I LOVE ITALY!

Subject: I LOVE ITALY.

Ciao famiglia,

Sorry not much time to write, I will do a little cutting and pasting here in this letter.. sorry not a whole lot of reason to write a long letter anyways, the time is so short.

That is so cool about that family, wow, good job! Honestly some of the hugest miracles I have seen in the mission are with less actives coming to again feel God's love for them. Here are some sweet Scriptures I read this week on love. Simple but powerful study. Romans 8: 35-39 1 Corinth 13:13 Moroni 7 : 45 John 3:16-17 Isaia 53: 3-5 . Read em'

This week was a lot of finding once again. Never done more street contacting in my life than here in Rome haha but its great. There are always tons of people to talk to at lest, and there is great scenery.

We are trying to have frequent contact with our investigator Patrizia. Between us and the Anziani teaching her, we think that her faith in Jesus Christ is really improving and she is gaining a stronger testimony to gradually make it towards her Baptismal date of February 19th. We are planning on teaching her this Saturday with a member with us who she has been able to establish a good relationship with. We are not able to see her as often as we would like since we are so far away, but we are doing our best to help her always have things to do, like give her conference talks, and the specific assignments to read daily from the Book of Mormon, and pray daily.

With Michela, we are planning on introducing to her to more of the people her age at church this week so that she will have more of a support system besides just us two missionaries. We are hoping to be able to have her boyfriend present at the lesson this Saturday. WE are trying to ask her more specific questions to be able to know her specific needs, and then follow the Spirit to be able to meet her needs. Unfortunately Satan is really throwing a lot at her lately that is causing a lot of distractions, and taking away her time from being able to read, but she is still reading pretty faithfully the Book of Mormon every day, and we are able to at least do "phone lessons" with her almost every night.

We have this family that we found last week who has 4 kids, who we have been working with to try and get in their home to do a lesson with both parents present. She is always home, but he unfortunately is extremely busy, however, we were at least able to get them their Book of Mormon this week, because he had said he wanted to start reading that.

•Describe your work with new members and less actives.

We were able to have an incredible experience with a less active family last night named the Rivera family. After about 2 hours searching for their house, we finally were able to see them, and miraculously both of them were at home, along with their daughter. This family is from the Philippines, but have been here in Italy for about 9 years. We were able to really have a lesson in which the spirit was incredibly strong, and he was able to remember again what it feels like to feel the Spirit. We know that that lesson was inspired, so that he would be able to remember the importance of not just reading the Book of Mormon, but COMING TO CHURCH:Through us being there, he had floods of memories come back from HIS mission, in which he was able to remember how HE at one point was the missionary pleading for the less actives to come back to church. He was in tears, with a strong desire to repent. Even if we said few words, the spirit answered his questions and concerns. He was concerned a lot about members not doing their role in fellow shipping, but by the end he understood that salvation is individual, and we must EARN our own salvation. it was a powerful lesson, not only for this family, but also for me. We can never think that we are OK. This was someone who obviously had a STRONG testimony at one point, but got out of the habit of going to church. Just once is easy to miss, then it just got easier and easier to come up with eligible "excuses" to just keep on not going. They were anxious to start implementing habits they had lost, and wanted us to come back soon. It was a great experience.

•Talk about what you and your companion learned from evaluating your stewardship on Sunday evening. What do the numbers tell you? If you fell short of your key indicator goals, briefly explain why, and what you and your companion can do to achieve them next week.

This week we have seen a lot of miracles, but we are also anxious to implement changes, in order to make this week go better than the last. We weren't able to have as many less active lessons as we would have liked. We have worked a lot out of the other Sorelle's area book, and have tried contacting a lot of less actives, but unfortunately weren't able to have any lessons, besides the one last night. We did an area book activity in which we said a prayer, and each went through the ward list and picked two less actives to go to their homes and find. We are going to be doing this in the next few days of this week. We would also like to do more service for these people, and have them be able to feel our love for them.

As far as our progressing investigators, we would like to find more ways to do more specific and direct commitments. We think that this will be able to help investigators progress, and be able to MEASURE their progress by following up with these commitments.

We would like to have more OTHER lessons but really focusing on teaching when we find, and finding when we teach. As we do this we think we will be able to immediately find those who are ready to receive the message. We want those we meet on the street to be able to immediately feel the spirit right there on the street and have the desire to feel that same spirit again.

We would like to find new investigators by being more creative in our finding techniques. We are trying to do role play every day and work on our approaches, and quickly relate everything to the Restoration. We also would like to be very diligent at being 100% obedient, and pray for miracles. As we do this we know that the Spirit will truly be our Senior Companion each day.

To get more people in church, we are still trying to do a lot of our finding in the area of the church, that way people will have seen the church, and it will be easier to get them there the first time.

Our goal is to be able to do the lesson zero each time with the strong and direct baptismal invite at the end of each lesson. That way, from the beginning they know our purpose, and we can quickly address their concerns. We think this will help us to have more people with baptismal dates.

I love the mission. I love these people. The gospel is true!!!!

I love you all. Have a great week!

ps. can we have BBQ chicken some time soon after I get home????

Vi voglio un mondo di bene!!!!!!

Monica

Sorella Miller