Ciao Tutti!!
This week was so fun. Milan is a blast and there is so much to do here. Sorella Berrey and I have set up a lot of goals and things that we want to accomplish, and we've quickly gotten in a groove and I'm loving the big city life and ward.
A couple highlights of the week include church last Sunday when our investigator Rosa came! We've been working a lot with her and it's been hard to feed into how we are teaching her the lessons, but she agreed to come to church and participated like a champ. She is also from Peru and so immediately bonded with all the Peruvians in our ward. They are all so kind and full of energy and every Sundaythey have me crouch down so I'm at eye level with them so they can kiss both my cheeks and give me a hug and say, "SORELLLLLLIIIINNAAA!". They're so great.
Another highlight of my week was that I actually got to go back to my birth city of Vicenza! Ah! It was so great. I went back to get some things done to make it so I'm legal here in Italy, but it also meant that I got a chance to be nostalgic and show Sorella Berrey around a litte. We were at the foreign police for a total of almost 4 hours, but we also got to go back to the ward house where my old district and the senior couple threw me a little lunch! I loved being able to sit and talk with them and see how the people there are doing.
One thing that I've been doing lately is reading a lot of talks from Thomas S. Monson. I'm increasingly in awe at how our dear prophet followed spiritual promptings throughout his life. I read a talk the other day about he felt prompted to buy 2 packs of gum to take on a church trip and that ended up giving hope and strength to the children he gave it out to, and changed a woman's life in one case. I've been trying on my own to follow spiritual promptings, even if they seem odd. Before I left vicenza, we met with a member who was having a really, really hard time. She has estranged family relationships and is having a hard time as she gets older. In her house, there was a modest and carefully arranged wall of small postcards that people have sent her as they've travelled. A couple days before I left the city, I re-found a little photo bookmark that my mom had sent me a few months earlier, with temple square on the front. I thought of this member and her wall and wrote a little note on the back telling her how marvelous of a job she is doing and that I loved her, and then asked Sorella Hoareau to give it to her next Sunday. When we went back to Vicenza, Sorella Hoareau told me that she had given this woman the bookmark, and she had started to cry and said it meant so much to her that I would think of and give her this.
I'm realizing more and more on my mission that it doesn't take an lot to help people. Most of the time, people just need to be listened to, hugged, given a bookmark or told how wonderfully they are doing. Our job as members of the church is to "lift up the hands which hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees". And I love that we can do that in small and simple ways every day.
I love you all and am excited for a new week! Vi voglio un sacco di bene!
Con amore,
Sorella M
Photos: metro times, Gelato times, and a darling family who we met with and made goals with for the new year:)
