Italy, Week 42 (8/26/15) - Food Poisoning, Black Magic, Witches, Ghosts and Murders

Made for a real interesting week....
Actually that was all just in one night, so let me back track and think about what happened this week.....
Thursday morning we went to visit to member who is the cutest little old lady. She's 85 and from Ecuador and absolutely LOVES Ecuador. She is the absolute most lively 85 year old i have ever met. She is so happy and loves life and loves everyone around her. When she tells stories she has so much energy. She was just so dang cute!!  We started to meet with an old investigator that we had dropped when I first got here. She's from Albania and super cute, but just going through some hard times and didn't make time to read and come to church, but she always said she knew this church was true, so we just had to give her a little space and some time to get things settled.  Things are really going a lot better in her life and when we called she was so happy! We extended a baptismal date and she was hesitant to "promise" anything, but we told her to pray about it, but she said she definitely wants to get baptized. That night we went to a new converts house to eat with her and her nephew and they're from Bolivia, so they made us some Bolivian food. IT WAS SO GOOD. It was meat that was pounded really thin and then fried, then with rice, a chunk of potato, a fried egg, and some tomato and onion salsa. So. Yummy. And it was such a fun night! Her nephew just got back from his mission in February and is still learning Italian. We asked him to tell us some mission stories and he starts pulling out name tags (he has 15 of them....) and business cards that he and his companion made to give to members to get them to feed them haha. He served in Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela and had some really great stories. It was SUCH a fun night!

On Sunday two members came out with us to do missionary work, so to start off we went to a less active family's house and talked about temples and it went so well! The less active mom was able to make a really good friendship with the relief society president and it turns out that the other. Ember that was with us is just starting to come back to church more and she really needed that lesson too! Miracles! Then the other member had to go and it was down to three. We visited another less active family's house and played a game about following the prophet (that one that we did for FHE that I talked about a few weeks ago where you have pieces of paper with good and bad things and you either go closer or farther from Christ. That one) and again, it
was SO PERFECT. It was so great to have the relief society president with us to make these friendships and help ease members feel more comfortable and loved.

Okay, now about the title of this email..... Oh my. So Monday night we were supposed to have an FHE with this less active family from the Philippines, but the daughters weren't home, so we were just going to visit the mom and bring our new convert whose also Filipino and is like a son to this woman. She told us that she was going to make us her specialty and she was allllll excited about it. And it turned out to be squid pasta. Anzi, squid spaghetti. Yeah. Didn't taste too awful, but seafood in general here is a little sketchy... So we eat the food and I don't know how it gets into this, but our new convert (we'll call him Kip) starts talking about witches and how his great grandpa was killed by a witch. Then the mom starts talking about how she doesn't believe in black magic and witches and Kip starts going off about black magic. We finished our squid pasta and within ten minutes, Sorella Nilsen gets these awful stomach pains and has to run to the bathroom, feeling like she's going to throw up. While in there, the conversation continues on and goes towards ghosts. And during this whole conversation, Sorella Nilsen is running to and from the bathroom, poor thing. So ghosts come up and they're telling us all these stories and whatnot. And then a family secret regarding murder gets thrown into the mix. I don't know what else was in that pasta, but it definitely seemed like it made them start spilling all of their confessions. Like some type of truth serum or something... It was some night.... But somehow we got the Spirit to come back and taught about the Anti-Nephi-Lehi's burying their weapons and about how we're going to choose something to sacrifice, such as pride or sleep to wake up and go to church or time on Facebook to write a missionary (cough
cough)( haha just kidding you guys are great :) ) it went really well and the mom asked us to teach the same lesson to her daughters!
Anywho, on the walk home Kip is being the typically annoying little brother who's trying to trip us and whatnot, but we have to stop at this cute little sandwich place for Sorella Nilsen to run to the bathroom. At this point I'm not feeling too great, but I know I can make it home. I can't run home, but I can make it home. We show up at the metro station and we see the Anziani so we plan to pull a prank and have Kip pretend to try to steal Sorella Nilsen's bag,  but he laughed too soon, so there was no time for anyone to react. Then Kip was just on one and super hyper, laughing, messing with everyone. It was such an interesting night.... In the middle of the night I woke not feeling good, but nothing happened. Until the morning that is....  And the rest of the day Sorella Nilsen felt sick  and I felt a little off, off and on. It would come in waves. So that was... Fun? Haha but luckily Sorella Nilsen felt well enough to go to church for FHE and correlation.

It wasn't a super crazy week, other than Monday night. But it was a great week!  In the Book of Mormon I've started studying the book of Ether and Jared and his brother. Every time I read that story I always learn so much more. First off, chapter 2 "the Lord talk[ed] with the brother of Jared and chastened him because he remembered not to call upon the name of the Lord." (Vs. 14) there are so many times in our lives where we become content where we are and where the Lord has brought us up to this point. But we need to continue to move forward, dive into great waters, take a chance, turn to the Lord and ask what else is to be done to bring you closer to getting to the promised land, aka the Celestial Kingdom. There's a great talk by Elder Carlos A. Godoy from
the Oct. 2014 General Conference called "The Lord Has a Plan for Us!“  It's super great and talks about this!  There is a lot more, but my favorite chapter is chapter 6: Crossing the Great waters to the promised land. First off, the people had light CONTINUALLY throughout their journey to the promised land, no matter how deep they were buried under the water. No matter how dark our life may seem, the light is ALWAYS there. "Choose to Believe" Elder L. Whitney Clayton April 2015 Women's General session. There's a great story of a little girl in a plane crash whose parents died. She could have sat and waited but she got up and moved and saw a tiny light in the far distance and made her way towards it. No matter what, the light was always there. Sometimes she couldn't see it, but sure as anything it was there. Sometimes we don't see God's light or hand, but it is always there. In vs. 8 it talks about how the wind God created never did cease to blow them toward the promised land. When we are in God's hands, when we put ourselves there because we must choose to do it by choosing to follow His will for us, he will ALWAYS guide us toward the right and life eternal. There will be waves of life that crash upon us, that scare us, that make us think we'll never rise to
the surface. But cry unto God, like this people, and you will always be lifted up. Life wasn't meant to be easy, the journey is long and requires a LOT of faith. But you will get there if you are letting yourself be guided by God. But don't just cry unto Him in the dark, scary moments, but at all times. The good, the bad, and all the in betweens. And I promise you you will reach the Celestial Kingdom and God will say unto you "Well done, thou good and faithful servant.“  Okay, this is getting way long and kind of preachy, but I invite you to read chapters 1-6 in Ether and those talks!  I love you all SO much, thank you for everything! You're the best!
Vi voglio bene! Tanti baci!
La Sorella Hawks :)