Dear family and friends:
Well this week was full of adventures. Like lots of crazy adventures
and lots of funny stories. Some of them were only funny as I look back
on them now.
Wednesday was a big day in the mission. We were able to watch a
worldwide missionary broadcast by the apostles/general authorities of
the church. It was such a good 2 hours, and I learned so much. But the
one thing I want to share with y'all is what I learned about teaching
with the spirit. And just following the spirit actually. Elder Bednar
said that any statement that could be started with "I've been thinking
about", "or I felt like I needed to" is probably a prompting of the
spirit... If it is something good. Sometimes in lessons, it is easy to
wonder, "is that just me or does the spirit want me to say that". But,
he said that if we think of something, we don't need to know whether
it is revelation or not before we say it. Just see what happens. Then
Anziano Stanley's mom works for the closed captioning part of the
church, so we turned those on at the end. She said she was going to
send a smiley face. Like this. :/ But that is a bit more like an
awkward face. I wonder if anybody else saw it. :)
Thursday was Thursday. It was probably the worst day of the week. But,
that's okay. Some days are just like that. That morning, we had
planned to have a lesson with a potential, but she didn't show up.
Since we were waiting outside a McDonald's, we decided to get
strawberry milkshakes and French fries to console ourselves. Haha...
The milkshakes ended up taking 30 minutes for them to make. And I feel
like that shouldn't even be allowed. They should have been free!
Customer service does not seem to be a first priority here. Then the
day continued with another cancelled lesson, a lesson with a new
convert which was really good (not all bad things happened), and then
we waited at a bus stop to go to English course. 1 hour later, the bus
shows up, and we are 30 minutes late. Meno male (thank goodness) for
the anziani! Then I had pretty much had it and I really wanted to go
home and go to bed, but then English course happened. One of the
anziani started to teach them slang (don't ask me why) and the ONLY
sentence one student could come up with in English using the word
wanna was "I wanna dance with the girl..." gesturing towards me since
I am the only girl in the room. Really? I hate being flirted at by 45+
year old men.
Saturday was a busy day also. But busy in a good way. We went up to a
mountain town at the base of Mt. Etna with the Bruno's. It was super
adorable and the houses are American style, meaning separate buildings
instead of apartments, and I could live there if it wasn't at the base
of an active volcano. We got this new family referral from the Bruno's
(members are the best!) and they are super prepared for the gospel.
Then we had a lunch appointment where I ate so much. We had the usual
pasta dish which was the size of a normal meal in America, and then
she brought out the meat dish, which had sausage, a quarter of a
chicken, and French fries. Then we were supposed to eat salad, bread,
a banana, and drink soda which they buy special for us. And another
side dish that I was too full to eat for two reasons. (It was purple
octopus.)
As we were leaving the meal appointment, we received a call from the
1st counselor in the bishopric. I answered, "pronto Fratello" and he
asked me to give a talk on Sunday for 10 minutes. Should I need to
mention that this was at 4:30 on Saturday? After we got home from the
YW's activity that night, I worked on my talk from 8 to 10:30. And I
was pretty impressed with myself that I wrote a 10 minute talk in
another language and translated stories in 2.5 hours. Not too shabby.
Then on Sunday, there was no electricity in church, so we only had
sacrament meeting. No electricity means no microphone, and no piano.
The ward members were counting on me to pick the starting note. I'm
not that great at singing guys. Haha.. :)
On Friday, sorry, time traveling here. Friday we FINALLY got to see
Gabriella. And guys she's still reading the Book of Mormon! It's
literally a miracle! We were so happy that she is still reading, and
she said she gets answers from it. I think the book might actually be
true. ;) She also asked if we had more pamphlets for her to read. She
is so prepared for the gospel, and sometimes I wonder why life
situations have to be so hard. We are hoping and praying that she can
marry Giuseppe and then get baptized at least before he dies from
liver failure.
Saturday morning, we walk downstairs and the outside apartment door
doesn't have a lock on it anymore. Um, okay. That's a bit strange.
When we got back on Saturday night, they had changed the lock without
giving us new keys. So all of Sunday, when we needed back into the
building, we had to ring people's buzzers. We strategically didn't ask
the same person more than once, but some people were a bit wary of
letting us in. So we'd say, "we're the sister missionaries." And then
they'd be like. "No. I'm not interested." And we were like, "okay,
that's fine, but we live here so if you could open the door.. It would
be appreciated."
And during companionship inventory, Sorella Davison told me that she
was bracing herself for next week. She described it as the scene from
Tangled where Rapunzel is having a melt down about leaving the tower
comparing it to me preparing to most likely leave Catania. Everyone
has decided that I'm leaving and Sorella Davison is training. But, I
decided that scene is pretty accurate with how I feel. I'm ready to
move to a new city... But I also have a piece of my heart that will
forever be in this city. Get ready for next week. :)
That's about it for this week. Hope y'all enjoyed reading about my
crazy adventures. Also, today we went to a botanical garden. Sorella
Davison and I weren't too crazy about learning about all the weird
plants from around the world, we were more concerned with how
beautiful this garden was and how we could elope and get wedding
pictures done there. Haha... We're weird.
Love you all!
Con amore,
Sorella Flansberg
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