Dear Friends and Fam,
I'm sorry this week wasn't as awesome. It started out a
little rough and I kinda faltered a little because I thought my load was too
heavy to carry and that Heavenly Father wasn't helping me like I needed. But
then He very kindly showed me that I need to put more faith in Him and have a
little more patience in waiting for the answers and the help. He is so right!
One of the "helps" He gave me this week was in the form of an awesome
greenie (new missionary) named Sister Pinkston. She is from St. Louis MO and is
incredible. She has the best sense of humor and my abs were literally hurting
after our exchange. Being, the more experienced missionary, I went into this
exchange thinking I would teach her a thing or two about missionary work...
WRONG. I spent some of the best 24 hours of my mission doing nothing but
learning and being extremely humbled. We all come into the mission with
different degrees of 'preparedness', and if I thought I was at all prepared...
yeah... seriously, these new missionaries coming in are just blowing me away. I
can hardly believe it. I have never felt more inadequate! Pazienza.
In other news, we invited like 6 or 7 investigators to come
to church... and Sunday morning, no one was there. Pazienza. Then... KEVIN
CAME!! He took a bus all the way to Fiano Romano from his little paesino and
made it in time for Gospel Principles. He only speaks English, and the teacher
didn't know enough English to talk about Gospel subjects, and since Kevin was
the only investigator, we made the Anziani teach it. Really it just turned into
one of the Elders and myself tag-team teaching. It went pretty well and Kevin
liked it-he got a lesson tailored completely to him and his needs, in his
language! Then, in sacrament... the members literally made me cry for joy- I
was a little bit nervous that since Kevin is a very different demographic than
99.9% of all our branch members that they might not mesh. But. Every single
brother in the church that knew a single word of English came up to him and
said hello and made him feel so welcomed and so loved. Andhe really did love
it! He asked me afterward if we did anything during the week and I said no,
just Sundays, and he said he'd be there. !!! That is the power of the members!!
They just have so much more control over helping our investigators have a
positive experience in church. Man I am just so grateful to be here!
And tomorrow, I am going back to
PESCARA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can hardly believe it!!! My companion has to do exchanges
so we are driving down Tuesday night and might make it in time for English
Course... :) One of the sisters there said the members are excited to see me
and are planning to come to English Course. I could cry. I know I will cry. I
am WAY more than aexcited to see them all again and to return to my "birth
city" of the mission. This is seriously just the hugest blessing I could
ask for right now. My Heavenly Father really loves me, a LOT. Holy Cow. Yeah.
OH!! Also, we were waiting for a train the other day that comes
every 15 minutes. For some reason, it didn't come for about an hour. I have
never seen that before. BUT. It meant that we met this group of American
tourists from..... AUSTIN TEXAS!!! I could not belive it!!! Seriously, Heavenly
Father LOVES me. Their accents made me feel right at home. We just were
friendly to them, and eventually they asked some aquestions about who we are
and stuff and I got to explain some things and I ended up getting an email of
one of them and we will hang out when I get home. They are all professors at
UT, all women, and all hilarious and awesome. What a tender mercy, for them and
for us.
Sorella Patterson
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