This week has been one of the best of my mission. First off, I'm so grateful that I got to be in Italy for 2 Christmases. They are my favorite. This week we kept doing as many Christ-centered things as we could.
We conducted our combined district meeting on Thursday and my companions and I talked about the covenant of salt talked about in the scriptures and how we, as missionaries, can accentuate the lives of the people we serve just like salt accents the flavours of food.
We went and helped out at giglio on Friday morning and walked around with the disabled adults and took them to a darling Christmas concert, and watched as they sang along to Italian Christmas songs and I loved it.
My final Sunday in church was very bittersweet, and I found myself getting teary as I listened to the sacrament prayers in Italian as a missionary for the last time. I know the sacrament is something so powerful and important and it's an area where my testimony had grown immensely during my time here. I also got to bear my final testimony in the Italian ward and I felt so much gratitude as I looked at all the faces in front of me that I've gotten to know and love so much.
I soaked up every minute of Christmas Eve and Christmas day, and many people were so kind to us. On Christmas Eve morning we went out on the streets and tried sharing a Christmas message with some people who were out and about. My favorite encounter was with this old man we stopped and before we could say much he looks at us and goes "ciao belle! Prendete! prendete!" And opens up a sack of freshly harvested raw purple potatoes and makes us take some haha. To prove to us they weren't bad or anything he took my potato and bit a huge chunk out of it. Yuck. We left laughing with a handful of potatoes and an invitation to go back and visit him.
We had member appointments the evenings of Christmas eve and day, and I love this time of year and that it truly does bring people from all over together. Even people from both our American and Italian wards were celebrating together.
These next couple days will be filled with as many investigator appointments ad we can fill our time with, just so we can see many of them and I can give them a squeeze and tell them that they are in good hands with my 2 capable companions.
Sorry this is such a long group email this week, I just keep writing things because I don't want to admit that this is another "last" of my mission that I'm about to finish. Makes me kind of sad. But I truly am so grateful for my mission. I love Italy. I love the culture and the food and the life and the people and the passion they have for all parts of their lives. They have taught me how to love more fully, worship more deeply, and how to develop more honestly into who God wants me to be. I know God lives and that He loves His children. It has been a blessing for me to see and be a part of bits and pieces of their lives and I know that the best thing we could EVER do this life is exactly what we were told at the beginning, to "love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind [and] love thy neighbour as thyself."
The mission is the BEST and I can't wait to talk everyone's ear off about it real soon!
Con affetto,
Sorella McConkie
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
No comments:
Post a Comment