23 June 2010
Hello Famiglia Mia!
Well let me just tell you about this week...Haha...It's been an interesting one.
Wednesday evening was incredible, seriously. We went to see Jessica, the woman from Ecuador who we gave the Spanish Book of Mormon to when we were going to give it to her friend Sandra from the Domenican Republic. Anyway, we saw Jessica, and she had read up to 1 Nephi 8 and had a lot of good questions. She told us a story about how her sister had been involved with another religion for a while and how before studying with them she'd just been a really sweet girl and after she left them she was just a totally different and unhappy person and so after seeing that she hasn't wanted to hear anything about any other religions. Her husband had a copy of the Qur'an at home for ages and she never even wanted to look at it. But we walked into her friend's store with the Book of Mormon and she saw it and wanted to read it. She says she's been reading it and imagining everything as it happened and that she feels like it's all true and the fact that she wants to read it and is so involved in reading it when generally she doesn't really like to read makes her feel like that's her answer that it's true. It's just a really neat testimony that the promises in the Book of Mormon about the Lamanites receiving the gospel are true--it's for them, and they feel it. So that was amazing.
Then Thursday was a pretty good day too. We went to see Agata, the ex-investigator from 12 years ago, whose daughters had called us and invited us to come over. And it was a really awesome lesson. She asked a lot of questions about what would happen if she decided that she wanted to be baptized, and she prayed at the end, and she said she's going to start praying that her husband will be okay with her learning about the church again. She's such a sweet lady. She's only about 50 but she has only a few teeth but a huge smile and her daughters are so cute too. Hopefully we'll get to start teaching them a little more. They may come to church some time soon.
Thursday evening we met Nina, she's a less-active, she's Richa the sometimes investigator's mom. She's really cool. She's got a really strong testimony, however she's got to work pretty much constantly so she can't come to church. She's from Mauritius. That was a good meeting, we'd been trying to see her for a while, but the woman she works for kept giving her things to do last minute, and this last week she had been in a car accident so she couldn't go to work so we got to see her.
Thursday night we had our family night in church. It was pretty hot but my companion was freezing. Anyway, we had a good lesson, etc, and then we ran to catch the bus. We got home to our apartment and it was 85 degrees in the room and my companion wrapped herself in a blanket. She really wasn't happy--she's been having a lot of problems with her hips lately and was feeling like "great, i'm sick again". Turns out she had a fever of 104.
So Friday morning we stayed in, with every intention of going out in the afternoon, except that she still had a fever and felt way sick so the doctor in Germany told her we needed to stay in and he'd call Saturday morning to check up on us. So, Friday my companion slept and I cleaned the house and did the laundry and cut my nails and made brownies and read a lot and wrote some letters and sewed some stuff and packed my winter clothes, and basically a whole bunch of things. Very productive day. At the end of the day, my collega was a little worried because she was noticing this rash appearing on her stomach and her back.
Saturday morning the rash was on her face too!!! So...Saturday we stayed in while my companion got more and more polka dots and we decided it was chicken pox even though we aren't doctors and she had had a vaccination when she was little. We went to the mission home to send pictures to the doctor in Germany and Sorella Taranto figured it looked like chicken pox to her too.
Sunday morning the doctor called and said he hadn't received the pictures, so we got a ride with Sorella Crawford to the mission home to send them and started looking up things about chicken pox. The doctor thought it was Coxsackies virus or something like that, because she had gotten the chicken pox vaccine. But everything else said chicken pox. He said to take her to the ER to see what they said. So, Pronto Soccorso...we taught a lesson to a lady who was there with her mother-in-law. Basically they asked questions about how long you wait in the ER in the United States, and they drew some blood for a basic bloodtest--like sugar levels, etc--and then stuck her with an IV of tylenol and water until that was finished, gave us a paper with prescriptions that are optional and another with the diagnosis "Varicella?", yes with the question mark. Anyway, la varicella has come to Catania. Could be from anywhere, we're everywhere, but thankfully I've already had the stuff... A couple of members called---I had talked to Sorella Catania earlier to tell her SW was sick and we couldn't come to sing, and told her we weren't sure but she had a fever so she assumed she had "colpa d'aria" (what you get when you change temperatures too fast, etc) and then when she called later we said SW had Varicella, and she said "Addirritura, la varicella!" (No Kidding, Chicken pox!) Oh dear.
Needless to say we've been inside since Friday and I'm going insane!
Monday I have no idea what we did...we went to the Crawford's for dinner though, and that was kind of nice to get out for a little.
Yesterday was fun...There was a zone meeting in the morning and interviews, and Slla Taranto took Slla Williams up to the mission home and me to the church. So we listened to the zone leaders, and then split up for district meeting except I went with the Siracusa District and the Assistants went with Messina, and as we were walking away Anz Hancock comes up and says, "so they asked us to do a musical number at the end, and since sister Williams isn't here I thought I'd just play and you could sing" I told him he could just play on his own but he said he wasn't good enough so I said oooookay. Anyway. We got to the end of the meeting and they almost forgot, and then they announced it and I was a little reluctant, and Slla White looked at me and said "you knew about this right?"...anyway, so I go up, and Anz Hancock says, I'll just do an intro and then you take it away, so he does the intro, and I'm about to start singing, and then ! He changes and starts playing Happy Birthday. Oh man. Yes, I was embarrassed. And then they brought out a giant trophy filled with chocolate and Happy Meal prizes. Ha. That was fun. There are several videos of it, I'll have to get them at some point. And then we went back to eat something in the kitchen after the meeting and they came in with a cake with 22 candles. Mamma mia. I didn't blow them out in one shot, I guess I'm just too old or something. But that was a lot of fun.
Then I did splits with the Assistants! Yeah. It was 3,30 and we hadn't eaten lunch so we went to try and get a panino but naturally it was closed because it was lunch time. So we went to the hospital to pick up the results of Sorella Williams' blood test, and then to the mission home. But hey, lots of first experiences here this week. And we ate Subway sandwiches for lunch (they have subway at the base) and then were at the mission home until evening. It was a pretty good day.
We did order a pizza for dinner, I forgot that the reason they ask for your last name here is because they have to find it on the citofono, but the guy saw Stevenson and assumed that it was foreign so it must equal Sorelle. Ha. Pizza with Mozzarella, Zucchini, Melanzane, and Peperoni (zucchini, eggplant, and bell pepper) it was good.
Sorella Robb called to wish me a happy birthday and asked if I had a good day and I said "yeah, it was nice, we got to get out of the house a little bit..." and she and her companion started laughing, she said "well, as missionaries that's generally what we do, but I understand that your situation is a little special."
Today I've been going kind of crazy. There are honestly only so many Ensigns you can read, and there is really nothing else to do in a missionary house. But hopefully my companion will be recovered by Sunday so that we can go to the District-->stake conference!!! I would be seriously devastated to miss that. So we're crossing our fingers. I'm going to go nuts though staying at home, wow. I'm sending some drawings that describe our week pretty well.
But my birthday was good. Ha. :)
I love you!
Eliza
Well let me just tell you about this week...Haha...It's been an interesting one.
Wednesday evening was incredible, seriously. We went to see Jessica, the woman from Ecuador who we gave the Spanish Book of Mormon to when we were going to give it to her friend Sandra from the Domenican Republic. Anyway, we saw Jessica, and she had read up to 1 Nephi 8 and had a lot of good questions. She told us a story about how her sister had been involved with another religion for a while and how before studying with them she'd just been a really sweet girl and after she left them she was just a totally different and unhappy person and so after seeing that she hasn't wanted to hear anything about any other religions. Her husband had a copy of the Qur'an at home for ages and she never even wanted to look at it. But we walked into her friend's store with the Book of Mormon and she saw it and wanted to read it. She says she's been reading it and imagining everything as it happened and that she feels like it's all true and the fact that she wants to read it and is so involved in reading it when generally she doesn't really like to read makes her feel like that's her answer that it's true. It's just a really neat testimony that the promises in the Book of Mormon about the Lamanites receiving the gospel are true--it's for them, and they feel it. So that was amazing.
Then Thursday was a pretty good day too. We went to see Agata, the ex-investigator from 12 years ago, whose daughters had called us and invited us to come over. And it was a really awesome lesson. She asked a lot of questions about what would happen if she decided that she wanted to be baptized, and she prayed at the end, and she said she's going to start praying that her husband will be okay with her learning about the church again. She's such a sweet lady. She's only about 50 but she has only a few teeth but a huge smile and her daughters are so cute too. Hopefully we'll get to start teaching them a little more. They may come to church some time soon.
Thursday evening we met Nina, she's a less-active, she's Richa the sometimes investigator's mom. She's really cool. She's got a really strong testimony, however she's got to work pretty much constantly so she can't come to church. She's from Mauritius. That was a good meeting, we'd been trying to see her for a while, but the woman she works for kept giving her things to do last minute, and this last week she had been in a car accident so she couldn't go to work so we got to see her.
Thursday night we had our family night in church. It was pretty hot but my companion was freezing. Anyway, we had a good lesson, etc, and then we ran to catch the bus. We got home to our apartment and it was 85 degrees in the room and my companion wrapped herself in a blanket. She really wasn't happy--she's been having a lot of problems with her hips lately and was feeling like "great, i'm sick again". Turns out she had a fever of 104.
So Friday morning we stayed in, with every intention of going out in the afternoon, except that she still had a fever and felt way sick so the doctor in Germany told her we needed to stay in and he'd call Saturday morning to check up on us. So, Friday my companion slept and I cleaned the house and did the laundry and cut my nails and made brownies and read a lot and wrote some letters and sewed some stuff and packed my winter clothes, and basically a whole bunch of things. Very productive day. At the end of the day, my collega was a little worried because she was noticing this rash appearing on her stomach and her back.
Saturday morning the rash was on her face too!!! So...Saturday we stayed in while my companion got more and more polka dots and we decided it was chicken pox even though we aren't doctors and she had had a vaccination when she was little. We went to the mission home to send pictures to the doctor in Germany and Sorella Taranto figured it looked like chicken pox to her too.
Sunday morning the doctor called and said he hadn't received the pictures, so we got a ride with Sorella Crawford to the mission home to send them and started looking up things about chicken pox. The doctor thought it was Coxsackies virus or something like that, because she had gotten the chicken pox vaccine. But everything else said chicken pox. He said to take her to the ER to see what they said. So, Pronto Soccorso...we taught a lesson to a lady who was there with her mother-in-law. Basically they asked questions about how long you wait in the ER in the United States, and they drew some blood for a basic bloodtest--like sugar levels, etc--and then stuck her with an IV of tylenol and water until that was finished, gave us a paper with prescriptions that are optional and another with the diagnosis "Varicella?", yes with the question mark. Anyway, la varicella has come to Catania. Could be from anywhere, we're everywhere, but thankfully I've already had the stuff... A couple of members called---I had talked to Sorella Catania earlier to tell her SW was sick and we couldn't come to sing, and told her we weren't sure but she had a fever so she assumed she had "colpa d'aria" (what you get when you change temperatures too fast, etc) and then when she called later we said SW had Varicella, and she said "Addirritura, la varicella!" (No Kidding, Chicken pox!) Oh dear.
Needless to say we've been inside since Friday and I'm going insane!
Monday I have no idea what we did...we went to the Crawford's for dinner though, and that was kind of nice to get out for a little.
Yesterday was fun...There was a zone meeting in the morning and interviews, and Slla Taranto took Slla Williams up to the mission home and me to the church. So we listened to the zone leaders, and then split up for district meeting except I went with the Siracusa District and the Assistants went with Messina, and as we were walking away Anz Hancock comes up and says, "so they asked us to do a musical number at the end, and since sister Williams isn't here I thought I'd just play and you could sing" I told him he could just play on his own but he said he wasn't good enough so I said oooookay. Anyway. We got to the end of the meeting and they almost forgot, and then they announced it and I was a little reluctant, and Slla White looked at me and said "you knew about this right?"...anyway, so I go up, and Anz Hancock says, I'll just do an intro and then you take it away, so he does the intro, and I'm about to start singing, and then ! He changes and starts playing Happy Birthday. Oh man. Yes, I was embarrassed. And then they brought out a giant trophy filled with chocolate and Happy Meal prizes. Ha. That was fun. There are several videos of it, I'll have to get them at some point. And then we went back to eat something in the kitchen after the meeting and they came in with a cake with 22 candles. Mamma mia. I didn't blow them out in one shot, I guess I'm just too old or something. But that was a lot of fun.
Then I did splits with the Assistants! Yeah. It was 3,30 and we hadn't eaten lunch so we went to try and get a panino but naturally it was closed because it was lunch time. So we went to the hospital to pick up the results of Sorella Williams' blood test, and then to the mission home. But hey, lots of first experiences here this week. And we ate Subway sandwiches for lunch (they have subway at the base) and then were at the mission home until evening. It was a pretty good day.
We did order a pizza for dinner, I forgot that the reason they ask for your last name here is because they have to find it on the citofono, but the guy saw Stevenson and assumed that it was foreign so it must equal Sorelle. Ha. Pizza with Mozzarella, Zucchini, Melanzane, and Peperoni (zucchini, eggplant, and bell pepper) it was good.
Sorella Robb called to wish me a happy birthday and asked if I had a good day and I said "yeah, it was nice, we got to get out of the house a little bit..." and she and her companion started laughing, she said "well, as missionaries that's generally what we do, but I understand that your situation is a little special."
Today I've been going kind of crazy. There are honestly only so many Ensigns you can read, and there is really nothing else to do in a missionary house. But hopefully my companion will be recovered by Sunday so that we can go to the District-->stake conference!!! I would be seriously devastated to miss that. So we're crossing our fingers. I'm going to go nuts though staying at home, wow. I'm sending some drawings that describe our week pretty well.
But my birthday was good. Ha. :)
I love you!
Eliza
Comments