Well this week has been very interesting. Honestly, not much has happened. All of our wonderful potential investigators either don't want to talk to us, won't answer the phone, won't answer the door, ect. Saturday night we called to confirm an appointment for Sunday and the lady seemed nice and happy to see us- but, when we rang her doorbell thingy ( I never remember the name) Sunday afternoon she started yelling at us that she didn't want to talk to us and leave her alone! Our backs are sore from all the Book of Mormons we plan to give away at appointments that fall through. But, we press forward with faith. Opening a city is hard work! But we know the blessings will come as we work hard to reach our goals. Yesterday was one of those days when nothing seems to happen. So we ended up doing strada (street contacting) for an hour. In that time we found two people who had member friends, one in our ward! It was a miracle.
I'm not sure if I've told you about Ediola. One day our district leader called us during lunch to let us know that they had made an appointment for us in an hour. So we cancelled our appointment with a new member and headed off to find Ediola. The anziani of course gave us the wrong address (story of my mission!) but we were finally able to find it. Ediola's friend Gennie was there so we gave them the first lesson. Ediola has investigated many churches in the past but never found what she was looking for. She's also currently studying with the Jehovah Witnesses and they walked in on our lesson. haha. We invited them to be baptized and Ediola said that if she learned that this was the true church then she would be baptized on 8 June. Gennie is Catholic and didn't know why she had to be baptized again, but before we could answer, Ediola jumped in and beautifully explained that if this was the true church then of course you had to be baptized. So Gennie sort of accepted a baptism date. We were soo excited! Ediola seemed like the perfect investigator! But when we tried to set up a return appointment she wouldn't because of her work schedule. Then we ran into yesterday on the street and she said she wanted to read the Book of Mormon and discover if it's true before she would meet with us again. So we're planning how to best approach her again. The funny thing is that we have 2 sort of baptism dates, but neither of them are investigators (because we don't have a second appointment), so we have no idea what to call them! Our zone leader said we could count them as investigators with a baptism date in our key indicators, so we did but we always stick in a question mark. So we have 2? investigators with a baptism date. It drives Anziano Christensen crazy!
On Monday we had new missionary training in Modena. If you look at a map of Italy, Modena isn't too far from Genova, but then you realize there is a wall of mountains in the middle. So we had to take a train from Genova north to Milan area and then back south to Modena. It's a four hour train ride, and we aren't sure why they sent us to Modena when there was also a new missionary training in Milan. We had to catch our train at 5:54 am. and we returned to the train station after training in time for the 6:30 train out of Modena- meaning we didn't get home until 10:30. It was a looong day and I learned that there is a reason we're supposed to be at home by 9 and in bed by 10:30. The training was so wonderful! I love President and Sorella Wolfgramm so much! Plus it was great to see some friends from the MTC, though no one in my MTC district was there.
My trainer Sorella Heupel is wonderful! I love her so much. I'm starting to have a fear that she'll leave in 4 weeks and I'll be here opening, training, and still unable to speak. It's great motivation to learn! :)
I'm working on having greater faith in the Lord and the Spirit. It is so easy to let my fear of the language keep me from speaking but I am learning to open my mouth and speak anyway. The words don't always come easily, but they do come. I love in Ether 12 where it says that you receive no witness until after the trial of your faith. There are so many stories in the scriptures that illustrate this point as well. I love the scriptures so much! They bring such comfort and peace!
I love being a missionary. There is no where else I would rather be than right here in Genova.
I love you all, thanks for all the letters, and have a wonderful week!!!
Love,
Sorella Pace
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