Dear Family and Friends:
Last Monday, we went to the Giorgianni's house for a family home
evening with Dayana (our new convert) and it was so much fun! They
have two of the cutest kids, and other than with Jennifer's boys, this
was the only time I've had the hardest time with not being able to
hold kids. It is so hard! I just love babies! Comunque, they have
Aaron and Kendra. Aaron is almost 3, I think.. And he has a huge crush
on Sorella Condé. They picked us up from the church and Fratello
Giorgianni told us that Aaron had been asking where Sorella Gialla was
(Yellow sister-because of her hair). Then Fratello G corrected him and
said it was Sorella Bionda (blonde sister). Haha, the rest of the
night, he was saying Sorella Bionda, guarda! (Look!) Fratello G
thought he was being funny and called me Sorella Arancione which means
orange sister. Orange, I don't know why.. But we had a great lesson
with them using the article from the Ensign about 'what the Book of
Mormon teaches us about being happy' (Such a good article!) and made
homemade pizza on thicker tortillas. It was kind of like an open face
quesadilla. Yum!
On Tuesday, we had our district meeting travels again. To make this
clearer, we ride a train to a stop in Rome and then take a metro from
there to the mission office. But, back to my story, we met people from
Ladispoli and got their phone numbers! We met Simona first. She was
really cute and spoke to us in English. She lived in London for 2
years and got really good at English! She said she knew a sister
missionary from 16 years ago who sat next to her on the bus. We hope
to be able to teach her the gospel sometime this next week. We met
Paola on the way back. We didn't talk to her as much, but she gave us
her phone number and told us she wanted to meet up. It was rewarding
to finally be able to talk to people on the train from Ladispoli. :)
Sorella Condé got a Valentine's Day package on Tuesday, and she shared
with me. So thank you Sorella Condé's mom! We had sugar cookies,
kisses, and REESES'! It was a nice midweek surprise!
Wednesday, we rode on trains almost the whole day. We left the house
that morning, rode 2 trains for a total of an hour and a half and
finally got to this member's house. They invited us to stay for pranzo
and we ate really great. They were afraid we wouldn't like it because
they don't eat like normal Italians, meaning pasta and meat for every
meal. We ate rice, with turkey pieces, and zucchini and artichokes, I
think. It was pretty good, and they were happy we liked it. Sorella
Viglietta made us homemade peanut butter later that day and gave it to
us on Sunday. It was really good! But cracking open a bunch of peanuts
for a little bit of peanut butter sounds like too much work to me even
if it supposedly healthier.
On Thursday morning, we had this thing at a school where we taught
13-14 year olds about America and we spoke in English. One of our
English course students, Giada, asked if we could help her out with
this and President said it was okay. It was a really good experience,
and I now understand how hard it is to be a teacher! We basically just
introduced ourself, where we come from, what the common animals are,
what the weather is like, and what we like to do, and why we are here
as missionaries. Then we talked about food and all the different
accents of people from different places in the US. We taught our
presentation 4 times in 5 hours, and after the second time, our jokes
weren't that funny anymore. Then we invited them all to come to
English course! :)
Afterwards, Giada wanted to buy us lunch for helping her, and she
wouldn't let us say no, so she bought us pizza and took us out to this
beautiful castle on the coast. Only in Italy does this ever happen!
Haha... The castle was cool, but I thought the countryside getting out
there was even prettier. Italy is just beautiful!
This week, President Waddoups challenged all of us missionaries to
read the entire Book of Mormon before May 15. I don't know what is so
special about that day, but I'm excited. We have to read about 5 pages
a day, and I'm only 20 pages in and I've noticed so many things that I
haven't noticed before. And I've read that book a lot! But the thing I
wanted to share with you all is that Nephi wasn't perfect! I always
thought that since he was writing the story, maybe he left out some of
the parts where he murmured too, but this week I discovered that he
didn't! A verse after it talks about Laman and Lemuel murmuring, talks
about how Nephi prayed to the Lord to know for himself and the Lord
softened his heart. If his heart had to be softened, that means it was
hard before. Maybe he didn't murmur like his brothers, but maybe he
was still a bit resentful for having to leave Jerusalem. Who knows?
(Chissà?) and then when they went to get the plates, after the first
try, it said that 'we began to be sorrowful'. The 'we' means Nephi was
included. And when he received the prompting to kill Laban, Nephi
shrunk meaning he recoiled. It took him a bit of convincing to do it.
I just thought it was cool to realize that even Nephi wasn't perfect.
This week it started to hit me more the meaning that is behind my name
tag. It only took me 9 months to really make me think about being a
representative of Christ. It is such a privilege every morning to put
my 'targhetta' on my shirt over my heart. It is a great reminder
throughout the day of who I am and why I am here. It motivates me to
work hard, push a little farther, and keep going!
Twice this week, Sorella Condé and I have finished getting ready only
to realize that we are wearing really similar outfits! Haha.. We were
going to take a picture, but we forgot.
On Friday night, we were walking and making rounds to see the less
actives we hadn't been able to see this last week. On our way to the
first one, my foot rolled and slipped off the curb and I ended up face
planting in the middle of the street. Meno male there weren't any cars
coming. I only got scraped up with a few bruises, and maybe my pride
got a little hurt, but we continued on to see the less actives after
sitting on a bench for a few minutes. We talked to one less active for
a few minutes, but then left and as we were walking down the road, we
met this cute Colombian lady and we invited her to English course. We
are hoping that she comes, because she was adorable. To console me,
Sorella Condé said I probably fell so we could meet her. If that is
the case, I'll be more grateful when she comes to English course.
On Saturday morning, we helped an older American man in the ward with
family history. We are helping him understand how the new programs
work, and I was just reminded about how important it is for young
adults to be doing this work. We grew up knowing how to use this
technology. Everything we taught him how to do in an hour and a half
would have taken us 20 minutes. But it was fun and a great test of
patience. Also helping other people do family history makes me really
excited to work on mine again. :)
That's it for this week! I love you all!
Con amore,
Sorella Flansberg
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