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
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