Sister Anderson Mission Blog: Miracle Moments

We celebrated Thanksgiving with our English class. Aka three other people but it was really fun. I made some gravy, mashed potatoes, attempted at stuffing, and some chicken. With the little chicken we bought two, one was made at the store and then I made one. The one I made was better... just sayin. It was fun having a little bit of Thanksgiving though and getting to know people from our English class better and it turn they got to know us a little better too!

Thursday was seriously a miracle day. It was just so good. We had some conference so it was like Christmas getting all our mail. But for the lunch, the senior couple made a nice turkey dinner for us. It was like a way better redo of Thanksgiving. They had everything and it was all so good! It reminded me of the nice Christmas Eve dinner that we always do. The tables were all decorated for Christmas, we had real plates instead of paper, and it was just beautiful. The food was way better than the stuff I made the night before too.

Then we had President and Sorella Allen come to a lesson with us. They came to visit Juana and Claudio with us. (First Sorella Allen had to come use our bathroom in our apartment though. Thank goodness we cleaned!) The lesson with Claudio and Juana was amazing. Juana was very touched by the spirit and Claudio just seemed so content. He just seemed happy. I think it's interesting though because he described a time where he knew he felt the spirit and it was the same how a few other people in the ward described how they felt it for the first time. I just think it's interesting that they were so similar. We talked about the Restoration and how opposition always comes before something great. We read the example of the First Vision but there are about a million of other examples in the scriptures too.

Do you ever have those weeks where you just feel so blessed by the Lord and you know everything that happens is thanks to Him? Well, that was me this week because after the amazing lesson with Juana and Claudio on Thursday night, on Friday morning we met Francesca. We found her from the old church referral systems. She was a referral from about a year ago that we found but it didn't say that she was contacted or anything so we decided to give it a try. It turns out that she was an investigator but stopped taking the lessons for some reason. But she has a testimony and she said she reads the scriptures every day. She wants to be committed to the church! The crazy thing is though is how she came to know the church. There's a video that a ton of Italians have seen. It was on TV and for some reason because of it everyone thinks Mormons are Amish. Anyways she saw this video and wanted to find out more. She got on the internet and searched for us and then referred herself. How amazing! A video that gives so many people false information on the church actually lead her right to it!

We were able to do finding and I absolutely loved it surprisingly. Not a whole lot of people listened but I really didn't care. With the people who we did talk to, it was interesting to talk to them about who Christ is for them. There was one guy we're talked to who was atheist and he said that Christmas doesn't really mean anything for him. And I guess we can all take a step back and ask ourselves what Christmas really means for us. Is Christmas another fun tradition for us or does it actually mean something? The Pharisees in the Bible were always good about following the rules and the traditions but they lacked allowing the reasons behind the traditions to change their hearts or actions. They couldn't see clearly. It's a great time for presents, food, and all the fun things about Christmas but do we really recognize What we are celebrating?

We have another new investigator! Her name is Roberta and she's Fratello Ponce's sister in law. I don't know if she had an accident or if she has a sickness but she's bed ridden. Because of her accident she's lost her faith. She wants to find that faith again! She's a miracle in itself and I already just love her! The Spirit was so strong when we were teaching her about the First Vision and it those moments that you just want to last forever. I wouldn't trade these moments for anything.

Tuesday we had a combined district meeting with Merate and ate lots and lots of sweets. I made cookies and the Anziani made some chocolate coconut bars with some pizza on top we were full to the max. Nothing too exciting for the rest of the day except that we did some passbys and had correlation meeting.

We read this quote in zone conference:

"If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up someplace else" -Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra

For all of you who don't know Yogi Berra, he was a catcher for the Yankees. I'm going to rant for a little bit because I love baseball and softball. But a catcher's job (one of the many jobs actually) is to call the pitches. I can remember in softball how important it was that our catcher position her glove just right so that our pitcher would know where she needed to throw the ball and to have a destination in mind. And a lot of the times, if she didn't focus on that catcher's glove, the ball would definitely not be in the strike zone. I just love this analogy for our life and I'm grateful for the gospel so I can set my sights on where I want to go.

I love you all and hope you have an amazing week!

Thanksgiving Dinner for English Class