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for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!

Monday, September 28, 2015

Monday, September 28, 2015

Ciao a tutti! 
So HEY.  
I’m sure you’re all wondering where in the bigggggg land of Italia I’m heading to. 
WELL I’M STAYING HERE! WHOOO HOOOOO.  I’m so excited.  I’m happy that I’m literally ALWAYS wrong about if I am getting transferred or not.  I seriously never know. hahahahahaha.  I thought I might be going but I didn’t feel super settled about that because I just feel like there is more stuff I need to do in this city.  I’m really, really happy to stay. And I’m doing three transfers with Sorella Embley which is the longest I have ever been with a companion.  And I’m so happy!  We are excited to see what this next transfer brings.  Sorry it’s not more exciting news for you guys.....you’ll have to wait six more weeks!  Or maybe I’ll just finish my mission here which would be fine by me.

This week was fun! great! fantastic! You know, like usual.  Monday was Sorella Embley’s birthday and it was a little dysfunctional but fun.  We wanted to go bowling but the bowling alley was closed until later on....so we tried to go to the cemetery (I know, that’s like the weirdest thing to do on your birthday but it’s the second largest one in Europe so it’s cool) but it was closed...so we ended up grabbing granitas, going to the beach, and then finally bowling.  You guys, I don’t know WHAT happened but I am the worst ever at bowling.  You’ll see my score and be like WHAT?  I even frequented bowling club in high school....I don’t know what happened.

We had some other dysfunctional moments this week.  One of them was when we tried to make brownies to give to some people but they didn’t cook right.  Our oven is teerrribbleeeeee.  It was the weirdest thing ever the way it cooked the brownies.  They were burnt on top and on the edges, and like liquid in between.  It looked like a bubbling cauldron of....well....anyway  it was gross.  It was a three day process to clean out the pan.

Another dysfunctional thing that happened was Sorella Embley and I both had some pretty righteous falls this week.  I was walking along and I saw a guy wearing a Canada t-shirt so I was paying attention to him trying to see if maybe he spoke English and not paying attention at all to where I was walking.  All of the sudden my foot was slipping and BOOM. I ended up face first on the pavement on the busiest street in Messina.  Everyone around was like, "AH are you ok?!?!?!" and I was like "”It’s all good it’s all good!!!!"  Luckily I wasn’t hurt at all and we got a good five minute laugh out of it.  ALSO Sorella Embley fell this week!  We were walking down the stairs with Abagail and BOOM Sorella Embley just fell to the ground.  She ended up twisting her ankle which was kind of a bummer but other than that we got another good laugh about it. 

The entire week wasn’t dysfunctional.  We also did some good missionary work, don’t worry.  The sad thing was that Giulia left for Korea!!! We are super happy for her to get to hang out there (and I got to send a package with her for Courtney) but it’s such a bummer to see her go right now, because she was doing so good.  We are excited to pick things back up when she gets home.  She took a Korean Book of Mormon with her to show to her friend that she will be staying with over there! YAY! 

I had yet another "preaching to the crowd" experience this week.  Love that.  We were walking by this place that sells full on camouflage outfits and airsoft stuff and the guy outside stopped us and asked us why we were here.  He told us to come inside and BOOM there were like 15 people in there.  So we were like "alright" and we told them all about missionary work.  It was kinda cool actually!   

We had pranzo this week with the Oliva family.  They are the CUTEST.  She is 66 and he is 91...he has a daughter older than his wife!!! (She is his second wife.)  They are madly in love.  They are the funniest little couple I’ve ever seen, very sweet though with strong testimonies of the gospel.  Fortunato (the 91 year old man) wants to do EVERYTHING like cooking and cleaning and stuff and before we left he gave us a ton of random food and shampoo.  I hope I can endure to the end like he has!!!!!!!!!!  

Last night we had a really cool mostra where we put a sheet on the ground and wrote "free English course on it" and talked about English course because we need more students.  It went really well and we had some good gospel conversations.  It’s fun to be able to speak quickly in Italian.  Sometimes I just talk until they interrupt me haha.  I explained the entire book of Mormon to someone that way!! and he actually listened!!  The only weird part of this whole thing was I was talking to this guy and he was like "so...besides this English course and talking about your religion do you guys do anything....else?" I was like "uhhhh what do you mean?" He was like "well I’m searching for a girlfriend and I was just wondering if you would be interested." haha I straight up shook my head and was like "no. not at all.  But if you want to know more about our church here’s a website."  So if any of you single ladies are interested I’ve got someone for you!

Other than that we just worked hard and saw lots of miracles this week.  Here are two of them! (there were many more) 

1) We had a fantastic lesson with Abagail.  We have been a little worried about her and trying to figure out what we can do to help her continue to progress.  She knows the church is true so we have been working on giving her the courage to be baptized, even though the world might tell her that it’s better to do other things than be religious.  We went into the lesson and had planned to talk about the story of Moses holding up the Serpent and the people being healed.  But as we were there we just felt like we should talk about Lehi’s vision (a story in the Book of Mormon).  It was so powerful as we testified that it was worth it to hold on to the iron rod, and make it to the tree, even if others might laugh or talk bad about you.  She told us some stories of things that have been happening to her at school and it was just exactly what she needed to hear.  At the end I felt prompted to challenge her to pray about when she should be baptized and talk to God about it.  She accepted.  I’m so thankful that we don’t have to use only our brains to be missionaries.  Without the Spirit guiding me I would be tooootallly lost!!!!!!!!!  I will never get sick of the feeling of being in a lesson when you KNOW that someone is coming closer to Christ.  It just feels so good. 

2) This week we went to go see Signorina (the old woman we are friends with that fell).  She had a really tough day before and wasn’t doing so hot.  We got there and felt prompted to stay a little longer than normal (normally we just pop in for about 10 min).  We stayed and we got Signorina talking and laughing!!!!!!  It was so great to see her laugh again.  I’m thankful God helped us to brighten her day.

It was a great week and I’m so excited to spend six more weeks here with Sorella Embley and the ward and all the people we are working with. You guys REALLY EXCITING things are waiting for us this transfer.  

I love you all. Thanks for your support and prayers. Vi voglio bene assai assai assai!!!!!! 

Sorella Brunson  

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