First Email

CIAO!

 It's me. Did you think I dropped off the face of the earth? I feel like I've been here for a month! But now I'm really beginning to think that's a good thing.

I won't lie. Those first couple of days were really tough. There were a few "What am i doing here?" and "what was I thinking?" moments those first couple of days. But now that I've made it through my first week here I look back and am so grateful for everything that happened those first couple of days.

When I got here I was taken to my room, to the bookstore, and to my classroom by my host, Sister Lear who is going to Hong Kong. When I got to my classroom I met my teacher, Fratello (Brother) Merrill. He is awesome! And I met the rest of my district. La mia collega (companion) is Sorella (Sister) Clark from Boise, Idaho. I absolutely love her. She and I are like the same person. We have very similar sense of humors which is really great, because most people don't understand mine... haha. We work really well and hard together so it is great. The other Elders in my district are Anziano Collins from Virginia, and Anziano Thomas from Arizona. The other Sisters are Sorella Comollo from Salt Lake and Sorella Smedley from Layton. I absolutely love them all. We spend so much time together we already are so close and I can tell we'll all be friends for a very long time. The Anziani and Sorella Smedley have no experience with italian so we help them out where we can. We had a pretty low moment yesterday, however, when we lost Anziano Johnson. He went home. I'm proud of him but it was really sad and we're all going to miss him. My italian is crazy improving! We talk in italian as much as we can and we always pray in italian. And, this was the craziest thing when they told us we would have to do this, we already have been teaching and "investigator" in italian! We first taught him on Friday and I absolutely love our investigator. His name is Salvatore. The first time we went on Friday we asked him how he felt about God and tried to figure out what his religious background was. To summarize this real quick because my time is running out: we finally got him to pray with us on Monday and it was absolutely amazing. The spirit completely overwhelmed us and we were so excited we forgot to invite him to church. But he's been reading a little bit from the Book of Mormon and we invited him to church yesterday and he said yes! We were really excited. We've taught him the first lesson and a half and we'll teach him again on Friday. And then he'll become our teacher... ha! But i love this experience and it is really forcing us to learn quicker and to study and try our hardest.

I absolutely love my branch and all the Anziani and Sorelle. We have an AMAZING group of italian missionaries here and I am so excited about it! There are 12 Anziani and 6 Sorelle. Three of the sisters, including my companion, are going to the Rome mission and the rest are headed to Milano. Forza Italia!

I have so much to tell you but not a lot of time left! 

So we have really great meetings here. After everyone i leave feeling empowered, humbled, and uplifted like never before. My favorite was last night's devotional. We were blessed to be visited by Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve. Sorella Clark and I were planning on singing in the choir, but had somehow missed the memo where we needed to be there two hours early. ha! So i was really bummed at first because they were singing Come Thou Fount. But we were able to get seats on the fourth row! Which was WAY better than the choir seats. A few highlights: He talked about how Christ sent his apostles out to the world to preach His gospel, but the apostles today can't cover the entire world, so they called the Quorums of Seventy. But even they can't do it all so we are called! He called us his companions in this work, and said this is an apostolic work with apostolic authority that we are set apart with! How cool! I'm a companion of the twelve apostles! He also said how a lot of missionaries come home thinking their debt is paid, but that in fact they come home with even greater debt to our Father in Heaven because of the blessings that come from serving a mission. And we always need to be in the service of our God and grateful for the blessings. We need to turn everything over to Him, and He'll give us what we need back. I love this place where the spirit is so strong and am so grateful to be serving the Lord! I already feel the blessings that are coming from it. THE CHURCH IS TRUE! Next week, I'll tell you my testimony in italian...because i can do that now...

Love you all!!! HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

 

Sister Forbes