Lots and Lots of Traveling !

Wow! What a blur this week has been! It's gone by so fast. So for Wednesday we went to Mantova to a palace that has some famous frescos. It was super awesome to see. There was one room that was painted (this was in the 1530s) entirely and when you walked in it was like an optical illusion. It's called "Chamber of the Giants". We were able to do some finding. A miracle always happens when you only have one pass along card to give out. So we have a couple new potentials and hopefully we will be able to see them soon. We were able to meet with Francesca, a member in the ward. She's adorable. We had a lot of fun talking and getting to know her. We saw "our Mexican grandma" this week too. She is so cute. Her health isn't doing to well and I always wish there was more I could do for her.

Thursday and Friday we had scambio! Yep! I did a scambio with Sorella Visconti and I could have died and gone to heaven. It was so good! I felt like a greenie again. She is seriously just such an amazing missionary and such a great example for everyone. It was nice planning lessons with her and doing companion study with her. It was just like old times and like we had never been away from each other. Scambio is always just fun because it's like having a sleepover with all your friends haha. We had a good time all four of us talking. Also, I was on the bus in Bologna with Sorella Visconti and this guy in front of us was eating a sandwich. Then as he was getting off he turns around to us and opens his mouth almost like he's going to spit out the sandwich to show us the gross chewed up food. Some of it fell out of his mouth and he caught it in his hand. I'm just thinking "please don't throw it at us, please don't throw it at us!" And luckily he just put it back in his mouth and got off the bus. Sorella Visconti and I just died laughing because it was so random. We didn't even talk to the guy! Then to end the scambio we went to a Mexican restaurant. Yep, that's right, a Mexican restaurant in Italy. You're choices of what to eat were pretty slim but they had real tortillas and salsa. It doesn't take a lot to make me happy. For the rest of the day we went back to Modena. Surprisingly saying goodbye to Sorella Visconti wasn't too sad because we both feel like we will stay in our cities and see each other again.

Little miracles happen every day. When we were finding on Friday we tried to stop a couple to talk to. The man just passed us but the woman turned around and talked to us. She couldn't believe that the man just walked past us and shook us off like that. She was the cutest thing.

Saturday we went to Pisa to finally pick up my visa. So I finally have it and there are no problems there. It lasts a year from now so it turns out perfectly that I won't have to renew it. That took up all of Saturday so there's not too much to say about that. 

Sunday night we volunteered with some members at a soup kitchen. They do it every month. It was so much fun! I love it! The members here are seriously great! We were able to meet some new people and just serve. I think it definitely threw some of the members off to see us in pants haha.

Monday we found a bike for Sorella Stevens and now we are just waiting for mine to be ready. We bought them used so hopefully they won't get stolen again. We saw Marta again and set a goal to help her stop smoking. It was great to see her. She is always doing things for other people and trying to serve them!

Tuesday we went to an old folks birthday party in a nursing home with Modesta. She's just a cute old lady. They offered us cake but we had just eaten and so we said no. After the party Modesta was super worried that we hadn't eaten so we learned our lesson and next time we are just going to take the cake!

Today we are in Verona because we need to pick up the visa of Sorella Stevens so we will spend the Pday there with the Verona Sorelle. I'm not sure what exactly what we will do yet but there will be pictures. Verona is beautiful and so I'm sure we will find something amazing. 

Something that I love about Italian is that there's 2 verbs for "to know": conoscere and sapere. Sapere is to know more like a fact. Conoscere is to know something on a more personal level. You could use conoscere in the sense of knowing people or places for example. Sometimes we get caught up in trying to know everything about the gospel. We think we need to "sapere" everything! It's so much more important to "conoscere" the gospel and to apply it into our own lives. We can have all the knowledge in the world but if it's not changing how we live, ours hearts, what good is it?

This brief summary of the week doesn't even cover 1/10 of everything that's happened this week or any of the crazy things that have happened. Haha. Sometimes I feel as a missionary it's a contest every day to see how many awkward situations you can get in.

Vi voglio un mondo di bene!

Sorella Anderson

We bought African Gypsy Pants!

Classic Eating Pizza in a Castle

Sleepover Time !

Messicana!

Best of Friends

Sorella Visconti and Sorella Anderson together again

Has it been a week already?

So after our very relaxing P-day in the apartment, we had a lesson with Quin. She's from Nigeria and she has the most beautiful smile. She has three kids who are living in Nigeria and she's so strong. She confirmed that it would be alright if I bought an African dress and wore it. I now have directions as to where I can find one. Stay tuned for updates. We were supposed to have a family evening at the church but no one came so instead us four missionaries just ate the cinnamon rolls that Anziano Brown made.

Thursday we cleaned the entire apartment. It was the semi-annual deep cleaning day. We took 4 hours and scrubbed all the nooks and corners. It feels so nice to be in a clean apartment! It reminded me of just a regular old Saturday morning at home! After English class, Anziano Brown gave us arancini that he made because he knew we hadn't tried them yet. Needless to say that the Anziani keep us well fed.

Friday we celebrated our 6 month mark by going out to eat. We finally tried the famous Modenese tortellini and tortalone. It was homemade in the restaurant and it was so good! The tortalone was filled with pumpkin and it was delicious. I've never had it like that before. Saturday was really great because we were able to meet some more less actives. One of the people we met is an old lady from Mexico. She's so sweet and just loves the missionaries. She has a really strong faith but her health is struggling. Now I see why my brother-in-law always talked about how great Mexican mom and grandmas are. (By the way her name is Connie too!)

 

Sunday was amazing!! First of all, I got to see the entire Sorellanza and Sorella Visconti again at the Holland conference. Sorella Visconti was actually on the same train as us heading to Milan so we got the whole train ride to catch up and talk. It was a joyous day! Hearing Elder Holland speak to us was amazing. Before the meeting even started he shook everyone's hand and so did his wife (le Sorelle were lucky enough to get the Italian bacii from his wife). He just spoke with so much power, made it interesting, and simplified it. I could really go on and on about everything that he said. Anyways, we finally arrive home to the Modena station to find that both Sorella Steven's and my bike have been stolen. Dangers. Well, the Anzinani lent us theirs for the night so we could get home. Even with our bikes getting stolen, I was on cloud nine!

On Monday we were able to see Marta. I love her so much. We talked about testimonies and why it's important to have one. She has a desire to get baptized but she also realizes that it's a big deal. She's working on quitting smoking and working her way there slowly. She's such a hard worker and she does it all for her family. I really love that about her. 

Not too much else happened on Tuesday. We had our district meeting and we did some finding before English class. While we were walking home for the night, we got caught in the pouring rain without an umbrella. We were completely soaked head to toe. At one point we just gave up trying to avoid the massive puddles and just walked straight through them. It was actually really fun haha. 

Whenever we go walking in the park, the nice old men always tell us to be careful. We meet the nicest people and it just makes me grateful, with all the bad that's in the world, that people are generally good. I can't remember where but I read recently that charity is the pure love of Christ. When you love someone you assume the best of them and doubt the bad things you hear. Our goal is to have charity towards all. Doubt the bad you hear about others and choose to look for the good.

"Behold, the Lord hath forbidden this thing; wherefore, the Lord God hath given a commandment that all men should have charity, which charity is love. And except they should have charity they were nothing. Wherefore, if they should have charity they would not suffer the laborer in Zion to perish." 2 Nephi 26:30

Vi voglio un mondo di bene!

Sometimes your bun is just to big to be contained in a helmet.

Ready to go to the conference with Elder Holland !

Sorella Garcia and us just chillin in district meeting!

Sorella Smedley

Sorellanza back together. !!

Of course with a photo bomb from the president.