18 November 2009
Hello everyone!
Sounds like it's been a busy week.
It's been pretty in Ragusa, it was above 25 degrees yesterday, it was amazing. I am currently wearing short sleeves. Dunno where this weather is from but I like it.
Yesterday we were walking by this old lady and we always say buon giorno to everyone and she was no exception, we weren't going to try and talk to her or anything even, but I said buon giorno and she said it back all cute and sweet and stuff and then she looked sideways and saw that we were wearing skirts (she came up to like my waist, she didn't even see my targhetta) and she started screaming at the top of her lungs "VATENE VIA!!! ANDATEVENE VIA!" (ed. note: I think this translates to depart, or get lost) and we were already past her when she started screaming but then every person she walked past on the entire street she was like "buon giorno? buon giorno? they just said buon giorno to ME?" She was kind of insane, it was kind of funny. I would be so embarrassed to look that old if I was old. But then we walked up the street towards our house because it was time for the pranzo break, and passed a shop with a really smiley old lady inside who gave us pane integrale (basically wheat bread, it's a rare thing here) for free.
This week has been nuts though. Our members are all going crazy and we had no evening appointments at all last week which means that basically we waste the whole night outside looking for people only there aren't really any people outside because if it gets a little cold then they think they'll get sick and they're all kind of freaking out about swine flu too. Thankfully there was a Nutella party on Friday night with the branch, so we had something to do. Although we tried making cookies with fake nutella and they were about 500% grease, it was worse than if you tried to cook french fries and put the potatoes in the oil before it gets hot. We decided not to take them and we also decided we will probably never buy nutella again. Especially not if it's fake because it doesn't even taste good.
Our crazy married couple didn't fight with each other this week. But they didn't look at each other either. And we met Sorella Iacono's mom and have visited her, and it's kind of fun considering she speaks only Siciliano because she's like 90 years old and we can't understand 70% of what she says. We get the gist, but the individual words are NOT Italian. Some are more spanish, some are arabic, greek, who knows.
I did get the package on Thursday, thank you! That was pretty exciting. You forgot to write the number of the apartment on it though, it's 201, luckily the mailman remembered my name. For the Christmas package you might want to send it to the mission home though. There is only one sister coming in next transfer and there are three leaving, which means one sister city is definitely closing sad to say and I'm not sure where it is, if they'll take the sisters out of the four elder cities or make Ragusa into just a two man town. Who knows.
We were able to find Paolo again, and his wife wasn't happy because she thinks that we think that we know all about why her daughter got divorced and doesn't go to church anymore when really we have no idea except that the ex-husband of the daughter is in prison. But she seems like she'll be nice if we aren't presumptuous so we'll see with them.
ESTHER HAD HER BABY! Okay, so Italian hospitals are pretty unsanitary as far as I could tell, but all is well with Esther and Vittoria and Justice. Sorella Campo on Saturday evening took us to visit an ex-investigator that she's friends with (Sorella Campo is INCREDIBLE and pretty much every scheda that we have for investigators has her name on it as a friend) and we had kind of a lesson with her. We need to tell her to write her questions down and we'll answer them when we get to them, because at this point she asks a question and we start to answer it and it reminds her of another one so basically if we keep going like that she's going to end up with thousands of unanswered questions and think it's because we don't have the answer. She gave us like 10 kilos of pasta made from grano duro, because some Tunisian woman didn't take it. We aren't sure what to do with it, we hardly ever eat pasta and I have no clue what the difference is between grano tenero and grano duro. But it could probably last us a few years. :P Anyway, we got to go visit Esther and Justice in the hospital. They pretty much hold on to your baby for you until you go home, it isn't allowed to leave the nursery here. But Vittoria is really pretty, lots of hair. I forgot to take pictures when we visited them at their home yesterday. The members have been really supportive of them too, which is really good. They're a really cute family.
Tell Christy that I heard that song she plays on the piano that's like church bells or something like that I can't remember the name, but I heard it from church bells. Pretty cool. The churches in Ibla were ringing back and forth at each other on Monday night, it was interesting. I'm not sure if there was a holiday or what. There always seem to be though. We went inside the Cattedrale di San Giovanni Battista today. It's the big one on Via Roma, you could probably google it or something. It is BEAUTIFUL. Very baroque inside, but not overbearingly so, just lots of angels. And it isn't like the duomo di San Giorgio where they added in gorey statues and things that don't even fit in the period of the building, it's all very united. And bright and white and gold.
Ragusa is really great. There are a lot of great people here, and lots of work to be done. We have been teaching a lot of lessons on the street and working pretty hard, but there's always improvement to be made of course. We need to work on getting the information of the people we teach lessons to so we can make them investigators. Italian hot chocolate is like hot pudding in a cup, I had my first this week from a very jolly man who thinks he's too old to change religion but likes introducing us to everyone, and he knows EVERYONE.
Friday we're going to Gela for consiglio di distretto and then Sunday is District conference in Catania, and Sorella Robb is going to Siracusa and SOrella Black is coming home with me to do scambi, so it will be a busy weekend. Hopefully we can plan some good stuff, Sorella Black's first city was Ragusa and she's getting ready to go home so she has a list of inactives she wants to see on Monday. It'll be fun.
Well, time to go. But I just want you to know that I know that the church is true. People here don't think they can know ANYTHING. Everything is always "nobody can know except God" or "speriamo (we hope)", and a lot of people have just given up on knowing anything and just stick with the "all roads lead to heaven" idea. But I know that we can KNOW. We don't have to just hope. Yes, we have to wait, but we can know that Christ restored his church to the earth. We can KNOW that there is a prophet today, we can KNOW that the Book of Mormon is true. We can know that God exists and that he loves us, and that through the atonement of Jesus Christ we can return to him, and we can be with our families forever. All we have to do is want to know, just have a little speck of desire, and pray, and God will let us know. It says so in the Bible and that's why Joseph Smith prayed. It says so in the Book of Mormon. We just have to ask, and we can know things. And I've asked, and I know that these things are true.
Have a great week, I love you all.
Eliza
Sounds like it's been a busy week.
It's been pretty in Ragusa, it was above 25 degrees yesterday, it was amazing. I am currently wearing short sleeves. Dunno where this weather is from but I like it.
Yesterday we were walking by this old lady and we always say buon giorno to everyone and she was no exception, we weren't going to try and talk to her or anything even, but I said buon giorno and she said it back all cute and sweet and stuff and then she looked sideways and saw that we were wearing skirts (she came up to like my waist, she didn't even see my targhetta) and she started screaming at the top of her lungs "VATENE VIA!!! ANDATEVENE VIA!" (ed. note: I think this translates to depart, or get lost) and we were already past her when she started screaming but then every person she walked past on the entire street she was like "buon giorno? buon giorno? they just said buon giorno to ME?" She was kind of insane, it was kind of funny. I would be so embarrassed to look that old if I was old. But then we walked up the street towards our house because it was time for the pranzo break, and passed a shop with a really smiley old lady inside who gave us pane integrale (basically wheat bread, it's a rare thing here) for free.
This week has been nuts though. Our members are all going crazy and we had no evening appointments at all last week which means that basically we waste the whole night outside looking for people only there aren't really any people outside because if it gets a little cold then they think they'll get sick and they're all kind of freaking out about swine flu too. Thankfully there was a Nutella party on Friday night with the branch, so we had something to do. Although we tried making cookies with fake nutella and they were about 500% grease, it was worse than if you tried to cook french fries and put the potatoes in the oil before it gets hot. We decided not to take them and we also decided we will probably never buy nutella again. Especially not if it's fake because it doesn't even taste good.
Our crazy married couple didn't fight with each other this week. But they didn't look at each other either. And we met Sorella Iacono's mom and have visited her, and it's kind of fun considering she speaks only Siciliano because she's like 90 years old and we can't understand 70% of what she says. We get the gist, but the individual words are NOT Italian. Some are more spanish, some are arabic, greek, who knows.
I did get the package on Thursday, thank you! That was pretty exciting. You forgot to write the number of the apartment on it though, it's 201, luckily the mailman remembered my name. For the Christmas package you might want to send it to the mission home though. There is only one sister coming in next transfer and there are three leaving, which means one sister city is definitely closing sad to say and I'm not sure where it is, if they'll take the sisters out of the four elder cities or make Ragusa into just a two man town. Who knows.
We were able to find Paolo again, and his wife wasn't happy because she thinks that we think that we know all about why her daughter got divorced and doesn't go to church anymore when really we have no idea except that the ex-husband of the daughter is in prison. But she seems like she'll be nice if we aren't presumptuous so we'll see with them.
ESTHER HAD HER BABY! Okay, so Italian hospitals are pretty unsanitary as far as I could tell, but all is well with Esther and Vittoria and Justice. Sorella Campo on Saturday evening took us to visit an ex-investigator that she's friends with (Sorella Campo is INCREDIBLE and pretty much every scheda that we have for investigators has her name on it as a friend) and we had kind of a lesson with her. We need to tell her to write her questions down and we'll answer them when we get to them, because at this point she asks a question and we start to answer it and it reminds her of another one so basically if we keep going like that she's going to end up with thousands of unanswered questions and think it's because we don't have the answer. She gave us like 10 kilos of pasta made from grano duro, because some Tunisian woman didn't take it. We aren't sure what to do with it, we hardly ever eat pasta and I have no clue what the difference is between grano tenero and grano duro. But it could probably last us a few years. :P Anyway, we got to go visit Esther and Justice in the hospital. They pretty much hold on to your baby for you until you go home, it isn't allowed to leave the nursery here. But Vittoria is really pretty, lots of hair. I forgot to take pictures when we visited them at their home yesterday. The members have been really supportive of them too, which is really good. They're a really cute family.
Tell Christy that I heard that song she plays on the piano that's like church bells or something like that I can't remember the name, but I heard it from church bells. Pretty cool. The churches in Ibla were ringing back and forth at each other on Monday night, it was interesting. I'm not sure if there was a holiday or what. There always seem to be though. We went inside the Cattedrale di San Giovanni Battista today. It's the big one on Via Roma, you could probably google it or something. It is BEAUTIFUL. Very baroque inside, but not overbearingly so, just lots of angels. And it isn't like the duomo di San Giorgio where they added in gorey statues and things that don't even fit in the period of the building, it's all very united. And bright and white and gold.
Ragusa is really great. There are a lot of great people here, and lots of work to be done. We have been teaching a lot of lessons on the street and working pretty hard, but there's always improvement to be made of course. We need to work on getting the information of the people we teach lessons to so we can make them investigators. Italian hot chocolate is like hot pudding in a cup, I had my first this week from a very jolly man who thinks he's too old to change religion but likes introducing us to everyone, and he knows EVERYONE.
Friday we're going to Gela for consiglio di distretto and then Sunday is District conference in Catania, and Sorella Robb is going to Siracusa and SOrella Black is coming home with me to do scambi, so it will be a busy weekend. Hopefully we can plan some good stuff, Sorella Black's first city was Ragusa and she's getting ready to go home so she has a list of inactives she wants to see on Monday. It'll be fun.
Well, time to go. But I just want you to know that I know that the church is true. People here don't think they can know ANYTHING. Everything is always "nobody can know except God" or "speriamo (we hope)", and a lot of people have just given up on knowing anything and just stick with the "all roads lead to heaven" idea. But I know that we can KNOW. We don't have to just hope. Yes, we have to wait, but we can know that Christ restored his church to the earth. We can KNOW that there is a prophet today, we can KNOW that the Book of Mormon is true. We can know that God exists and that he loves us, and that through the atonement of Jesus Christ we can return to him, and we can be with our families forever. All we have to do is want to know, just have a little speck of desire, and pray, and God will let us know. It says so in the Bible and that's why Joseph Smith prayed. It says so in the Book of Mormon. We just have to ask, and we can know things. And I've asked, and I know that these things are true.
Have a great week, I love you all.
Eliza
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