Happy Fourth! Came and Went without me . . .‏

So I have decided that the good ol' USA is pretty great. I woke up Monday almost completely forgetting until I saw the date on my watch. It made me sad that we did not really get to celebrate the Fourth of July, but my companion, Sorella Ashman wore red white and blue :)

So this last week was crazy with the new transfer and figuring out everything but it went really well. We did grocery shopping last Wednesday, wrote letters at home, than had a little farewell party with the GANS, investigators, and the missionaries that night. Even the Sorelle from Taranto were there because they had to come to stay with me all day Giovedì while I waited for Sorella Ashman to come. It was good fun. We played basketball in skirts, talked, and ordered panzerotti. Even Massimiliano came!

Giovedì mattina presto we took Sorella Laws to the station at 6.00 because we wanted to go and see the Anziani off who were heading home or to other città. Then she left me to head off to Ragusa :( and I and the Taranto Sorelle went to study and then get to work. We made it a nice morning of contacting referrals and doing house in Japigia. We did not find anyone willing to listen to our message, but that is alright. We then had pranzo and cleaned up the apartment nice and good for Sorella Ashman. Then we went to the station again to wait for the bus with my new comp. The bus ended up being an hour late so we Sorella Johnson and I talked to this old barese man the whole time. When the bus got there he introduced us to his daughter and grandson. He was super nice, but would not give us his number. Managia! Better luck next time. But anywho, Sorella Ashman had arrived! And she is great! Her face lit up the moment she stepped off the bus and fell in love with Bari immediately. Also, she too is a vegetarian. That makes it 3 for 3 of all my companions. I think that that is a sign. What do you think?

So the next morning the Taranto Sorelle were off super early to catch their bus back home and then we had weekly planning! I got to spend 3 hours talking about all of our great investigators (progressing or not) and planned our week. After that we went to get groceries and I found out what type of missionary Sorella Ashman is. And wow. As missionaries we are supposed to talk to everyone but she literally does. She goes up to the person closest to her and talks to them whether they are in their car, listening to music, waiting at a bus stop, talking to a friend, smoking a cigarette . . . anything. And if they are not willing to listen she goes right on the the next closest person. She is great! Granted it takes us three times as long to get places, but finding and teaching are the reasons we are here. After planning and shopping I pulled out this old grimy piece of paper I had picked up off the streets weeks ago. It had a name and number on it so I could not resist picking it up even though Sorella Laws said it was gross. But neither of us had been brave enough to call it. But because Sorella Ashman is fearless she grabbed the number and called it right then and there. I was even more surprised when she came right out and told him that we had found his name and number on a dirty slip off paper on the street and felt inspired to call him and tell him about our message because we are missionaries of the true church of Jesus Christ. And you know what happened? He wanted to learn more! Even more shocking, he lives up in northern Italy and could not even explain why his number was here in Bari, but that he will be taking a month long vacation here in August and wants to get into contact with us when he arrives. That boosted my spirits! Silvio Caranza, our new investigator, also called out of the blue to inform us that he would be in church on Sunday. I do not know about other missions, but that is rather unusual. Usually we have to call and remind them and promise blessings that will come from attending church at 9.00 in the morning. But he called us. After all of this and eating lunch we took off to Adelfia, the little paese outside of Bari. Our investigators, Ameli and Marco were not home, so we spent the whole night finding. The first person we stopped to talk to was named Giovanni. He started out talking to us in Tedesco because he thought we were German. And when we told him we were American he spoke to us in English. That was a shocker. But he wanted to hear more and gave us his number. Not a bad start. To a new transfer because we set up an appointment for the next day. And things just keep getting better.

Sabato mattina I felt like we needed to go see our cute little member, Rosa Magno. She is a doll and shares the gospel with everyone and loves the missionaries. We called her that morning and went over to see her and low and behold, the girlfriend of her son was there who is not a member. So we were able to teach her with Sorella Magno and got an invite to Lunch. But not wanting to waste any proseliting time, Sorella Ashman said we would be back in a half hour after we went to another "appuntamento" and we went to go to more finding. First we wanted to stop by and see if a member family, the Perinis still lived one street over or if they had moved. We have a member book with their picture but I had never seen them in Church and Sorella Laws thought they ahd moved away. So we stopped by. On the citofono their name was still listed next to the buzzer so we rang for them but no one was home. Then we tried calling and Fratello Perini answered. They never did move but are going through a rough patch so they have not been in church. He seemed very pleased that we had called and told us to feel free to stop by another time when his wife is home. After that we still had 25 minutes and we did not know where we should go so we went into the shadow of a building and said a prayer asking to find a palazzo with an open door. We looked over and both picked the same building. We walked around to the front door and guess what? It was open. The significance of this is: When the door is open you do not have to speak to people through a speaker. It is a lot easier for people to reject you when they do not see your face. But if the door is open you can walk right in, take the elevator to the top and knock on the doors. So we did. Unfortunately again, we did not find any potential investigators, but we had a little chat with a proclaimed atheist. When we had knocked on his door he was really rude to us. But as we were leaving the apartment building he was coming down the stairs with his daughter to do the spesa. You could tell he felt embarrassed for being rude and talked to us for 20 minutes about a book he read that would inform us on the true reason for religion. He would not let us say much, but we made him feel uncomfortable. At the beginning he would look me in the eye as he spoke to me, but after a while he blatantly refused to make eye contact. I know it is because he sensed the Spirit and knew we were not ordinary people. I hope that those like him will one day open their hearts to the truth because they can always sense it, they just will not admit it to themselves. It broke my heart to see his little daughter standing right next to him. We were right there, offering him a chance at eternal happiness and he would not even take a minute to hear how he could be with his family forever. But I know we made an impression and maybe next time he comes into contact with the missionaries he will stop and listen. Pranzo with Sorella Magno was great! She even made us homemade pesca sorbetto which was delicious that she made with this cool little machine called the Bimby. Every woman in Bari has one of these. It weighs, mixes, freezes, cooks . . . everything! I want one when I get home. Mom, you should get one. It is WAY cooler than a kitchen aide. Anyways, the miracles of a mission continued after that morning. A couple of weeks ago we had met this woman named Marta at the bus stop. She actually came up to us and asked us what the difference was between our church and hers. We saw her twice more that same day and she lives on the same street as the church. Even though we were not positive which building she lived in we decided to go find her. I was pretty sure it was numero 1 so we stopped there and said a prayer that we would know which citofono to buzz. Sorella Ashman pushed one towards the middle and asked for Marta. OH YES. Heavenly Father loves us. It was her apartment. She let us come up and talk to her for a second, gave us her number, and told us where she works! She is legit! We will definitely be meeting with her again! After that we had an appointment with Giuseppe, the man we met in Adelfia the day before with Fratello Valentini. That too went great. Then we took off to the station to go find Rita, a new convert from Ragusa, who was in Bari to fix her Permesso. It started pouring rain and we were stranded at the station and Rita did not show. We missed our bus when it was right in front of us, but turns out we were supposed to, because while we waited for about another 45 minutes, Sorella Ashman talked to this man next to her. It is the weirdest thing. Immediately he offered us a ride, which we could not accept, but why would he be waiting outside the train station, in the rain, when he car is in the parking lot and he lives about a kilometer away? While she talked to him she invited him to church the next day and he said he would come. But people say that all the time and they do not do it so we did not expect much. Well . . . we were wrong.

The next day we were waiting in the Gospel Principles room when a man dressed in a suit and tie waved to us. We thought it was a member wanted to introduce themselves to Sorella Ashman before we realized it was Antonio, the man from the station the night before. He had arrived right at 9.00 for priesthood in church clothes, sat through the lesson with a member, Fratello Carlucci, who happens to be his friend, and he loved it. He loved Gospel Principles and Sacrament meeting too. Seriously. This does not happen. Ever. Again, Heavenly Father loves us. And Silvio came! I like being a missionary :) And after pranzo our day just got better! We wanted to stop by la famiglia Perini again to see if the wife was home. No one answered the citofono but someone entered the gate while we were there so I stopped the door from shutting all the way with my foot. We went in and housed the whole building hoping to find out which apartment was theirs, but we had no luck. We walked outside and there, about 50 feet away is a cute little blonde girl playing on her bike that looked just like the Perini girl in the picture. We walked a little closer and we knew without a doubt that it was her and her mom was standing talking on the phone right by her. There is no such thing as luck. Nope, not in this business. We talked to them for a couple of minutes and then Fratello Perini drove up and even gave us cookies. We got both of their cell numbers and said we could set up a family night for later in the week. They are a BEAUTIFUL family and we will find out why they are not enjoying the blessings church attendance if it is the last thing I do!

So Lunedì mattina we were not sure what we were going to do at all. Everything had fallen through. We had no family to visit that night either. But during companionship study we got a call from Sorella Magno. She told us she had a friend who would be stopping by that night and wanted us to "stop by" to see her. Well, there is our lesson for the night. And for the morning we decided to go out to Adelfia again because we had set up an appointment with Ameli. We tried to confirm but could not get a hold of her but chose to go and try anyways. She was not home. Darn it number one. Number two . . . no one would talk to us. Number 3, we then stopped by a referral who turned out to be a really irritably old woman who yelled at us. At this point I was thinking that we had just wasted our whole morning by coming out there. Later after we had talked about it, Sorella Ashman said she had thought the exact same thing. But while we were walking through a park back to the bus stop we saw two men ahead of us talking. We did not want to push it and disrupt their conversation so we just saluted them and kept walking. But right was we passed one of them walked away and the other turned towards us and stopped us. He asked who we were and after we explained he told us that he is not happy. He believes in Christ, has a family, work, home . . . everything. But he is not happy. He then asked if we were. We told him yes and that we knew how he could find that true, pure joy that we feel everyday. He got excited and we exchanged numbers. We have not been able to reach him yet, but we are not going to give up yet! Because of that contact, we were running to late to go to the bus stop in the center of the town so we went to the one nearest, which is something we have never done. And a good thing too, because five minutes later the bus showed up and we hopped on. And guess who was on the bus? Giuseppe! The man we had met and taught from Adelifia! He was sitting in a seat for two, hopped up, moved to a place for four and motioned excitedly for us to sit with him. He asked us a bunch of questions and we set up a time to teach him again. Guess our time was not wasted after all lol. That afternoon we went to see Nella. I was afraid she was losing interest, which killed me because I adore her. But Sorella Ashman gave her a call and she told us to come over. When we got there she told us she was really worried because her 4 year old, Andrea, was having surgery the next morning. Sorella Ashman, the wonderful teacher that she is, promised her a ton of blessings if she would just read the Book of Mormon for 5 minutes everyday. We taught her the Plan of Salvation again and promised to pray for her little boy. She may not be progressing right now, but so help me she is going to get baptized and enjoy the blessing of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ! No one deserves that joy more than she does. Her life has been so hard and she is so full of love of others. I want her to experience that same love from her Heavenly Father and Savior and know that she is never alone! The lesson with Sorella Magno's friend went well too. Catia is in her late 40's and has two kids in their teens. She was so nice and warm to us and agreed to set up a family night with her whole family. When members join in the work of the Lord, things go so much more smooth. I love Sorella Magno. She is going through chemotherapy and she does not lose a beat in her step. People like her make me realize how much better of a person I have need to be!

Tuesday mattina we stopped by the store where Marta works and turns out another street contact we met works there too. What are the odds? Oh yeah, there aren't any :) We set up an appointment for that night! After that we went to consiglio di distretto which was great as always. We talked about goals at the beginning and set a district goal for baptisms this next transfer. The ward I am serving in has not had a baptism in over a year. We are going to change that. Our district goal is 10, two baptisms per coppia. And I feel fully confident that the Spirit will lead us to those of God's children ready to make covenants with the Lord now. That is key, we waste too much time trying to work with people who are not ready when there are people all around us prepared adesso. The field is white and ready to harvest. Or as our teachers in the MTC said, the tops of falling off and their rotting, just waiting to be picked up :) Later in the day we went to Marta's home and taught her a short lesson. She is just spilling over with curiosity. She is super catholic and goes to church every Sunday and actually reads the bible. She can sense truth and wants it. She tells us that she is just curious, that she won't change because she already has the truth. But if she really reads, which I think she will, she will change :) English course and correlation were great. Fratello Curci (the Curcinator haha) is a wonderful help as he always has been. We had a great lesson with Silvio after English course and he finally read the Book of Mormon! One chapter a night as we had asked him and not only had he read it, but he basically recited it back to us word for word. We are definitely excited about him!

So the work is most definitely going! Bari has been waiting for ages for Sorella Ashman to find the elect and we most certainly are! Is it easy? Especially for me? Heavens no. In fact, I am terrified to talk to people. But she is very supportive and patient with me and is helping me gain confidence in my own abilities. No worries, I am in good hands :)

Ci Sentiamo la prossima!
Tanti BACI per tutti
Vi voglio un SACCCCCO di bene!
Sorella LeCates