Banner Laura made for Sorella Ivory's one year mark

1 year left! this week sorella ivory completed 1 year in the mission and tomorrow i will hit my 'no repeat day'. 

so.... that's pretty weird haha. 

so arcangelo still isnt making progress... which is frustrating because he knows its all true. he brought his whole family to church this last sunday even without the wife (she had to work) and he was wearing a suit which he doesnt usually do either so that was good but its just frustrating because he knows exactly what he needs to do to change and be baptized and be sealed to his family in the temple but he just doesnt want to do it yet. and... this has just made me think about how many times in my life when i knew exactly what was right and what i needed to do or not do but i went against what i knew and just did what i wanted and not necessarily what was right. and i thought about how frustrated God must be with me! so..... hopefully i can be better and keep moving forward and trying my best and just remember that its important to follow the right path, even when sometimes its not the easiest to do or its not what we necessarily want to do... 

boh. 

anyway.

Disinfecting their room

the other day during studies, sorella ivory went to get something in the room and screamed at me to come look at something. at first i didnt see anything but she made me look really close at her comforter and there were hundreds of tiny tiny insects crawling around on it. needless to say we then spent the next couple hours cleaning and disinfecting our room of bed bugs and other insects. so that was fun hah... she's still paranoid. rightfully so.

so we met with our golden anna the other day and she told us this crazy experience she had. she said that 20 years ago she'd been praying to know what path heavenly father wanted her to go because she was searching for the truth and really just had big desires to do whatever God wanted her to do. she said she had a vision or dream of two young men with white shirts, ties and name tags. and this happened 20 years ago and she still remembers it. anyway, right after our first visit with her she opened a Liahona magazine to a page that had 2 elders and their testimonies on it. she was in shock. then, on sunday she and corada (the member she's staying with) went to church together, but to a different ward (corada's son's ward) and they had elders in their ward and she said they were the answer to her prayer and she knew that this is the right church and the church that God wanted her to be apart of and she said that we were her angels that were sent to her to help her understand and become part of this church. 

Her favorite thing to get in Rome

we also went and visited old lady maria. she is my favorite... usually she's not very aware of things going on and just says 'mamma mia! mamma mia!' over and over or 'aiutomi! aiutomi!' (help me!) so we usually just ask her questions and try to get her to focus on anything but she was super aware when we went and visited her this last time and was just being so funny. we asked her how to many lasagna from terni (where she's from) and she said 'why don't you go there and ask THEM.' oh man.. shes a funny one..... haha i love visiting her though. she's so cute and just.. is the sweetest one. i was showing her pictures of my family and whenever she'd see a picture of logan, my baby nephew she'd say he was a cute little meatball. haha. 

allora... things are going well in ladispoli. it was a pretty hard week but heavenly father is blessing us so much. its crazy. i know numbers down matter but............ our zone leader told us we had the best numbers in the zone this last week. and i literally dont feel like we did anything different but heavenly father really just blessed us with so many opportunites for lessons and getting new investagators. it was insane. 

oh yeah! we contacted that family referral last wednesday and they loved the first lesson and came to church and everything! and they said when they come to know its true they will be baptized and we're meeting with them tomorrow to set a baptismal date so they can have a goal to work toward. hopefully all goes well with that. 

uh..... the hot weather literally changed overnight on sept. 1st to being chilly and rainy. cant complain. i love it WAY more than being hot.. but i heard next week should get hot again.. but after than its gonna start getting pretty cold, pretty fast. so.. i'll enjoy this weather while i can. 

shoutout:

brittany eliason - i sent you something in the mail. email me if you get it! (its important.. :)

not much else to say but i love you all!

VVB.

Sorella Sudweeks