Letters from Milan: Italy, Week 62 (1/13/16)

Hello beautiful people! This week was the bomb digiddy! We got to go down to Africa! We stayed mostly in Nigeria. Okay, that wasn't true at all, but we may as well have been in Africa. We taught Africans almost EVERY day this week, it was awesome! I'm teaching in English more than in Italian these days. But it's very simple English, so I'm starting to only be abLe to speak in very simple, slow English and imperfect Italian. Yay! Anywho, we had a fun zone training on Thursday, but honestly nothing exciting....
On Saturday we went from our investigator who is going to be baptized this Sunday, Bernice (from Ghana) to a member who recently moved here who is from Nigeria. When we walked in, there were two of her friends! As we taught them the Restoration , the member was sewing hair onto her friend’s head. #weave. It was a very entertaining lesson. But! It's cool telling people that just like in the Bible we have a prophet today and just like Christ established, we have 12 apostles. And they're like 😮 And we're like, "yeah, it's pretty neat." 😏

Then we went over and taught a woman from Cuba. We haven't taught an Italian in a while haha. Sunday we had interviews with president! It was good! He always has good advice and it's always good to talk to him. It was funny though because Bernice had to get her bap interview from president, so I was talking to her before I went into my interview. at the start I was still talking in my funny English and he was looking at me so funny and I was so confused why he was looking at me like that. I finally realized that I was speaking to him like he didn't speak English fluently and so I slowly slipped back into normal English. So that was fun. But! Bernice passed her interview!!!! SHE'S GETTING
BAPTIZED!!!!!!!!!! I love that woman, she is so sincere. She doesn't speak English perfectly, so it's kind of like teaching a child. When we ask her questions, she gives us the most beautifully simple answers that pierce your heart. "What does it mean to endure to the end?" "I will follow Jesus forever!“ "What does repentance mean?" "Before, I was a bad girl. But NOW. I am changed! I am a good girl!“ And so on. Teaching her has strengthened my testimony of the basics of the doctrine of Christ ten-fold. She has such a strong testimony but can't express it in a language we understand, so she has to simplify it, and it is the most beautiful thing. The Spirit testifies so strongly. That afternoon we met with the sister of a member and also their brother, all from Nigeria. We taught the Resto and it was so cool! Later that night we got cancelled on, so we went out to do finding and subito found this Nigerian man named Glory. It turns out he's an
evangelical pastor and we got to tell him that the ACTUAL true church is on the earth today and it was glorious. So many sparks we're going off in his head, but then we think he got scared of that fact and asked for our number and ran off suddenly. But it was a super cool experience. The cool thing is that we are TWENTY YEAR OLD GIRLS teaching a PASTOR of another church. And yet because we are set apart under the direct authority OF God given to man TODAY, we have the
POWER of the Holy Ghost that teaches others through what we say. There is such a blatant difference and people can see it and feel it. I LOVE it.
Monday I got to go back to MILANO to pick up my permesso and we waited outside for three hours, just to even get a number and get inside. At one point people were being dishonest and trying to claim they were pregnant or use their youngish children to get ahead and get inside faster, so there was a mini riot. FINALLY people came out and organized the people, but it took a while. An Arabic man and an African man almost got into a legitimate fight. It was really cold, but eventually you lose feeling in your feet so it's really not that bad. Finally we got in and waiting for my number to come up so I could pick up my little plastic card that states I'm legal in this country for the next two months didn't take as long and we got to LEAVE. On the way out one of the guards looked at me and said " ciao suora“ which means "bye nun." Hahahahaha!

Okay, this email is becoming eternally long, so I'm going to wrap this
little guy up.

I'm just excited because this week was very good. Getting to the end of your mission when you're with a companion who is finishing her mission can get very tough. You're both tired and your body is trying to tell you that it cannot go on anymore, but you keep trying to tell it that it has to for just a little longer. You're Spirit and Body are in a constant battle almost every moment of every day. And on top of it you're trying to get your companion to keep going as well. But we are doing it! We're going hard and making the best of this beautiful time that we have as servants of the Lord. I'm so grateful to all of you, for your love and support. Thank you for your unending hope in me and all your prayers. I can promise that they are helping so much.
I love you all so much! Vi voglio TANTO bene!
Sorella Hawks :)