THE ELECT - April 14th, 2010

Last week I was kind of annoyed with my President because he basically told me that park contacting was a waste of time and we should be trying to teach people in their homes. He explained that we would be more likely to find "the elect" this way. To be honest, I don't think I really believed there was such thing as "the elect" or people just waiting for me to knock on their door. From what I had seen, it was up to us as the missionaries to be interesting enough, spiritual enough, ready enough to answer their questions, etc. If all that was in place, then anyone could be converted. Based on this theory, park contacting worked better, especially for Italians, because we had more than the 20 seconds yelling through the closed door to do all of the above and touch people's hearts.

This week I was humbled. There is such thing as "the elect". We did lots of door to door this week, even though it was so hard to walk by all the groups of families chillin' in the parks, walking along the river. We even took the time the night before to pick out exactly what road we wanted to go to. Here are a few of the people we found...

Luigi, a 20 year old Italian, model-esque, semi-professional soccer player living at home with his family while recovering from knee surgery invited us to come back and meet with him and his mom. When his mom, Sylvia learned of the Book of Mormon she was in shock and couldn't believe that she hadn't heard of such thing before. She was really upset that no one at the Catholic church had taught her about it. We told her all of her questions and concerns about life could be answered in it and in faith she continued to ask us about a million questions she has been pondering. We will try to answer them all tomorrow when we go back.

Mirella - a 25 year old Brazilian with the cutest 2 year old boy ever after Rio. She invited us in without hesitation and had her husband, uncle, and cousin at the next 2 lessons.

Brenda - a 30 year old woman who lives in the same complex as her sister and mother so invited them all to come over and meet with us. We only had a 5 minute lesson with them but they all were so excited to set the next appointment with us. Brenda was all "Yeah, two days from now should be perfect. We are going to need that time to reflect about all that you have taught us."

Hamda - An Egyptian Muslim who wandered over to us while we were talking to an old Italian woman through her window. He joined into our conversation and by the end was asking us for a Book of Mormon. We said yeah, wed bring one by that week. He called us the next day to ask us when we were going to be able to bring it. Then he came to church on Sunday to get it and stayed for 2 hours of church.

As I was pondering this new idea of "the elect" and what exactly that means. I have been trying to read all the Ensign articles possible about converts and what converts feel during the finding and teaching process. There are some incredible stories. Mostly what it seems like is that the elect are those whose hearts are not hardened against learning the truth. When they hear the truth and the Spirit testifies of the truth than they readily accept it.

This lead me to start studying the spirit a little more. My favorite phrases I read about the spirit is that it is a "foretaste" of eternal life and a record of heaven. When you put that in perspective using the scripture in D and C 14 that says that eternal life is the greatest of all the greatest gifts of God...that means the spirit is a foretaste of the greatest gift ever!! And we are told that, based on our worthiness we can constantly be tasting of this greatest gift. Then working in the opposite direction...in Galatians 5:22 we read that the spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith - meaning that eternal life is all of that times a million. That is what we are working for. That is why we need to keep the commandments and make covenants.

I was also pondering this week about Mom's favorite section from the Harvard lecture where Oaks talked about the 3 fold sources of truth. I read an enlightening paragraph in Jesus the Christ that said something along the lines of...Christ was able to progress and develop during his youth so rapidly because he didn't have the retarding and dragging weight of sin. He loved and obeyed the truth and therefore was set free. This really impressed upon me the importance of being sin free. We cant receive knowledge when we are not cleansed from our sins because the spirit can't be with us to teach us. 2 Nephi 32:3-7 goes along well with this thought.

Hopefully you all find these thoughts as interesting as I do. I feel like they are probably things we are all taught from day one, but some concepts seem to just take a few years till they finally click for me. I am glad that I learned at least these few concepts this week. I was really having a hard time during personal study because our president had assigned us a handful of scriptures from the Bible to read and every time I start getting into a story in the bible I start reminiscing about various vacations we have had to Biblical sites.

Not really anything funny to report from the week. Sorella Casalingo has started talking quite a bit more. She actually probably talks more than me when it is just us two together. We'll just be walking along, then she'll tell some completely random story from her life that is related to nothing, then we walk some more in silence until she thinks of another story. One of my favorite stories was about how the highlight of every week during high school was going to the homeless animal shelter nearby her house where they LET people take the dogs on walks. Mostly it is her giddy smile and light in her eyes that makes the stories awesome.

I'm going to send you some pictures from last p-day. It was her birthday and she wanted to go to the cemetery to celebrate. Her mom had served a mission here in Milan and went to the cemetery and told Sis Casalingo about it so she has been dreaming about it since childhood. I also tried making Sister Prina's bread pudding recipe for her for her bday. Didn't turn out half as good as Prina's, but I tried.

After internet today we are going to go enjoy the sun in the park nearby us and write letters. I basically have the best friends ever and have about 15 letters backed up that I need to respond to, so I'm going to try to get them done while getting some sun.

Love you all,
SLC

WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG - April 7th, 2010

First things first, then I'll explain the title:

TO DO
- find out when the missionaries PDay is and invite them to come with you all to activities or sites in DC.
- make arrangements necessary to have the family in Napoli for March 26, 2011 (I think i should be done with the mish then?) for Marco and Valentina's wedding ceremony (they have only had the technical state wedding but haven't celebrated it yet or had a ceremony that the church recognizes so that they can go through the temple). They are the new convert couple that we do stuff with all the time...I think I sent a picture of them from Christmas Eve.

GOOD LAUGHS FROM THE WEEK
- when the angry old woman who called us because we had given our phone number to her married husband. It was poor Sister Casalingo who answered the phone and as patiently as possible explained who we were and our intent. The funniest part of the whole situation was that afterward Sister Casa couldn't stop giggling for about 20 minutes and just kept shaking her head and repeating, "I can't believe it, I can't believe that woman thought we were trying to hit on her husband, I just cant believe it."

-best April fools joke anyone has every played on me: we were on the metro on our way to do casa at a specific stop we had previously planned. when we got to that stop the metro stopped for abot a minute, everyone lined up at the doors, then the train just moved on without ever opening the doors. Everyone was getting really upset, a few started to run up to the front of the train to yell at the driver, then one of the passengers standing near us started cracking up and said, "It's April Fools Day!!!"....which in Italian is called "the fish of April." I'm sure that's not why the doors didn't open but it sure helped to lighten every one's mood.

The not so funny part of the story... When we got to the next stop, Sorella Casalingo and I were about to hop on the train going back in the opposite direction so we could go to the stop we had chosen, but then I remembered what one of you had told me last week about the missionaries in Oakton Stake always assuming that if they got lost it was for a purpose. I told Sister Casa about that and so we did casa nearby the stop we had been taken to instead...it was hailing and raining and no one let us in. Maybe someone just needed to see us??? who knows.

FAVORITE PEOPLE OF THE WEEK:
- The Italian flower man (still don't know his name) that owns the fancy flower shop down the street and that I have been inviting to church every week for the past 3 months. This week I tried bribing him with chocolate to come to church. Unfortunately he said he'd just trade me some free flowers for the chocolate instead.
- The old construction worker Italian man that randomly burst out into song as my companion and i walked by with our flowers. It was some song about roses. we invited him to church. he didn't come :(

FAVORITE MOMENT DURING CONFERENCE:
- Tito came to both sessions on Sunday which was awesome! During the Japanese mans talk when he mentioned that the missionaries had told him that he needed to take up the challenge at the end of the book of Mormon and really read daily and pray to know the truth Tito leaned over to me and said as if he had just had some big epiphany "hey, that's what you guys keep telling me!" Afterward the conference he said something to me about how now he understood why i was always so persistent in asking him if he had read in the BOM whenever we called and he really appreciates that we do so.

Alright...so back to the title. Why can't we just all get along instead of it being necessary for us to all accept one religion. This is something that a lot of people have been asking us recently and as someone who likes to study other religions, cultures, etc. it is often difficult for me to answer. There are so many Italians turned atheist, Buddhist, or just have their own theories because they just want peace. And indeed, they do seem more peaceful in a lot of ways than those who are hard core into whatever other religion. On Easter, before we ran off to Conference, my comp and I went to a Multi-religious Easter potluck lunch. We were invited by the Arabic professor that is friends with the BYU Arabic professor who is now the mission president down South. It was mostly a bunch of super open minded Syrian and Moroccan Muslims, a few Jews, a Catholic priest, and a few random other people that were doing there own thing religiously. It was nice to be in an atmosphere where people weren't yelling scripture verses at us to prove to us what "the real name of God is" or "what time of the day Jesus was really crucified."

So I have really been trying to strengthen my testimony of Jesus Christ this week so that I can respond with more ease. I learned a lot about the importance of the atonement. Every time anyone sins they are lead to unhappiness and feelings of guilt and shame. If people aren't feeling good about themselves then there is no way we can all get along as well as we should! It is only through Christ that we can have those feelings taken away. From what I understand, Buddhists believe that overcoming cravings stop us from suffering. It is also through Christ that we can easiest overcome carnal cravings.

Also, it is ONLY through the priesthood authority restored on the earth today that we can feel the joy of having the Gift of the Holy Ghost. The Fift of the Holy Ghost is literally a foretaste of eternal life and a record of heaven. When we get a glimpse of what heaven tastes like we can more fully achieve the goal of just having peace.

Plus, see Mosiah 24:5-7. This population loved each other, were well behaved, etc but they were not taught in the ways of Christ/God. Therefore, when it came to interacting with other populations they were not fair, and they were selfish, mean (sorry, I don't have the scriptures in front of me right now so I don't remember the exact words). Without the grander perspective and deeper understanding that we are all Children of God that need to use Christ's atonement through the teachings of the restored gospel we may be good to those that are similar to us or close to us but won't have the drive to be good to EVERYONE.

Ughh, internet time is never long enough to really describe my thoughts clearly.

Love you all.
Hope you all share the gospel with your friends so that we really can have more peace.

Love,
SLC

Silence is GOLDEN - March 31st, 2010

This week I have fallen in love with silence and Italians.

I absolutely love serving with Sister Casalingo. We walked for about 30 minutes in silence the other day trying to find an apartment of a member. First we had to walk along a river , cross over a bridge, then through the most beautiful neighborhood ever and I got to just look around and enjoy the beautiful Spring weather, look at the neat old Italian buildings, etc. and not have to worry about entertaining or listening. Then, when someone walked by with their dog, neither of us were distracted and we both knew that we both wanted to talk to her. Being with Sister Casalingo this week has reminded me about the comment that Dave made when the Prez was over at our house to set me apart. He said the companion that he loved serving with the most was the one who he could tell really wanted to be there on the mission and reallly loved doing the work. Sister Casalingo may not talk a lot but she is also ridiculously focused on the work (but in a calm way that doesn't make anything stressful), super humble, and never has wierdo emotional problems that come from thinking too much about yourself. Plus, I asked her the first day if we could speak only in Italian and she has been super dedicated to that and it has helped my Italian so much just in this one week.

The best part is that since she doesn't talk much, when she does talk the things she says are soo so memorable. Both in lessons and just in the apartment. For example...instead of trying to say something enticing when a person opens the door when we are doing casa she just says, "Hi, I'm Sister Casalingo, can I come in for 5 minutes." And when she does invites to people on the metro or park or whatever I can see her working on building up the courage, slowly sneaking out a pass along card, then she pounces,and just says "Hi, I'm Sister Casalingo, I want to invite you to church." At first I thought for sure no one would respond well. But who am I to judge? In the scriptures we learned that anyone with desires to do the work is called to the work. I've found by watching her, that if a person really does have interest, really is being prepared, it doesn't matter how awkwardly we approach them. Well, to some extent...

Anyway, on to why I love Italians. Mostly I love them because I have started talking to them more and more instead of following the normal missionary trend of picking the foreigners to talk to. Also because they do what they say they are going to do and tell you they won't do something if they really don't want to. They really do call you when they are interested. Plus, they are hilarious. I think I am just discovering this recently because I am understanding more of what they are saying these days. Also, they love being in the mountains and being active...automatic bonding points.

A few highlights of awesome Italians I met this week...
- Francesco: A super sporty, young dad at the park with his daughter who had his dog tied up to the sign that said no dogs at the park. Later on in our convo he admitted that he switches sides of the roads whenever he sees the Elders. I died laughing and burst his bubble, explaining that he is not as smooth as he thinks he is and we definitely notice everytime someone tries to dodge us.
- The old crippled man who walked by in the park while we were talking to a woman with a baby and shouted something like "they're the Mormons!" I shouted hi and invited him to come join the chat. We asked him what he knew about us and he rambled on about how kind and well dressed the missionaries that he talked to for 30 seconds like 60 years ago were.
- The woman who swung open her door when we knocked, shouted hello, gave me bacci (the kisses on the cheeks), then took a step back and realized that I was not the person she was expecting...mumbled something like "who are you, no, you like like..." then slammed the door and double locked it.
- Tomas: A short Italian man, in his 50s, standing right in front of me on the bus. I was looking around the bus for someone to talk to and almost missed him. Then I heard him say something like "I'm reading your tag." We had like a 30 second conversation then he had to get off so I gave him a card. He called us a few hours later and asked if he could come to church. The next day he took the hour long trip to get to our church from his house and was early.
- The old men sitting in the park that we talked to about bocci ball, then the church. We said a prayer with them at the end of the "lesson." The one saw me bowing my head and closing my eyes so he asked if he needed to do that. I said sure. Then at the end of the prayer he shouts out to his friend "Pascuale you are such a faker! I saw you with your eyes open!"

Well, as you can see, all is well here in Milan. I have had about 10 million other tender, funny, exciting, humbling, etc. moments this week that I wish I could share with you but the time is too short and I'm sure your attention span also.

Much love,
L

Threesome to Twosome - March 24th, 2010

Assignment - can someone compile a list for me of where different fruits and veggies should be stored? ie - fridge, bottom pull out drawer of fridge, out on the counter.

Recommended reading - the speech that Oaks gave at Harvard in Feb. of this year. I think you can find it online.

So I had to use most of the email time today snagging pictures from Sister Prina and Simons because we got transfer calls yesterday and they are both leaving :( I normally am completely excited for change and it doesn't upset me at all, but I am super, super sad about this one. I really have enjoyed being in this threesome, especially being with SIster Prina again. We were talking last night and both confessed that we are baffled why we get along so well because we really are completely different in a lot of ways. Anyway, she's off to Como without me. We had plotted in the MTC to serve there together, because that is where there is a whole village of Prinas for us to convert. Simons is going to Bergamo. And what is coming my way will be a HUGE change, especially after being in so many 3 somes. Sister Casalinga, who has been serving in another part of Milan will be my new companion. She is a native Italian (but moved to the states when she was 10) and so speaks Italian perfectly...maybe it'll help me out a bit!

On another note though, here are some highlights of the week...
- On Friday we had a repeat of Tuesday with tons of bidones and lots of time running around from point to point talking to people on the way. (yes Pop, we do call and confirm with people 2 days or one day before, and often a few hours before). We met lots of awesome people though...
A personal favorite was a woman on the street walking her dog with her daughter. She had a bag with music notes on it that we complimented her on. After talking for about 10 minutes we knew that she was a singer of sorts but did not know much more than that. As she was walking away Sister Prina shouts out, "Do you have any concerts coming up in the area that we could go to?" Without looking back or stopping the woman shouts out "yeah, at the Scala..." Sister Prina almost hyperventilated and was so sad that all we knew about the woman was her first name (we had tried to get her phone number but she said she wasn't ready to hear our message. booo.) . Then, A few days later when doing casa for a few hours and not getting in anywhere, the last door we were going to knock on let us in. They were an old Chinese couple with a bunch of ballet pictures everywhere. Turned out they were ballet dancers at the Scala for years. We are going back to them on Saturday.

Also when we were out and about on Friday a woman pushing a stroller does a double take when she sees us, then stops and with a ton of enthusiasm and asks who we are. We explained briefly and she was just so giddy and asked if she can hug us,then continued to thank us a million times for our work. We were completely baffled. More often than not Italian mothers literally run away shaking their heads no at us when we even say salve (hi)...not kidding, we did park contacting the other day and had this happen several times. We never really figured out in the end why she was so excited to see us. She had never heard of our church before, didn't really want to go to our church or meet with us when we explained why our church was different, etc. Oh man, then just a few minutes after this woman had stopped us there was another woman that responded super enthusiastically when i said hello then stopped as if to chat. Turned out she thought I was some Russian friend of her daughter and didn't really want to talk much when she discovered I wasn't. At least we were able to give her a little pamphlet though.

- We went back to Sister Prina's cousins house and this time went MUCH better. There were only 2 of his friends there so it was a much easier crowd to teach.

- In the middle of a lesson with Doris (an El Salvadorian woman who has had a super hard life and does not smile much or ever seem happy), during a pretty crucial spiritual part of the restoration movie, she shouts. I think she is creeped out by Heavenly Father coming down to visit Joseph Smith or something, but then I follow her pointed finger...the floor is COVERED with a white liquid substance. We had bought a container of Soy milk on the way to our appointment with her so we could make a dessert to bring to dinner at Andrea's house and I had punctured the container when scooting back my chair. It was awesome, though, because we all just busted out laughing and it was the first time I had seem her really smile. Heavenly Father works in mysterious ways...

- We had 5 of our investigators in church for all 3 hours which was saweeet. Tito and Luzmilla, Vincenzo (a Bolivian man that we had just taught the night before because he was randomly at the house of someone else we were teaching), and Lilia with her daughter (we met them on the street a few days before and had one appointment with them).

Alright, I'm out of time.

Thanks for all your love and letters and prayers.

Sorella Cozzens

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

I NEED SOME AIR March 10th, 2010

That little trip to the countryside last week and beautiful day in the park gave me an insatiable need for fresh air and nature. Last P-day we planned to go to the park after email so Sister Simons and I could go running while Sister Prina wrote letters but by the time we got out of email it was POURING RAIN. It was still a treat, though, because I got to wear sweats outside for a total of 3 hours because we had the intention of doing something physical. Oh man, I almost forgot how much I love sweats. I've decided that when I get back home I want to go hike the entire Appalachian trail. After a year and a half of wearing skirts and being in cities I will probably need 6 months at least of the extreme opposite - only nature and sweats. Then I will be ready to live a more equilibrious lifestyle.

So yeah, we weren't able to go running. Then we had a whole day inside for Zone Conference (which, as always was really enlightening...details to follow), then about 3 or so days mostly inside because Sister Simons was sick. Even when we were stuck inside Sister Prina was up doing the charts for our investigators with me, teaching me how to cook various healthy treats (got another good cookie recipe for you Crust) , making phone calls, giving me private voice lessons, etc. Then we had another day inside for Interviews yesterday. And today....we planned on going back out to Ludmilla's to go hiking for Pday, but then it started snowing last night and hasn't stopped since?!?!? Instead, to satiate my craving for fresh air and movement, I read an article in the Ensign during study that related skiing to some gospel principle and we stopped by a book store for a bit and looked through some books with incredible nature pictures. I was inspired by the Ensign article to be better at making up real life personal examples to teach doctrine principles in lessons. It will be good practice for me and help me get more creative. I read something else in the Ensign the other day talking about how creativity is a Godly attribute (he designed the world, us, etc). Mostly looking back at the week what stands out is all the things I have learned from the Ensigns...
I will spare you all my detailed thoughts, though, and just let you explore most of them yourselves. Here one though...
- There is one article (Putting Families First) about a family that started a "Family Club" instead of doing all the extracurricular activities that were causing them all to go crazy and taking a toll on them individually and as a family unit. The story demonstrated that we can have less stress and more joy when we prepare EVERY NEEDFUL THING versus EVERYTHING. I think I am naturally drawn to the latter of the two and then I end up pushing my companions too much and take a toll on them and their patience. But if I really learned to follow the Spirit to know what the needful things to do are, then no one would be drained and sick at the end of the day, but we will still have been diligent in getting what needs to be done done.

Despite all the indoors time, we have taught a few noteworthy lessons too...
Tito and Ludmilla: We found them our very first week of the transfer doing Porta. Ludmilla was the only one home and just peeked her head out the door. She said no to us like 10 times but we just kept talking to her, asking her about herself, etc and after about 10 minutes she finally opened the door all the way. Being in three is pretty useful...If the door is just cracked opened people can't see all three of us and get curious about the mystery voices. After about 15 minutes we were inside talking about the Book of Mormon. After 20 minutes the guy that she lived with came home and after 25 minutes he had scheduled an appointment for us the next day and said he would be in church that Sunday. He has come to church every Sunday since but has not let us come back to teach a lesson because he only wanted a lesson when Ludmilla was around at the same time...which is never. People work soo so much in this city. Especially foreigners. FINALLY on Monday they called at 5 and said we could come over at 7. So we cancelled our other appointments and made it there. We taught the plan of salvation and...I'm not even sure what else to say. Mostly it was just a miracle that we were able to teach them both. Tito is awesome. From Ecuador, has a long pony tail, always kickin it in sweats, super sincere, looks you right in the eyes when he talks and does exactly what he says he is going to do.

Haha, funny language story for the week happened at this lesson...My tag broke, Ludmilla asked if I wanted some glue (cola) and I said, "No, I'm fine, but maybe some water...".

Neyusa: We found her also a couple weeks ago doing door to door during a time of the day that is normally not super productive because doormen are working and won't let you in, plus no one is really home anyway. She was one of the doormen that we went up to to ask for permission to go in...we ended up talking to her for about 30 minutes about the importance of families. She is from Portugal, married to an Italian, and is pretty much an Ensign style mom with an Ensign decorated house. We have taught her two times since then but leave having learned more from her about mothering than she has learned from us about the church. During my study the morning before teaching her the third time, I was lead to two different scriptures from the BOM that I thought would really relate to her...Mormon 2:23-26, a story of moms and families that loved each other and wanted to protect each other but couldn't because they did not have faith in and the strength of the Lord VS Alma 56:45-48 where the children had been taught to have complete faith in the Lord and succeeded in defending themselves because of it. Then, when we planned our lesson, we decided we shouldn't share that because she really just needed a basic Restoration lesson. Turned out when we got there and got into the convo, though, those scriptures were EXACTLY what she needed.

Sister Malinverno: Her last name is translated Badwinter. She is one of the few Italian members in our ward and invited us over for lunch when she noticed Sister Prina singing during sacrament meeting. This woman is obsessed with Opera (but does not sing at all herself) and the second we walked into her house started pulling out piles and piles of opera cds then for the next hour and a half while we ate an Italian style 7+ course meal and taught our lesson we listened to opera in the background. I actually really, really enjoyed it. Sister Prina is always so calm, super genuine with everyone, really dedicated to speaking the language correctly, and an incredibly clear and engaging teacher. I have felt so much more joy and love and enthusiasm for life just having her around me for the past couple of weeks again.

Well, that's about all I have to say.

Love you all, miss you all, hope someday I will get the package from you all...

Sincerely,
Sorella Cuzz

OUT OF MILAN! April 3rd, 2010

Pop, you complained about my letters getting boring since I had been in the same city for three weeks in a row. I was not able to get myself promoted to Assistant to the President yet, but I was somehow able to work out two trips outside of Milan. Neither were really on purpose. The first one was pretty close to Lake Como (not to the city of Como, but to the part near the city of Lecco) and at the foothills of the Alps. We have this crazy (but in a really good way) new convert named Ludmilla who was baptized in another city but recently moved into our ward...or so we thought. She has been begging us to come to her house for some native Belarus food and relaxation (she is superduper into health, yoga, massage, etc.) and we finally decided to go the day after her birthday for our 2 hours that we have everyday for lunch and language. She didn't tell us exactly where she lived but told us to go to the train station then call her to find out where we should take the train to. Bad move. We found out that she lives about 45 minutes outside of our zone. Long story short...our Mission President and Ludmilla had a battle, and Ludmilla won. Our good fortune. It was sooo sooo sooo nice to breath fresh air, see a real Italian village, sit in her kitchen with the window open looking out on the mountains, rolling hills, etc. and listening to the stream rush past her house. It is no wonder the people in Milan generally don't think much about God! If they can't see any of his creations ever it would only be natural to forget about him and focus on the things that are constantly surrounding them...clothing stores, money, food, etc. Speaking of food...Ldmilla made some really good potato pancake things that I loved. She said it was a Russian dish. If you want to google this town, the train stop was called Olgiate C.B.

Our second outing this week was to Torino. It was not quite as relaxing as the other. We got a call from the office on Friday saying to go on Monday to pick up Sister Prina's permit. We got up at 4am to get there when the office opened at 9, wait in a giant hall with about 600 other people for 5 hours, then got back home around 7. We had a few really nice experiences, though, while waiting. There was a family from Romania sitting next to me with 2 little kids. The parents were completely ignoring the kids and the kids were super duper intrigued by me writing in my journal, so I started drawing with the kids and entertaining them. In normal life I probably would have been annoyed by them for distracting me...that's the great thing about being a missionary...in the end we are called to love and serve people and there really isn't anything more important that I should be doing. A little later on we talked to this awesome family of gypsies from Yugoslavia that live in a "camp" here. They had about 6 of the mot beautiful children I had ever seen. Haha, one of the little boys was telling me he wanted to be a police man when he grows up and I thought he said he wanted to be a house cleaner so I started telling him about how much I love vacuuming and miss having carpet and asking him about which chores he liked to do most. Lots of confusion during that conversation. Anyway, we shared a little bit of our message with them and left them with the Torino missionaries address. I didn't see too much of Torino...we stopped by one of Sister Prina's favorite chocolate shops and to 2 different train stations and that's about it. To get to one of the train stations, though, we went through the center, older par tof town which was really charming. I think I saw the spot where Pop took the picture when Mom and Pop were there on their mini trip.

On our way back on the train we met my favorite Italians yet. There was a big group of businessmen that work together in the city and during their hour long transit every morning and evening they play a very roudy game of cards on a big piece of cardboard that they set on their laps and bring with them every day. Since we don't get into many houses of Itaians doing door to door (or even have many of them open the door...they prefer to just have conversations yelling through the door) it is always really nice when we have positive interactions with them out and about and get to learn a little more about the culture, etc. In fact, yesterday we had another really nice native Italian experince. Last week after doing email my comps had a very odd craving for McDonalds and were positive they couldn't make it until we got home to eat. So, even though our day time was over, we stopped by McDonalds. I was kind of frustrated, but Heavenly Father, as always, was merciful and taught me another lesson on patience and placed a golden opportunity for work in my path. One of our Italian members was sitting in McDonalds with a group of about 6 friends and had just been talking to them about the church. So, I was able to chat with them while my companions had their "McItalians". Then we had a return appointment set up with this group of retirees yesterday at a park where they all hang out together in the afternoons. If we would have just approached the group and started trying to explain who we were, what we were doing, etc. no way they would have listened to us. But because of the member they were way way more open. Haha, except for Pascuale who is really aethiest and really didn't think there was a need to pray to invite the spirit into our lessons. I had to convince him to let me pray by saying I would just pray for the people in Chile... by the way, I really have no idea what happened in Chile so if anyone wants to update me Id appreciate it.

Remember the girl that was starving herself...we finally had an appointment with her and a friend this week and it went really well. They are meeting with us again but are afraid to talk to tell their parents about it just like our group of underage Filipinos...

OK, I am going to try to send some pictures now so I'll wrap this up and write more after if I have time. I am really sorry if this letter is not understandable...the keyboard is really horrible.

Favorite scriptures of the week: The whole book of Ephesians.

Love you,
Lauren