other than that, i have nothing else to write.
naaaahhhhhh...... just kidding. but this was seriously the most mortifying/hilarious experience thus far on my mission haha.
well i am just going to start at what we did last p-day. we made our best purchase so far. a dart board. and realized that its probably not the best thing to be putting holes in the wall of our apartment (we're not that good yet.......) so we put up a giant Ladispoli map behind our dart board and long story short (really there just isn't a story..) we came up with a thing called 'dart board finding' where we throw darts at the map and wherever we hit, we have to go do contacting on that street. its probably the best idea we have ever had. haha also makes finding a little more enjoyable, since its not the easiest thing for us to do...
for service each week we go to a town called Santi Marinella to visit a member's mother who is sick in a creepy catholic hospital. we just go and hangout with her for an hour and help her to eat or do whatever she needs to do. this week we cleaned her dentures and i about puked. (sorry. just not into this kinda stuff haha) but it was good for us to be there for her. she's catholic and since the hospital is run by nuns we arent really allowed to try and teach her but we do bring Liahona magazine and do spiritual thoughts with her. she loves it. hopefully if she ever gets out of the hospital we can really start teaching her.
i dont know if i told you think last week but there is a month long music festival going on in Ladispoli at night and..... its just a little bit awful. have you ever heard an italian try to rap? well......... haha........ anyway..............
alright so we have been teaching this family, Antonella, Salvatore and their three kids, Francesca, Alessandra (twins) and Davide. Davide is almost the exact same age as Halle. he is CRAZY. and francesca and alessandra are 5 i think. so this week we had planned to teach them the plan of salvation and then invite them to be baptized. we had been wanting to do this for a while because antonella is so receptive to the gospel and salvatore's brother is a convert of 6 years (and his whole family) and they have really been pushing them to take the lessons and learn more. okay. so we were stressing about this lesson. we prayed SO MUCH to know the date we should invite them to be baptized on and at what point in the lesson we should invite them. seriously, we have never prepared more for a lesson. we practiced teaching it like 20 times to each other and practiced the baptismal invite. i even drew up a 'plan of salvation' coloring page for the kids to do so their parents could pay attention during the lesson (they're all a little A.D.D.) and i just cant explain the amount of prayer and preparation that went into this lesson. we even got the bishop and his wife to come to the lesson and we preped them on everything we were going to be teaching and helped them understand the purpose and everything.
SO- we taught the lesson just like we had practiced a thousand times and when sorella ivory was talking about the celestial kingdom and how you can be with your family forever there, and the spirit was SO strong and i was crying and the bishop's wife was crying. and at the highest spiritual point sorella ivory told them that we have been praying about this and we wanted to invite them to be baptized on the 18th of August.
RIGHT when she asked them they both started talking really fast and giving us excuse after excuse about why they couldnt be baptized and all these reasons, for like 5 minutes i kid you not and all these distractions came in like davide turned on the tv and it was just the worst thing.. we just were so frustrated and kind of devistated because we really had put our hearts deep into this one...
sad story? a little but yesterday at zone conference, literally it was ALL about inviting people to come to baptism and how that is our purpose here as missionaries and how in the end, even after we do all we can do and prepare and pray and do our very best, people still have their agency. that is something God will never take away from us. the ability to choose. and i think thats something really hard for me to accept but im learning.
in the end, it was still good that we invited them because now they know what the end goal is for these lessons that we've been having and they still agreed to keep meeting with us.
im not really sure why i shared that story. i have realized though, that everything in my life, everything i have ever done and experienced and every person i knew or met along the way was put there for a purpose. nothing has happened for a reason. its all part of a plan for me to learn and grow, from others and from myself. i know i am here with sorella ivory for a reason. far beyond anything logical because neither of us speak italian very well or are extremely emotionally stable haha but we do good work here and i know there are people here that only we can touch, not with our words (for they are few!) but with our love and experiences. its great. and even though sometimes its really hard and all i want to do is go home and watch batman (oh man..) i know that this is where i am supposed to be.
vi voglio bene.
sorella sudweeks
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