CAN'T THINK OF A GREAT TITLE THIS WEEK

We rarely have member lessons and\or eat with members but somehow yesterday on scambi we ended up with two (Luckily we actually had a bit of time because we got bidones, or cancellations?, from the other 7 lessons we had planned). We showed up to this woman expecting just to give a brief lesson before running over to a lunch appointment with another member and our hearts sank when we smelled food cooking. I said, "oh, how nice, are you cooking for your husband? He gets to come home for pranzo?" She shakes her head. " Oh...so this is all for us? We really weren't expecting anything. You really don't need to worry about it..." She then launches into a million and 5 stories end on end about how she used to do so much for and with the missionaries but this horrible thing and this other horrible thing and some other horrible thing are happening in her life these days. And she knows that there aren't many Bolivians here and so she decided she needed to run out and buy all the ingredients for this special Bolivian dish. The she continued to fry everything in sight (potatoes, hot dogs, eggs, etc...) while telling us another million tragic stories about her less active children, her non member family members, etc. We then were encouraged to add mayo and ketchup to this heart stopping Bolivian combo. I have developed some really handy food dodging skills here on the mission. I was able to stop her from serving me the 5 scoops she gave my companion then sneak all of the hot dog slices back into the bowl and steal all the veggies from my scambi companion who doesn't like veggies while the member wasn't looking, then pretend like i was using the mayo. In then end I enjoyed a really delicious, hopefully only heart slowing rather than stopping version of this Bolivian surprise and somehow was able to direct her tear jerking, life is hopeless stories to the passage we had planned on in the Book of Mormon.Then we sprinted over to the next member and the games started all over again....

This time it was heaps of boring pasta that I had to escape from and really crude stories mixed with semi apostate theories that we had the challenge of directing towards a conversation and message about following modern day prophets. On the bright side, we came out of the appointment with a whole slew of new ideas on how to use Bideas (I'm not sure how to spell it but am referring to those things that go next to the toilet that spray water as a means of cleaning up instead of using toilet paper) and a big slice of home-made focacia. My scambi companion is going home next week (I seem to always be put with the ones going home, eh?) and had not used a bidet during her whole time here so decided to try it last night at our house...apparently she is not the only missionary who doesn't use Bidets...the faucet spouted out nasty brown water for like a minute.
If any day is a good day to eat as much unhealthy food as we ate though, yesterday was it. We for sure walked it all off going to all of our back to back lined up cancelled appointments. I was so tired at the end of the day that it was kind of a big relief when I realized we had been going in the wrong direction on the bus for 30minutes trying to get to our last appointment of the day and would have to sit for another 40 minutes to get where we needed to go (one of my real companions had taken my map with them on accident). Of course, didn't even matter we were late though cuz...you guessed it, the woman wasn't even home and hadn't been all night and no one knew where she was. booooo.

Also encountered a few people of interest yesterday during all our running around...1) a drunk man sprawled out in the middle of the sidewalk at 12 in the morning 2) two really creative campaign workers who were dressed up in renaissance clothes with a trumpet and one of those announcement scrolls and were going from one metro car to the next giving a hilarious announcement about some big political debate the next day. A few days ago Prina Simons and I used the car hopping technique on the metro for contacting and it was kind of effective but now I see that we could improve our work by leaps and bounds. I will be suggesting a trip to the local renaissance store when I see my companions tonight. 3) Diana. We actually met her a few days ago, not yesterday, but she definitely has a story worth mentioning. Her mom is from Eritrea, her dad from Ethiopia. Because of some political issues and this ethnic background she and her brother were not allowed to stay in either of the countries. So, they fled from the South of Ethiopia, worked their way up through Libya (or maybe it was Algeria) to the ocean, got packed onto some boat and 5 months after their journey started, ended up in Northern Italy. The kicker is that she was pregnant during all that. And now, since she doesn't have a job she has had to give her son to the "soure" or...I guess in English that would be like a monastery, or place where the nuns live so that he can at least get a little food. She is only allowed to visit him once a week and if she doesn't find a job and a way to take care of him herself in the next few months then the Soure will have possession over the kid somehow and he'll have to grow up a priest.

And a few interesting people while doing only 30 minutes of casa...1) A Milanese woman hard core into occult sciences in order to communicate with God or the dead or whoever. 2) An American girl here on a mission for another Christian church who wanted us to go out to a club together later on. ha ha, apparently her mission is a bit different than ours. 3) A 90 year old woman who, well, I'm not even sure how to describe her. She grew up really poor in Rome, had a really rough life, but has some incredible stories and the biggest heart ever.

Oh, I forgot to tell you about the other pictures...

Anyway, other highlights from earlier in the week...
We had dinner with one of Sorella Prina's distant cousins and a group of 5 of his other single adult Italian friends. It was the cousin that a few months ago had said that one of his friends had met me on the metro. That friend was at the dinner too. The dinner was super chill and a good time, at least for me. They were all big skiers and travelers. A few had been to Cuba...pretty jealous of that one. We planned a ski trip for a year from now. Then we sat down to have a lesson. Oh jeez, for sure the most awkward lesson ever. Sorella Prina had been stressed about it for days so we had tried really hard to plan a perfect lesson but we had realized at some point during the dinner that what we planned wasn't going to work at all....so we tried to improvise. Didn't work. We were all sooo bummed and just in shock when we got home. Sister Prina said something along the lines of..."Thank you Heavenly Father that we made it through that night" in the prayer when we got home and then I just busted out laughing and we continued all laughing for like 10 minutes straight in order to keep ourselves from crying.

We have a few really promising new investigators. Marcella and Roxanna. A mom and daughter from Peru. The Elders found them doing casa then passed them over to us. We have only taught them 2 times but they have already read a ton in the Book of Mormon and also brought up baptism. Normally we have to force that conversation into lessons...nope, they just rolled right into it. Plus, they already have member friends because I accidentally tricked (does it count as a trick if it was on accident) a member into coming to a lesson with us. There was yet another transportation strike the night of our first lesson with Marcella and Roxanna so I called a member family to ask if they could meet us for the lesson then give us a ride home. Clearly my Italian still is not very good because they had no idea they were doing a lesson with us when they got there. But they were good sports and changed their plans a bit so they could do it. I might use this strategy more often so members have less time for excuse making. My favorite excuse I got this week for why a member couldn't come to a lesson with us was something like "I really am not feeling up for it because my dog died four months ago..."

And in my last few seconds here's a bit of food news for pop - Sorella Simons and I made home-made Eggplant Parmesan a few days ago. Sooo good. Recommend trying it.

Love you all -

SLC