August 11, 2010

Subject: ciao ciao

Ciao Famiglia,
 
    Wow, first off thanks so much holy cow so fun to see that picture of Wendy and her gorgeous little girl!!!! That was so fun to see! tell Wendy hello for me!!!!!!!
   Char thanks so much for that letter last week. Seriously needed all that you said. Love to hear the stories from your mission!!!!! So funny.
   Dad, I just loved that email, thank you so much for that, The stories were wonderful.
   So this week has been incredible. The Lord is truly blessing us in the work here. August 15th is called Ferragosto and the city is basically shut down.Shops are all closed until the beginning of September and the majority of the people are at the sea. We are still managing to teach people though! The Lord really does just put people in our path. We are teaching a lady named Rita who is from Ghana. It all started as we received her as a referral from one of our new converts Esther and Justice. We have been seeing her almost every day for the past two weeks. She came to the baptism of one of the little girls in the ward last week and said she felt really good, and also had the desire to fully devote her life to Jesus Christ. She has some crazy stories, and basically has had a really hard life. Been thrown in prison, traveled across the desert and almost been killed many times, grew up in a house where her Dad had prostitutes coming in and out just cant even imagine the kind of past she has. All I can tell  you is The Lord blesses me with an incredible love fro these kind of people that is not my own. Rita is incredible and has such a desire to change and give her son a good life. She has literally nothing, we go in and sit in her tiny house on the floor, and teach her little boy to pray and play with him. She is praying about Joseph Smith and is confident that God will answer her prayers. it is incredible. Every time we teach her I just am filled with love, The relationships we can have with God are so real its not even funny.
  We started teaching a family from Albania who we had dropped about a month ago because we felt like they weren't really progressing. We kind of felt like whenever we were in the area that we should stop by, so one day, we just did. It has been incredible to see the amount of progress that they have been making ever since we started to teach them again. We have a bit of a language barrier with Maniola, the Mom, but her husband and kids all speak Italian, so its only hard when he is not there to help translate. but it was pretty cool what happened when we went back to start teaching them about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I was sitting there in their family room, trying to figure out how I could make the lesson more pertinent for them. The only thing at my disposal was a bowl of fruit in front of me. It turned into this really successful object lesson. We as "fallen" individuals were the bananas, that fell from the presence of God. Then the apple was Jesus Christ, and the Eternal life with God was this goblet of fruit. Sin was an orange. it has turned into this continual object lesson that actually is helping them so much haha The Lord inspires our thoughts! They came to church and loved it, I absolutely love them. We are pretty excited because we got a greenie a few weeks ago in Agrigento, a city that is about two hours away, who is Albanian! So we arranged for a lesson where he will be coming on splits and can talk to this family with us. Pretty excited.
   We had 6 investigators in church on Sunday. President Kelly at our last Zone Conference emphasized the importance of getting investigators in church, and allowing them to have those spiritual experiences. It was the craziest Sunday of my entire mission. NEVER had that many investigators. We had Rita and her son, another lady from Nigeria we are teaching and her 2 year old twins, a new investigator we have named Isaac (also from Africa) and The Maloku Family. Basically all the Italians are gone to the Sea lately so we have been finding all the foreigners that are still here! haha they are all so humble though, so they actually talk to us....
   Mom, I received the green and pink skirt, and then the package with the make up in it. thank you so much! The only thing that I seriously am struggling with is my skin. It's been so bad lately. I think just from the heat I'm always sweating and so then we are kissing everyone (the baci, you know. not real kissing American style, come on) My complexion had been super bad lately. oh well.
   My companion goes home one week from today. What a huge period of growth it has been for me. Sorella Foote is just amazing. We have so much in common, and its been great to get back in the routine of running again in the mornings.  She is so fun, loves to laugh and she is just so real. We can talk about stuff  and its nice to have someone so FRESH in the mission! She is doing so great.
   We are super stoked about this Baptism of Anna Frasca that will happen on Friday. We have all the plans done, just one more lesson to do with her tomorrow, then the Baptism is on Friday night. It will be so amazing she has waited now fro about 3 years to be baptized and its all looking like it will happen. Amazing person.
  This Saturday we do a huge deep clean since the holiday Ferragosto is on Sunday and there will be absolutely no one on the Saturday before, we have to clean that day. So we will first have to clean the baptismal font for the baptism, then clean the house all day/pack up sorella smith and send her home-
I love you all, and am grateful for your prayers. The Lord is truly blessing us here in Ragusa. I just am grateful for the love God blesses me with for this people. The other day in the grocery store this little old man came  up to us and started reciting poetry to us, then snatched our Book of mormon right out of Sorella Foote's hand, put it in his cart, and then ran off. Hilarious!!!!! I love the quirkiness of Sicilians!!! They are one of a kind!!!!! Hope you all are good,
 
Vi voglio un sacco di bene,
un abbraccio,
-MONICA
...Sorella Miller