🇮🇹❤☀️🤗- Lampugnanao, Milan, Italy

Ciao everyone!

Just a short email for today, with some attached photos and letting you all know that I love you and that Heavenly Father does too! I was gratefully reminded this week that God knows us each individually and helps us work though problems in the ways that he knows his best. All he asks of us is to, as Elder Holland put it, "keep loving. Keep trying. Keep trusting. Keep believing. Keep growing. [Because] heaven is cheering you on today, tomorrow, and forever." 

Heaven is cheering us on! Vi voglio un mondo di bene! 

Con amore, 

Sorella McConkie 

Photos... 

Lemonsicles during splits 

Leaving the church after a crazy Sunday with my greenie

Happy Wednesday!

Ciao tutti!

What a great week it has been. A little less crazy than last week but productive and happy nonetheless! 

On Thursday we met with our investigator Luigia for the second time and set a baptismal date for the 5th of May!! That feels so close and we still have so much to Do, but I'm grateful for the work and the business and for an investigator who truly wants to learn and grow. We are teaching the Plan of Salvation this week with a recently returned Italian missionary from our ward tomorrow and I'm really excited:) 

I've also been thinking a lot about elder Bednars talk from conference about meekness this week. Here's my favorite line: 

"Whereas humility generally denotes dependence upon God and the constant need for His guidance and support, a distinguishing characteristic of meekness is a particular spiritual receptivity to learning both from the Holy Ghost and from people who may seem less capable, experienced, or educated, who may not hold important positions, or who otherwise may not appear to have much to contribute." 

I've thought about this so much this week as I have gone about and done normal missionary work, about how I can learn better from other people. It's something I want to improve at. I'm learning a lot this transfer from my cutest greenie Sorella Pearson, our loving members and our incredible investigators. I feel so grateful for people around me who can help me to learn and grow everyday:) and I invite you all to try to do that this week! Notice the talented people around you and I promise you'll learn something valuable! 

Have a lovely day! 

Love, Sorella McConkie 

Photos... 

Gelato, pizza, and walking through the rain. 🇮🇹

The Trifecta - Lampugnano, Milan, Italy

Hello friends and fam!

I literally have no clue where to start with this week. IT HAS BEEN SO CRAZY. First off, we moved apartments on Thursday and I can quite literally say that it was one of the most frustrating things I've done on my mission, maybe in my life. To those of you familiar with my family's Czech mission saying of "carry your corner," that took on whole new meaning as we ported out corners of a mattress full of bedbugs down 3 flights of stairs and cleaned and cleaned this apartment for 3 straight days. We changed apartments with the Anziani in our district and they left us with an apartment full of mold, bedbugs, and a cockroach under our sink. "The trifecta" as Sorella Pearson and I have called it.

Amidst the chaos and grossness of all of this, Sorella Pearson and I saw so many miracles this week. On Thursday we taught the Restoration for two of our English students who agreed to meet with us. Such a cute Venezuelan couple. Not only had they started reading the Book of Mormon that we gave them, but they agreed to meet with us each week and receive all the lessons! We were so excited!!

Throughout the cleaning days, we got to breathe and go outside a couple times for some appointments that were all so lovely. Our less active woman Michela who we visit often had a birthday! So we made a banner and the three of us ate a cake together.

On Sunday we had a really cool potential named Chantel come to church and we are meeting with her again this week! And we also got to help a blind woman named Laura who I love get home ok on the metro and bus after church. Her husband just passed away and she's going through a really hard time.

On Monday we kicked things off with going to find a referral that got sent to us from Salt Lake for a 17 year old girl named Claudia. We only had an address and no phone number, and she lived more than an hour away, so we went all the way to her house and said a prayer outside her front gate that she would be home so that we could say hi. We rang her doorbell and we were greeted by the cutest Italian teenager who said six times how happy she was to see us and how surprised that we would take the time to come and visit her! We exchanged phone numbers and she said she would love it if we would come back and explain more about Mormonism to her family. She was such a sweetheart.

The biggest miracle out of all of these happened on Monday night, just as we sat down to do studies at about 7:30. The assistants called us and said, "how fast can you both be ready to come teach a lesson with us?" We ran through the rain to meet them and drove together to the house of a woman named Luigia. She had met the missionaries 3 years before and had stopped meeting with them. Since that time, she said that she has felt an absence of something in her life and that now she wants to study with us and be baptized in our church. She said that and all 4 of us kind of dropped our jaws on the floor. We continued to talk with her and confirm that yes, in fact, she wants to be baptized this month. Stuff like this doesn't happen in Italy. But she is amazing and so ready to learn more and we can't wait to teach her and get her ready for baptism so speedy fast!!!

I guess at the end of the day, our gross apartment full of bugs and mold seemed like a very small part of our week compared to the miracles that we were compensated with. I have come so strongly to believe in this principle throughout my life. Just as Peter and the apostles tossed their nets aside and decided to follow Christ and developed the faith and conviction necessary to become his disciples, we also can become greater through the knowledge that God will compensate for our losses. He knows us and what we can handle, and he also knows what will be hard. He knows how challenges will stretch us, but he also knows that throughout righteous pursuits, all our sacrifices will be for our good and we will continue to see only blessings pour out from difficult experiences. This week has been one of the most impactful of my mission. Even though my hard thing this week was cleaning up a dirty apartment, who cares about cockroaches when we get to interact with amazing people everyday?

Vi voglio bene!

Love,
Sorella Evie McConkie

Sorella Pearson chucking our bug infested bedding out of our window.

Celebrating Michela's birthday!

Walking Laura home.

Our celebratory macarons after finding Claudia! 

The Anziani making sure I didn't get wet in the rain

God Directs Our Paths - Lampugnano, Milan, Italy

Buongiorno!!!

Happy Wednesday from Milano! This week has been rainy but happy as we've approached transfer season once again. My greenie and I will be staying together for another transfer! Yay! We are so excited to keep working and growing together. We are also having 3 new elders come into the city making a total of 8 people in our district. Whoa.

We had a lot of experiences this week which helped me to see God's hand in our work. On Friday we had a lunch appointment with a member family, and for some reason my 3 months of directional reasoning and knowledge about this city flew out the window as I got Sorella Pearson and myself so lost again and again on public transport. I was momentarily frustrated as we finally got to the bus station we needed to be at and to see the bus roll away seconds before we ran up and had to wait 30 minutes for the next one. As we were looking at the bus schedule, a woman comes up and sees our tags and starts up a conversation. We talked to her while waiting for the bus and a little more on the bus ride, and ended up giving her a Book of Mormon and explaining a little bit about it. It was a simple experience but it helped me to realize how much God needs us to calm down sometimes and realize that he is putting us where we need to be. It helped me to feel less stressed about circumstances I can't control and more grateful that God is directing my paths so much at this stage in my life:) even if we were an hour and a half late for lunch.

I also adored conference so much. We haven't been able to watch all of it yet, but I wanted to echo the message given by president Nelson and just say how crucial it is to receive our own personal revelation in these latter days. We can't really survive spiritually without it. I loved his talk and also the talk by Elder Wilson, and how the topics of prayer and revelation perfectly coincided with each other.

I love you all and have the happiest week!

Con amore,
Sorella McConkie

Last week when Sorella Stolk came up for her visa

work and I got to have 3 of my comps in once place!! 

Sorella Pearsons Easter/conference cinnamon rolls. So tasty.