ciao tutti!

I write to you from Laveno at a member's home. We decided to make lunch for a sorella here to surprise her for when she gets home from work. So her son, who teaches with us a lot, has been hanging outside while I cooked moroccan stew and now we're waiting to surprise her and eat lunch.

I'm slowly getting more used to being here. Since I last wrote we've done a ton of finding work. I'm a little tired of it to be honest. Had some good days and some not so good days. But we decided it's time to leave Varese and work the surrounding towns. The Anziani knocked this place dead so we feel really good about doing work outside of the main city. August will be interesting because everyone is leaving for vacation. We keep finding people and they're like call me in September when I get home again.

I also finally got to teach Luca Sunday night, a solid investigator the Sorelle have been teaching for a while. He's been pretty much taught everything but is still working on understanding better the atonement, the priesthood and a couple other things. So we just get together and talk about his different questions. He's super rad and I'm sure teaching him will be one of the highlights of every week.

Okay...love you guysss! be good!

salve tutti!

OK, so I am stealing a quick 20 minutes to email you a real letter that is not wallowing in depression. After a week of trying to love being here it all of a sudden worked. Varese really is beautiful. These lakes and mountains are not what I imagine when I think of Italy but it keeps the weather cool and reminds me of my green home. Yesterday we also had a really great zone conference that was exactly what I needed and I'm ready to work. I know tons is waiting to happen in Varese and that there's a reason I'm here. I know what my weaknesses are and what I need to change and I'm ready to do everything I can to change the work here so that when it's time for me to leave I'll be leaving the same amount of work I left for the sorelle in Bergamo.

We're teaching a beautiful family. Dad is Italian, mom is from Santo Domingo and her son who's 11 just got here two weeks ago, so doesn't really speak Italian yet. Last night we taught the plan of salvation and talked about how families can be together forever and there was a beautiful spirit. He understands everything we teach so well and she's starting to as well. They both are happy to have us there whenever we come and this week we're planning on bringing some members and I feel like that will help them a ton, see the gospel being lived by real people. He's read the begining of the Book of Mormon and told us he would try and start praying more, that it probs would be a good idea. I told him it would.

Other beautiful peeps we started teaching this week. A half moroccan half egyptian muslim we stopped on the street and a Congo refugee who speaks decent italian and has been here for 5 months. Both of them came to their second appointments having written down all the things they understood about what they read and all their questions. It was so rad. I invited our muslim to get baptized when he knew it was all true and he was like you know, maybe I'll get there, we'll see, pian piano. But he prayed and it was beautiful. 

Right now we're focusing a ton on finding new people because really they have one awesome investigator who should get baptized soon and another young kid from El Salvador, but we need people to teach. It's funny because I feel so comfortable teaching whoever wherever whenever and Sorella McNamara feels so awkward teaching, but she's great at just walking up to people and telling them God is their father of the family brings us more happiness than anything else, which is something I have to fight with myself a bit more to do. I know all my fears are unrational because who cares what any of these peeps that I'll never see again think about this funny american talking about God, but I still find it to be a bit tricky. But I'm getting better! And that's what it's all about.  

At the end of Zone Conference we watched Eryings talk from conference called mountains to climb and at the end Sorella Wolfgramm talked about the part where he talks about his mother's battle with cancer, and if a woman that good needed that much polishing what was in store for him. And Sorella Wolfgramm said isn't it beautiful that the Lord thinks you are worth polishing. And I like that. Obviously I've heard a thousand times that trials are what later bring the blessings, but it felt more real yesterday. There is a reason for all of this. All the mountains I'm climbing in Varese are tailor-made for me, which is beautiful thought. I'm ready to climb, espesh since it's likely I'll be training here next transfer. I'm ready to get my feet planted firmly and do some growing so that the work only gets better every transfer.

Last night we came home and did 10 minutes of yoga on the roof before planning. We live on the 10th floor and there's a sneaky door out to the roof. The sky here is beautiful, usually with fatty clouds sitting over Como. It felt good to stand still and be, let me feet stand firm and get ready for everything that awaits me here. I'm ready to really love my comp, this city, the members and all the people we meet everyday and that's the only way to cast out my fears. Love!

Hope you are having a happy Saturday, maybs a bit of farmer's market?

Love you all!

sorella bush

no time for email this week...

I had to go back to Bergamo today to get my permesso card saying I can legally be here so today is a lot of trains and waiting in hot rooms full of foreigners. I'm hoping tomorrow to have time to email you. Varese is beautiful. I'm in love with the mountains and lakes and our baby branch.

Not so in love with the work yet but I'm trying. Turns out I'm bad at transitioning, and not much is happening so we've got a lot to do. I love you all and will try and write you a real letter tomorrow. New address is:

Via Rainoldi 19
Box number 56
21100 Varese
Italia

I saw Sorella Simkins and all my Bergamo peeps are happy and well and Lulu is getting baptized Friday.

Keep praying for me, these next few weeks are going to be interesting...

xoxoxo

sorella bush

varese!

Okay, famiglia, I have a weird P-day tomorrow and we're not sure we're going to have time to do all our email, so here's a baby letter for you. Thursday morning I head to Varese.

I don't know my comps name yet becuase she's new, she just is finishing her second transfer so I'll be her first comp that's not her trainer. Going senior companion.

I'll start another email that I'll finish and send off tomorrow hopefully, but I love you both! Pray that I have an easy transition into city number two. I'm nervous but excited and I know I'm going where I should be because this is God's work.

 P.S. This picture is dedicated to Larry Hewett (Director of Specialty Sales for Thule USA). Ignore my crazy hair.

hi ho!

Hey guys, happy 4th! I told Sorella Simkins we needed to buy trashy flag shirts, eat a whole cow and shoot guns. I'm pretty sure all that's going to happen is a nice hamburger and a rootbeer float at our little BBQ with the Anziani and the Petersons, a senior missionary couple. But I'm content. 


Had a nice sleep this morning and reloading on my energy for one more week in Bergamo. Hooray for Ian's new job! For lots of wood! For Ian being a rock star and bringing peeps to church! for mom's bucket of new keens! for summer living in general. All your pics made me the babiest bit home\summer sick, but I know it'll all be there when I get home next year. 

Bergamo is still an oven. So glad I'm not a pizza maker, madonna, fa troppo caldo. But we have some awesome new people that we're working with. One Bolivian lady is the friend of a member, had come to church in the past before going home to Bolivia for a few months. Came back and is totally on board, loves everything we say, feels so peaceful and picked her own date to be baptized July 28 and she keeps telling us just how good she feels about her decision and says she knows it will bless her life as well as her children in Bolivia. Then we started teaching three new peeps this week.

First there's Leonardo, 21, Italian, studying to be a lawyer. Has a few funny ideas but is down for meeting with us and totally understands that the key is reading the Book of Mormon. He said a prayer at the end of our lesson asking God for help to find time to read a bit because he's really interested. Cool stuff.

Then we have Mauricio, 17 Bolivian, mom and sisters are members and just decided to come to our church with them for the second time in his life and agreed to meet with us. We had a beautiful simple restoration lesson with his sister who's 14 and has a really sweet testimony and he was really glad we came and wants to learn more and was excited when we gave him his own BOM.

Then we have Lulu who is hilarious. She's Mexican, but has lived in Canada most of her adult life. She's here on vacation and the lady she's staying with basically fed her a bunch of lies about what the situation would be like with us. She's pretty lonely but randomly met one of our reactivated members we've been working with who works at the airport and found Lulu when she first got her because her flacky friend didn't even come get her from the airport. Any way, she came to church, met with us yesterday and when I called her last night she was just hanging out reading the book of mormon and loving it. She is so hungry to learn and keeps asking us questions about things that have never felt right to her doctrinly, like original sin, and is so relieved when we tell her how it really is. We can't teach her fast enough. She's coming to our BBQ today and I'll take some pics, she is just the coolest old lady. Sorella Simkins and I are invited to her beach house in Mexico whenever we like. Totally hitting that up in the future.

The last few days really have been beautiful. We felt like things wern't making much sense, we're teaching tons of lessons, at least tons for our mission, finding new people but all these people that seem elect keep dropping off, and then the Lord handed us three beautiful people working through the ward.

Lauren asked in her last letter if she could email me pics and I forgot to tell her that yes, she can. Thanks for all the prayers, thoughts and letters. You all sound happy and that makes me happy! Salute the Sorella Noteware for me, I did a scambio with her baby Sorella Walton last week who finishes her mission next week. Time is a funny thing.

Much love!

xoxo,

sorella bush

blindingly white running shoes!

Ciao cara famiglia,

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

sorella bush 

tanti auguri!

Okay, peeps another P-day and this time I am 24!  Whoa! All the Italians think I'm 20 and insist that it's better that way (to look younger), ha.

Life is so good. The last few days have been crazy. It is BLAZING here now and we have so many appointments that I feel like we're eaither teaching for speed racing on our bikes to the opposite part of the city. Long story short, I am a sweaty swamp monster.

I think the package is taken care of, I faxed the form off on friday and the office emailed me and said that I got a package. Hopefully it's the one from you guys. And customs was only 13 Euro which is kind of a miracle itself.

These days I feel like the Lord really is guiding us and taking care of everything. We keep talking to people and planning our time the best we can and he takes care of the rest. We have some super sweet new investigators. Deysi and Fatima are two cousins from El Salvador who understood the first restoration lesson SO WELL. We're going back tomorrow night when we get back from conference in Verona. Our less active anna maria had her family get here. They were still in Bolivia and she's been here for 9 years. She has two daughters 10 and 16. The younger one isn't baptized because when Ana Maria came here her husband stopped going to church. So we're working with both of the girls to help them re/find their testimonies. The only catch is they don't speak any Italian because they literally got here on Thursday. But they're so nice and super patient with us trying to remember the bits of Spanish we know. I watched the restoration movie with them in Spanish this morning and they really liked it, totally believe Joseph Smith was a prophet and God will answer their prayers if they ask him. 

We taught a really interesting lesson to a lady who's been studying with JW's  for the past year. We met her in the park and she thought at first we were JWs.  We explained who we were and she said she knew some members of our church. Turns out she knows the Bishop's sister and her family really well so she came to teach with us yesterday. It actually made me really sad because she was telling us how in this past year she's felt blocked, like when she tries to pray she's just talking to the table, who she didn't really want to believe and of the things they were teaching her but they had shown her things in the Bible (taken out of context) and in the end nothing was sitting well with her. But her friend shared some beautiful experiences, made the gospel real and she wants us to come back. We'll have to give her to the Anziani because they live out of our area, but I'm really hopeful for them.

Our wards are officially split and we now have church at 4:00 in the afternoon. Crazy town. Our new Branch Prez asked to have us in his ward and we're all excited to get working with the members and their friends and contacting the thousands of inactives that live in Bergamo. Sunday we did some pass bys and found a really cool young Bolivian who's whole family got baptized while he was still in Bolivia, 12ish years ago, and have been inactive since he's been here, but he wants us to come back Friday and he was going to tell his parents so everyone could come. Then we found an older Italian lady and her son, who isn't a member, and we got her number so we could set up a time to meet with them, hopefully next week becuase we are booked.

We've been practicing our bike stops. Which is when we awkwardly stop on our bikes to talk to people walking, but have found tons of people who have family members that are members of the church and are willing to meet with us. Including one lady whose 7-year old daughter lived with her sister and brother-in-law for 5 years in Bolivia. He's stake president there and the daughter who this past year came to Italy keeps telling her mom she wants to be Mormon.

Tonight we're partying with the Capelli's for my burfday which means I'll be eating well. I'm going to buy the stuff to make mom's chocolate cake this afternoon and niente. The primary kids that were here who we did service with this morning all sang to me, Sorella Botta kissed me on the cheek and one of the members called me and it's just kind of fun to have people thinking about me and being glad I was born. I am so glad I was born. So many adventures had and soooo many that await. Not I'm just living up  my last few weeks in Bergamo. I feel like once I change cities life will really start to fly even more. Crazy town.

Mom your dress is rocking. Wish I could hit up some Anthro sales with you. ha. It's funny to me that I literally wear the same clothes everyday. Keeps life simple I guess.

Love you all!!!

sorella bush