10 March 2010
Hi!
Well it's been another crazy week. The weather decided to go back to rainy, luckily today it's almost sunny again.
Things are going well here. She's currently having some problems with her joints and can't walk a lot which makes life a little interesting, but life is pretty good. I was a little sad to lose Sorella Hirsh though, she's way too cool to just be colleghe for six weeks. Eh...pazienza.
I didn't go back for Esther and Justice's baptism. I didn't ask, I know there are other people who have gone for baptisms but I didn't really feel like that was necessary. It's not about me, the cool thing is that they got baptized regardless of who was there.
I bought shoes at the market today for 6 euro. I have to get inserts for them but they aren't plastic soles which is a plus. They probably won't last super long though, but the flats season is starting so eventually there will be flats on sale and hopefully some of them are black. I don't really need purple ones. But oh well, they fit and they're black and so I can't really complain. I got tan ones a few weeks ago that are nicer and they should last a long time, they have thick soles and stuff. There's a lady in our branch who's got Doc Martins that look like really good not hideous slle missionarie shoes, but they aren't from Italy, purtroppo.
I'm glad you got the chocolate stuff. The dark chocolate torrone was really the best. I liked the Modica chocolate though, it was interesting. They have a lot of chocolate with pepper in it here, even gelato. It's interesting.
So this week there isn't a lot to report about investigators, mostly because we don't have any. Okay we have a lot, I've just never met them and they don't answer their phones and we don't have their addresses or last names. Which means basically nobody. It's kind of been a rough week. But we did have correlation with our new branch mission leader and he seems like he'll do something which would be nice. It's kind of weird to switch branches or leaders, because Fllo Cascone in Ragusa was PHENOMENAL, he went way above and beyond to help us with everything from rides for investigators to finding out what it would take for Esther and Justice to get married in Italy. And then here the guy just asked what we were doing and gave his two cents. But Fllo LaFerla seems like he wants to get the members involved a lot, it'll be kind of hard because he's not here a lot, but we'll see.
Thursday we played telephone in corso d'inglese. That was a lot of fun. The best one was "I think we need a doctor for our ears" that ended up being "My sister is wife doctor", or "which do you prefer, meat or fish?" that ended up being "my favorite fish is salmon". We laughed a lot. And then I did the spiritual thought, we're going through the Preach My Gospel lessons and teaching one principle at a time for pensieri spirituali, and Thursday we were on lesson 2, the Atonement. I think it went pretty well. The Atonement is really an incredible thing, that through Jesus Christ we can have eternal happiness, eternal families, eternal life, and all we have to do is decide we want it, do what Christ asks us to do, and work hard and never give up. Pretty amazing. We do spiritual thoughts in Italian, we like people to understand.
We met Heberne on Friday, he wanted a Bible in English. He was a referral from the Palermo Sorelle from when they came for zone conference. He's from Haiti and he's a philosopher. That was a surprise, we were just thinking he was here for work like everybody else but invece [instead] no. He's pretty intelligent and educated. We gave him a Book of Mormon. He said he'd read it. He didn't come to the appointment we had planned for yesterday but he did say he was going to France for something so maybe he left early. WHO KNOWS.
Saturday it rained. And rained. Not too exciting really. But we did go to see Lillian, a member from Nigeria. She's been here for around 15 years, but she was in Nigeria for 4 months to visit her kids and go to the temple. Some of these immigrants have crazy stories. I don't know if I could leave 5 and 7 year old kids to go to a country where I don't speak the language and try to find work. But she's a really sweet lady.
Sunday the assistants gave us a ride to church, meno male [fortunately], it had been raining for a long time and we would have had to walk through lots of lakes. They actually wanted to give us a mattress they got from the Crawford's house (the office couple) for my companion--our mattresses are horrible. They try to eat you alive. I think I'm going to have back problems after this city. But anyway, it was raining so they didn't give us that but they did give us a ride. I don't know how you'd feel about Relief Society here. It kind of sounds like a big fight even though they're all agreeing with each other. I have a hard time staying awake, I think I got in the habit of tuning it out my first month when I couldn't understand more than one person at a time and I have not broken the habit. But oh well. The Gospel Principles teacher gave us homework--to write "una lettera d'amore a Gesù." [a love-letter to Jesus] Basically all the reasons we love Him and are grateful for his atonement and make it really personal and heartfelt. I think it's a pretty interesting assignment. I think it will take a long time to write that letter...
We ate lunch with a little old woman who hadn't come to church because of the rain but called the Branch President's office about three times to make sure we were still coming. Naturally we ate too much. But she actually makes semi-realistic proportions, for an old lady. Some of them cook for about 10 when we come. She only cooked for about 5.
We also finally got a hold of Gabriella and at least she still loves us. I just don't know when we'll ever see her again...
Let's see...Monday we went out in the rain again. People are always so shocked when we are out in the rain walking. We went to Sorella Seminara and talked to her about prepping a Libro di Mormon for the person she's chose from the list she made. It went pretty well. She's not as defensive as a lot of them. Richa canceled on us, big surprise. We ended up going home early because Sorella Williams' legs hurt. We talked to a crazy old man on the bus and I got really mad at a lady on the bus. I guess I glared at her...I guess I should have born my testimony or something. She doesn't even know what she's missing.
Yesterday we went to Ingrid's, up in San Gregorio. It was really foggy, we couldn't see where we were walking and I wasn't sure I knew how to get where we were going anyway because we had only been there one time, but luckily her palazzo appeared out of the fog. We spent way too much time at her house--she gets kind of distracted and we didn't start the lesson right away. But it ended up kind of good because her son Daniel came home and so he was there for the lesson about reading the Book of Mormon. She reads. Right now she's reading the Old Testament and can't wait for Jesus to be born. But they said they'd read the Book of Mormon too.
The person sitting next to me just finished smoking. What a headache. Especially combined with the air-freshener the guy sprayed to cover it up...
Anyway then last night we were supposed to have an appointment with Heberne at 5 but he never came. Luckily the basilare [basic] English class has stuff at 6 too so there were people there and we got to talk to a few about the gospel. Then we only had one student until about 7:30 because it was raining so people just don't go outside. But that one student wanted to know what exactly we're doing here and why so we got to talk to her a little about the Restoration and what we're doing and why and we'll talk to her again some more sometime. Cool. There's always something, even when it seems like nothing is working out Heavenly Father always gives us something, we just have to be patient and wait for it.
Today we went shopping. I got shirts for summer. There's an outlet store that has pretty nice clothes and the shirts were on sale for 5€ each. They don't add tax to the prices here either, things are really the price they say they are, which is kind of nice. But anyway. And we went to the market and I found those shoes, so that was good. Hopefully they'll last a few months at least. I also got a belt at the market. I think it's really funny to see American women in the market trying to bargain and not succeeding. The guy told me the belt was 10, I said maybe we'd come back later. So he said 8, or two for 15. I still said maybe we'd come back later, and I was being completely sincere. Then he told me it was 6. So I figured I might as well take it since I did want it. The best bargaining tool is walking away, evidently.
Well I think that's about it for this week. I'm excited for the Easter package. :)
I love you all a lot, have a wonderful week!!!
Eliza
Well it's been another crazy week. The weather decided to go back to rainy, luckily today it's almost sunny again.
Things are going well here. She's currently having some problems with her joints and can't walk a lot which makes life a little interesting, but life is pretty good. I was a little sad to lose Sorella Hirsh though, she's way too cool to just be colleghe for six weeks. Eh...pazienza.
I didn't go back for Esther and Justice's baptism. I didn't ask, I know there are other people who have gone for baptisms but I didn't really feel like that was necessary. It's not about me, the cool thing is that they got baptized regardless of who was there.
I bought shoes at the market today for 6 euro. I have to get inserts for them but they aren't plastic soles which is a plus. They probably won't last super long though, but the flats season is starting so eventually there will be flats on sale and hopefully some of them are black. I don't really need purple ones. But oh well, they fit and they're black and so I can't really complain. I got tan ones a few weeks ago that are nicer and they should last a long time, they have thick soles and stuff. There's a lady in our branch who's got Doc Martins that look like really good not hideous slle missionarie shoes, but they aren't from Italy, purtroppo.
I'm glad you got the chocolate stuff. The dark chocolate torrone was really the best. I liked the Modica chocolate though, it was interesting. They have a lot of chocolate with pepper in it here, even gelato. It's interesting.
So this week there isn't a lot to report about investigators, mostly because we don't have any. Okay we have a lot, I've just never met them and they don't answer their phones and we don't have their addresses or last names. Which means basically nobody. It's kind of been a rough week. But we did have correlation with our new branch mission leader and he seems like he'll do something which would be nice. It's kind of weird to switch branches or leaders, because Fllo Cascone in Ragusa was PHENOMENAL, he went way above and beyond to help us with everything from rides for investigators to finding out what it would take for Esther and Justice to get married in Italy. And then here the guy just asked what we were doing and gave his two cents. But Fllo LaFerla seems like he wants to get the members involved a lot, it'll be kind of hard because he's not here a lot, but we'll see.
Thursday we played telephone in corso d'inglese. That was a lot of fun. The best one was "I think we need a doctor for our ears" that ended up being "My sister is wife doctor", or "which do you prefer, meat or fish?" that ended up being "my favorite fish is salmon". We laughed a lot. And then I did the spiritual thought, we're going through the Preach My Gospel lessons and teaching one principle at a time for pensieri spirituali, and Thursday we were on lesson 2, the Atonement. I think it went pretty well. The Atonement is really an incredible thing, that through Jesus Christ we can have eternal happiness, eternal families, eternal life, and all we have to do is decide we want it, do what Christ asks us to do, and work hard and never give up. Pretty amazing. We do spiritual thoughts in Italian, we like people to understand.
We met Heberne on Friday, he wanted a Bible in English. He was a referral from the Palermo Sorelle from when they came for zone conference. He's from Haiti and he's a philosopher. That was a surprise, we were just thinking he was here for work like everybody else but invece [instead] no. He's pretty intelligent and educated. We gave him a Book of Mormon. He said he'd read it. He didn't come to the appointment we had planned for yesterday but he did say he was going to France for something so maybe he left early. WHO KNOWS.
Saturday it rained. And rained. Not too exciting really. But we did go to see Lillian, a member from Nigeria. She's been here for around 15 years, but she was in Nigeria for 4 months to visit her kids and go to the temple. Some of these immigrants have crazy stories. I don't know if I could leave 5 and 7 year old kids to go to a country where I don't speak the language and try to find work. But she's a really sweet lady.
Sunday the assistants gave us a ride to church, meno male [fortunately], it had been raining for a long time and we would have had to walk through lots of lakes. They actually wanted to give us a mattress they got from the Crawford's house (the office couple) for my companion--our mattresses are horrible. They try to eat you alive. I think I'm going to have back problems after this city. But anyway, it was raining so they didn't give us that but they did give us a ride. I don't know how you'd feel about Relief Society here. It kind of sounds like a big fight even though they're all agreeing with each other. I have a hard time staying awake, I think I got in the habit of tuning it out my first month when I couldn't understand more than one person at a time and I have not broken the habit. But oh well. The Gospel Principles teacher gave us homework--to write "una lettera d'amore a Gesù." [a love-letter to Jesus] Basically all the reasons we love Him and are grateful for his atonement and make it really personal and heartfelt. I think it's a pretty interesting assignment. I think it will take a long time to write that letter...
We ate lunch with a little old woman who hadn't come to church because of the rain but called the Branch President's office about three times to make sure we were still coming. Naturally we ate too much. But she actually makes semi-realistic proportions, for an old lady. Some of them cook for about 10 when we come. She only cooked for about 5.
We also finally got a hold of Gabriella and at least she still loves us. I just don't know when we'll ever see her again...
Let's see...Monday we went out in the rain again. People are always so shocked when we are out in the rain walking. We went to Sorella Seminara and talked to her about prepping a Libro di Mormon for the person she's chose from the list she made. It went pretty well. She's not as defensive as a lot of them. Richa canceled on us, big surprise. We ended up going home early because Sorella Williams' legs hurt. We talked to a crazy old man on the bus and I got really mad at a lady on the bus. I guess I glared at her...I guess I should have born my testimony or something. She doesn't even know what she's missing.
Yesterday we went to Ingrid's, up in San Gregorio. It was really foggy, we couldn't see where we were walking and I wasn't sure I knew how to get where we were going anyway because we had only been there one time, but luckily her palazzo appeared out of the fog. We spent way too much time at her house--she gets kind of distracted and we didn't start the lesson right away. But it ended up kind of good because her son Daniel came home and so he was there for the lesson about reading the Book of Mormon. She reads. Right now she's reading the Old Testament and can't wait for Jesus to be born. But they said they'd read the Book of Mormon too.
The person sitting next to me just finished smoking. What a headache. Especially combined with the air-freshener the guy sprayed to cover it up...
Anyway then last night we were supposed to have an appointment with Heberne at 5 but he never came. Luckily the basilare [basic] English class has stuff at 6 too so there were people there and we got to talk to a few about the gospel. Then we only had one student until about 7:30 because it was raining so people just don't go outside. But that one student wanted to know what exactly we're doing here and why so we got to talk to her a little about the Restoration and what we're doing and why and we'll talk to her again some more sometime. Cool. There's always something, even when it seems like nothing is working out Heavenly Father always gives us something, we just have to be patient and wait for it.
Today we went shopping. I got shirts for summer. There's an outlet store that has pretty nice clothes and the shirts were on sale for 5€ each. They don't add tax to the prices here either, things are really the price they say they are, which is kind of nice. But anyway. And we went to the market and I found those shoes, so that was good. Hopefully they'll last a few months at least. I also got a belt at the market. I think it's really funny to see American women in the market trying to bargain and not succeeding. The guy told me the belt was 10, I said maybe we'd come back later. So he said 8, or two for 15. I still said maybe we'd come back later, and I was being completely sincere. Then he told me it was 6. So I figured I might as well take it since I did want it. The best bargaining tool is walking away, evidently.
Well I think that's about it for this week. I'm excited for the Easter package. :)
I love you all a lot, have a wonderful week!!!
Eliza
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