CARNIVAL WEEK - February 24th 2010

This week was Carnival week in Milano. Apparently every city in Italy has a different Carnival week or day. From what I understand Carnival is kind of like Halloweeen...or at least that is what the 60 year old woman wearing a bright pink bunny rabbit outfit while riding the metro to go to the hair salon told me. I didn't really see many other people dressed up, though, so maybe she was a bit confused. Either way, she made my day. When are other holidays this year by the way...like Easter? General Conference? Mothers Day?

Here are some other highlights of the week besides talking to the bunny rabbit lady...

Food: Sister Prina's Chocolate Bread Pudding. Instead of stopping at Pastry shops she took to the kitchen this week and whipped up some amazing desserts.

Most touching moment: We didn't see as much success this week doing door to door. One old couple let us in the other night, though. The wife was really reluctant to let us in at first saying that her husband wasn't well, she didn't need anything, she prays already (while holding up a picture of the Madonna situated by her door as proof), etc. Finally we convinced her to let us in and say a prayer with her and her husband. She wasn't kidding - her husband really wasn't well. He had some problem with his chest that made it so he couldn't eat and he was probably like 70 pounds at most. It was really, really sad. We chatted a bit, shared a comforting scripture with them from the Bible, and said a prayer. After the prayer he just had this glow about him and you could really tell he was touched. They didn't really understand anything we tried to explain about he Restoration but at least I really felt like we helped them feel Heavenly Fathers love a little more.

Most entertaining moment: Encounters with Italian men from the South. They are hilarious. I think I already told you about the Man from the South that helped us last week...We were looking for someone but couldn't find their exact address. I had asked him for help but when he couldn't find the address either he said..."Well, this is how we'd do it in the South, then started yellling out the name of this contact while walking up and down the super busy street. Then this week...we were trying to get into an apartment building one morning to do porta porta (tracting) but weren't getting past any doormen. One doorman we got stopped by looked at our tag and immediately said "You won't find any work here Sorellas. We are all Gay, Hebrew, atheist, and murders." We then continued to have the most amusing conversation ever, figured out that the apartment building was mostly photography offices for models and in the end (after setting up an appointment with us and his family for Friday...woohoo!) he advised that we go try working a couple streets down where we could find a few apartment buildings witout doormen and people who eat a little more.

Most disturbing moment: We walked past a man standing outside the gate of an apartment building. I felt like I should go talk to him. So we did. After we inroduced ourselves he jumped right into explaining that he was waiting for some woman he didnt know to let him into the apartment building so they could...make love. He knew he shouldn't but God hadn't been helping him out with any of the things he needed and this was his last resort for finding happiness. We bore testimony of a few gospel truths and then left. I felt bad for getting my companions into the situation but my companions after both said that they had felt like we needed to talk to him too and were glad we did. Sis. Simons said when we walked by the first time she had gotten an image in her mind of him teaching the Young Men's class or something. Who knows what will happen...

Favorite scriptures of the week: We are teaching the commandments (starting with the 10) to the high school philipeano girls so I read the story of Moses and him getting the 10 commandments. Super fun to read, imagining all the places he was in that I have probably been to or at least near. Highly recommend it for the fam and Kristen. Might make you all appreciate more the jaunt I sent you on over to the Siani even though you were all dying at the time.

No more time.
Love you all lots.

Sorella Cozzens.