"CAZA" AND OTHER ENLIGHTENING EXPERIENCES

On the street where she lives!
Famiglia,

I have developed a Christi addiction to writing. I am about to start my second journal of the mission already. If only I didn't have to sign off every time I get online to get the most recent emails you have sent. This past time I signed off I accidentaly typed in gmail.com out of old habit and thus went to an illegal webpage!!! Yikes. Good thing my companion was distracted by a phone call...pretty sweet phone call by the way. It was a random man who said something along the lines of "you handed me a card on the metro on Monday and it really touched me. How do we do this? Do i just come to your church? Or do we meet somewhere?" My companion was completely baffled. We were just brainstorming to think who it could've been and I think we determined it was an Italian man in his mid 30s who was on the metro with a bunch of his friends, but kept looking over at me, so on my way out I handed him a pass-along card that has questions of the soul written on it or something and I said something lame like "Hi, we are missionaries". He said, "good for you," then I shook his hand and ran off the metro because it was our stop. Pretty crazy that he actually called us. I heard statistics from someone the other day about how super rare it is for people to call us from the pass-along cards but...look at us just defying the odds, eh?

I have actually had a lot of experiences this week that have kind of built up my confidence again in my ability to find people to teach. All of your thoughts that you shared with me last week about being myself and finding what works for me instead of trying to be a mini-Sister Simons (btw, that picture probably was my companion, she fits the description) really helped. My president also gave me some pretty basic advice that helped...be patient with yourself. On Saturday when we were doing our service (which i hope to talk to the president about tomorrow...isn't that something that a visiting teacher could be doing?) I had decided to make it worthwhile by letting my companion do the talking with the woman we were shopping with while I talked to other people. I ended up talking to the man sitting next to me...well, mostly he just talked to me. People tend to do that a lot here. They are big talkers. Apparently I got enough into the conversation, though, because when we got off the tram he gave me his number and said he'd see us at church and also wanted to come to English class. I wanted to call him to remind him about church, but my companion wasn't really feeling him and advised me otherwise. Then I wanted to call him after church when he didn't come, but my companion said to pass to just pass him along to the elders. So I did, but apparently they never called him. Last night, though, after sitting around for 30 minutes at the church waiting for anyone to show up for our English class, we got a phone call (as if i wasn't antsy enough before the mission about wasting time, I get even more antsy and annoyed now. I have been learning patience. I always am suggesting things like..."why dont we make flyers for English classes so people actually come." "Why don't we advertise at the library, university, etc." I'm sure my companion has to learn patience with me too, though, and gets sick of my ideas. Apparently there is a specific order to things, though, that i just don't know yet. It is really hard for me to have to base what I do with my time off of what someone else who might not have as much energy as I do thinks I should be doing!

Thank goodness there is a piano at the church. I have been getting lots of opportunities to accompany lately. I am pretty horrible at accompanying but apparently am the best that there often is available.). The phone call was from the tram guy (named Oscar). He said he was wandering around the neighborhood looking for the church and couldn't find it. He said he had tried Sunday morning to find it too, so he could come to church, but never found it!! Ai yai yai. Finally we located him and the elders are now teaching him.

Yet another awesome finding story...
So I was frustrated one night after we had gone over what our final numbers were for the week and were once again way far off from our goals. I don't like setting goals that we continually don't reach. Then i started thinking about the goals that I had set for myself at the beginning of the mission that I had to give to the mission president the first day. One of them had to do with baptizing families. I realized that for some reason i had been intimidated by families just because they were in groups and not as easy to talk to on metros as people sitting alone. So, I could for sure do more to achieve my goal of finding families and decided that the next day i would talk to at least one family. So i did. We were waiting at a bus stop for Victoria for about a half hour. I was getting antsy and kept asking my companion if we could go do caza or something while we were waiting. She wanted to stay and wait though, or had a feeling we should or something. I never really know. So we did, and a man with a little boy came along. They were hanging out waiting at the stop for a while with us, not taking any of the buses that passed by. Then the mom came and they were still waiting around more. I finally went up to them and said something like..."It makes me really happy to watch your family because i can tell you love each other a lot. I believe that families can live together forever if we follow God's commandments. Can we meet again sometime and talk about it?"....Then my companion jumped in and helped clarify what I had said...we have an appointment this Sunday!! wahooo.

So - funny/awkward story of the week:
I actually have a few from doing caza this week. Caza (door to door) was pretty awesome this week and left me feeling like a real missionary finally. The first awesome experience was on Friday. We only had a half hour for finding and we were walking back and forth on the road we had chosen, not going into any buildings because my companion said they all had doormen who would stop us. Finally I suggested we just walk by one of the doormen and pretend we knew what we were doing (the lifelong trick I learned from mom, always works). So we did - and we got in fine. And it resulted in a very awkward moment...after doing about 5 doors one lady answered and was really annoyed at us, so apparently she called down to the doorwoman and complained. From the bottom of the stairs the doorwoman started screeching at us at the top of her lungs. I have absolutely no idea what she was saying but it sounded horrible. My companion got from the screaming that she wanted us to leave. On the way down the stairs a bunch of people had their heads popped out of the doors trying to figure out what the heck was going on. We just had to smile at them all and pretend like nothing was happening.

Another day doing caza a woman threatened to call the police on us and another woman came chasing after us down the stairs after her husband had turned us away. She was wearing a half unbuttoned shirt and nothing else. she stood in the stairwell and talked to us like that for about 30 mins about some crazy dreams she has had and about our church. I feel like those are both experiences that every missionary has to have - like a sort of initiation or something. I sure wish that we could just do family missions. All of these experiences would be 100% more awesome if it were with you guys and I could laugh about them a bit. Everything I see and do, every discussion I have, etc., I just wish it could be with you all.

By the way, Mom, before I forget...I wanted to tell you that I am getting more and more excited about doing some sort of instructional design grad program. I had that thought the other morning when I realized how much I enjoy studying for and creating the lessons that we teach. If you are bored while stranded after surgery, feel free to do any research on programs.

Man, I'm almost out of time. I really want to tell you about the things I have learned in the scriptures, good talks I have read, etc. but might just wrap up with the story of visiting the Boer family last Saturday, and write details about scripture studies in the package with the pictures that I am sending today.

Short summary of Boer visit: Remember the Italian elder that my companion and I had a really touching experience with at the mtc? I got permission to leave our zone and go a little bit out into the suburbs to visit his family and tell about my experience with their son. The dad isnt a member so i got permission. En route, I discovered that we live really close to the Alps. I hadn't seen them from the city. I also had a really, really Italian meal, including an entire course of different cheeses and one type of cheese that you put honey on.

gotta go.
love you all lots!!!

read the following talks... "honorably hold a name and standing" by bednar in conference last april. and some article in the june 2009 ensign by calister about how we need to refine our language, literature, music, art, appearance, and attitude in order to prepare ourselve for our heavenly home. one of the purposes of our earthly probation is to become like our heavenly parents in every concievable way so that we may be comfortable in their presence.

Sorella C.