Subject: BELLISSIMA!!!...cioè, la vita!!!!
Ciao Famiglia!!!!!!
I had the best birthday I have ever had of my life!!!!!!!! It was seriously an incredible day. I first off have to say that we had a lunch appointment and I had the best meal I have even had on my mission. Just this amazing pasta, chicken, and gelato. Of course I gained three pounds when i got on the scale two days after my birthday hahahaha but it was delicious, and so worth it!!!!! WE also had Fratello Micozzi, the husband of the coupòles house who we were at for lunch, turn on his old records of Frank Sinatra, and he was singing to me and dancing, probably one of the most hilarious things I have ever seen! Then we went to Comiso to have a lesson with Isaac. Isaac is now progressing towards baptism with a DATE!!!!!!!! September 25th He is coming to church every week, and reading the Book of Mormon daily. We were just sitting on theses dirty steps in the street, teaching him about the restoration. He had welled up eyes the whole lesson, and didn't say a whole lot. We were asking him questions, and he seemed to be understanding it all, either that, or he was completely zoning out. We weren't even planning on inviting him to be baptised that day, but the spirit brought that on super strongly. We followed the impression, and he just started bawling, and thanking us over and over again. It was one of those moments on my mission where I was felt so much gratitude to God for letting me participate in giving people this message...some who have been searching for it their entire lives!!!! Isaac just keep saying to us over and over, "God will bless you for giving me this miraculous message" Wow. How awesome is the mission eh?? I absolutely love it. It kind of makes me sick thinking that the time goes so fast, and before I know it its gonna be over. I love love love the mission.
We finally hear from Rita who went out of town for the last week and a half!!!!!! We finally heard from her! She called us last night, we were sure that we would never hear from her again, and that she had just run away from us and gone back to her old like in Ghana or something. But on the contrary,she has still been praying daily, and that she did take with her The Book of Mormon every day and read it too! We are anxious to continue seeing her again to help her work toward her Baptismal date.
The Maloku family are still doing really well. We are trying to help them start living commandments, so that they can see God's hand in their lives , and then be able to recognize that God blesses us when we ACT. They have a lot of faith in God, but we are working to help them see that when we have faith, it drives us to act in accordance with God's commandments. Klaudio is still smoking, and Moniola is still drinking coffee, but we are working towards helping them gain a testimony of the Restoration, and connect all the pieces of truth that they have been taught. Klaudio we think will be the first to be baptised. We are also challenging them to read from the Book of Mormon and pray together daily as a family. We also have been trying to really include one particular family with us who is in the ward in the teaching process. We were able to bring with us one of their sons, who went on a mission, and is a great example for all of their young boys. We are working to help them generate a love for the Book of Mormon, we read stories together and help apply them to them and they love it! We are working to get Klaudio to come to all three hours of church. The more commitments we can get them to keep, the more they will be able to recognize God blessing them even more, even if it's not in the ways they might like (like finding work).
Silvana is about our only Italian investigator! Things with her are going along slowly, but we have seen he start to progress more, as we bring our new convert Sorella Anna frasca with us.It was actually a miracle. We decided the night before, to invite Sorella Frasca with us to this lesson. When we showed up to Silvana's house the next day with Anna, they immediately knew each other! It was such a miracle. Apparently they worked together like 8 years ago, back when Silvana had only one child (now she has three). We are glad that we keep going, and her husband is there every time. Usually he is just there chillen on the couch with no shirt on drinking coffee and eating croissants....Not necessarily at all interested, but we are happy that he isn't objecting to her hearing our message. Silvana is about 35, and has three kids. Me and Sorella Smith found her on the street walking with her stroller about 2 months ago, and its been hard teaching her because there are always a million things going on at her house, (babies, her homeless brother and his Dog yelling at things..hes not all the way there in the head, little boys riding bikes etc) but we've been able to start seeing her more frequently, and now that we know Anna frasca knows her and has a lot of respect for her, its just getting better and better.
We have been trying to do more to serve so that they can first feel our love that we have for them. We also have been trying to involve members more in our less active work. We just finished all the lessons with Esther and Justice after baptism. We have been a little worried about them lately as they told us that they are weekly visiting with some Testimoni di Geova missionaries and don't see the damage that it is creating to their testimonies. WE hope to be able to continue including them in our work with our investigator Isaac, because they really enjoy sharing their testimonies with him, and seeing the excitement Isaac has for the gospel.
We had been noticing that in weeks passed we had a lot of other lessons, but we weren't generating very many new investigators out of those lessons so we focused a lot on striving to really find a new instigator every week. We had a lot more scheduled lessons with our progressing investigators, and weren't having a lot of time to talk to people on the street. So we did a lot more scheduled finding work this week than we normally do, in order to make sure that we are constantly replenishing our finding pool. Along with making finding a part of our daily activities, we did some house at the Marina di Ragusa, and we also here in Ragusa.
When we were at the Marina di Ragusa this week, we were walking down the street and heard what sounded like an accordion. We both looked at each other in confusion. AS we kept walking, we noticed it got louder and louder, then we realized it was coming from a nearby house. We get to the house, and look inside, and see this little like 85 year old man, playing the keyboard, with this music BLARING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are pretty sure he was deaf because of years of blaring this, we heard it from like 4 blocks away. Then all of a sudden this lady out of no where comes and grabs us and takes us in the house and is teaching us to dance, meanwhile this little guy has no idea we are there, and continues on playing as we are dancing with some random old lady in his family room, Sicilians are the craziest people in the world, but it was hilarious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We lacked on our lessons in the presence of a member, and so we really tried to coordinate more with our ward council. When we had our meeting on Sunday, the progress record included exactly which days we had scheduled appointments with our less actives and investigators, so we could ask for specific help from members. Then our Relief Society President and Elders Quorum President have started making weekly availability lists for the embers to help us with our work. This is really going to help us include members in missionary work. As far as getting people to church, we want to better prepare people to come to Church by either doing lessons with them in the church, doing church tours, and having the courage to just invite everyone to church. We also think that by doing English Course we ill be able to get more people in church because they will have been to the church already, so it wont be as hard to come again.
This week I did a really great study on the Book of Mormon. I made a list of objections I have heard lately to the book of Mormon, and then went through and answered all those objections with the Book of Mormon and Bible. It was amazing to see how we truly are left to ourselves with just the Bible. It all started from a visit with a less active lady we have named Anna Conti, who is convinced that the Book of Mormon doesn't tell us anything "new" that the Bible doesn't tell us. I did the same thing with The Plan of Salvation. We talked to a man in an art gallery this week named Salvo who was convinced that Adam and Eve was all about Sex. He is a philosopher...man, I would wear myself out if I questioned everything that much!!!
This week when we went to Comiso we had a really cool experience. We were walking down the empty street that we normally do towards Esther and Justice's house, when we saw a group of about 7 people, sitting in chairs in a small plaza. We began talking to them, and next thing we knew, we had invited over everyone in the plaza to come listen. We had the gospel art book, and had people standing up all around us with their cigarettes and beers, listening to us talk about how God know us individually and has a plan for each of us. There were about 12 people!! It was such a cool experience. There was one man in particular who was quite troubled about what is to come after this life on earth. He had recently talked to several different people from different faiths about what will come to be after this life, and he remained confused. He asked US if we could come back and teach him about what will happen after we die. We were obviously more than thrilled! His name is Angelo. He is like 60, picture the most Sicilian looking man you can, big ole' pasta belly, white stringy hair, about 4 teeth, dark leathery skin, broken sandals on.. BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!! The best part, is that as he skimmed through the Plan of Salvation pamphlet we gave to him, he began to get really excited and could hardly wait until Friday when we will see him again! He hopes we have something more to give him than we will die, and then all live in a field of flowers as spirits...(that what he was told) WOO do we have great news to give him! Through him, we met another man nearby, who at first I was a little hesitant around. A little "rough around the edges" if you will. But as we talked, we found out that he is from Argentina and had talked to missionaries years ago, and had even been to the Temple in Madrid! He too, was very excited to come back on Friday and hear our message. It reminded me the importance of seeing everyone in white, from the first time you meet them! EVERYONE deserves this message, and even if they are 75 years old, if they are searching for truth, they will recognize it when they hear it!!!
Sorry a lot o that was just exerpts from my presidents letter, but that is what I do every day. Haha. We are pretty excited for Zone Conference tomorrow in Palermo. WE take a bus at 5:25 am, and then will return back with the Elders in a car (the elders who are serving in Gela) , so it will be a quicker trip home than the bus ride, which would have put us back to Ragusa really late at night. This will be my 2nd interview with President Kelly. I have a feeling like I'm getting transferred, but I guess we'll see. WE have a lot of work here right now, it would kill me to not see these two baptisms of Rita and Isaac, and we think not far from now Klaudio Maloku will have a date...I guess what ever The Lord wants though, so we'll see. I love you all and hope you are good. I pray for you all, even though I'm not going to lie, it is sometimes hard to remember everyones names in my prayers at night since sometimes I never make it to the end of them awake, and making sense. There are so many people to pray for!!!!!!!!! Please pray for these people, and that I can somehow help them...sometimes I just feel so small and inadequate, but I know the Lord calls the weak things to thrash the nations! love you all
Vi voglio un sacco di bene,
-MONICA
...SORELLA MILLER
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