to have the Spirit, the priesthood to go to the temple, to just keep progressing his whole life, to have that joy that comes when we live the plan heavenly father has for us and get continually closer to our potential.
One of our other cool dudes is the Nigerian Kevin. It was super weird to teach in English but we had the most beautfiul plan of salvation lesson. I love listening to peoples questions and being able to gauge how much they understand. Kevin totally gets it. He asks the best questions. Now let's hope he'll just start answering the phone again.
Some unrelated thoughts I've been pondering over:
- by changing the inner attitudes of our minds we can change the outer aspect of our lives what we inherit from our first estate, I'm excited to someday remember who I was and what I did before this life. I was reading my patriarchal blessing the other day and I don't know how to explain it but I felt closer to who I was before.
- Someone told me in Bergamo that the things that we experience in life happen because we deserve them, like they're a consequence to an action, or we need them, to grow and continue on becoming better, and I've been pondering over this idea of decisions we made in the premortal life being connected to consequences we live here.
- The idea of being blessed to live the challenges of this life testimony vs conversion repentance as a returning to god, a literally turning away from ourselves, following Christ's example of turning out the humility required to learn and change. when it's not important to be right.
Vi voglio bene!
sorella bush
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