Lesson Learned

This week has been really good! We got 7 new missionaries all going to catania. 2 sisters and 5 elders. 2 of the elders are from England.

Julie B Beck came and spoke last Tuesday and that was an awesome talk. We started teaching in Italian on Friday.Yikes! in our class time we do these fake progressive investigator senerios where we teach our other class mates who pose as investigators. So now we have to teach only in Italian. One of our teachers shared a story about how if you put fleas in a jar they will just jump out cause they can jump real high, but if you put a lid on the jar for a few hours the fleas will readjust there jumping standard so that when you take the lid off they will no longer jump out of the jar. So we were reminded not to put lids on our abilities.

That story is kind of a good lead in to my next story. Monday was a really hard day for me. I was feeling super discouraged with the language and my ability to learn and to retain Italian. In class me and my companion taught our teacher as our progressive investigator and he kind of came down on us for doubting our abilities and told us that as missionaries we have the power to call on God at anytime. I was still feeling pretty frustrated as the day went on, wondering how I am ever going to learn this language and being so frustrated that Icould say the things I felt because the words just weren't there. When we went to gym I decided I needed to call on God so I went into the bathroom where I could be alone for a minute and I just offered up a prayer. I told God that I knew he called me to this work and I knew he was here with me, but that sometimes satan pushes too hard for me to feel his presence. I told him I know he had already blessed me so much, but if he could just give me an added measure of courage and faith I would be so grateful. I ended my prayer and later that day we had our apointment at the TRC. the trc is the place we go to practice teaching once a week. there is a hallway with a bunch of rooms and volunteers come in so we can practice teaching. The first part of the TRC is in Italian and then we teach in english for 35 minutes. the door we were assinged to had a man inside with a little baby boy. The baby was so stinking cute! we were assigned to teach the plan of salvation and when we got to the part about eternal families the smil on the investigatores face was huge and I felt my eyes well up with tears as I bore testimony of eternal families. I immediately thought of all those families in Italy who didn't know they could be together forever and I knew that I could learn Italian, that I had to learn it for all of those families. at the end of the lesson the investigator said the closing prayer and it was the only time he broke character. He prayed and blessed my and my companion to have the gift of tongues and increased testimonies. It was very powerful and Iknew it was a tender mercy from the Lord, answering my plea for added courage and faith.

God is very kind and Iknow he loves all his children.

I have almost no time left, I love you all and I am so grateful you are supporting me.