Buon giorno tutti! OH MY! I don't even know where to begin with this crazy awesome amazing week! I love being a missionary!!! First of all, it was so great to talk to all of you my family! I miss you guys. But it sounds like you are doing great. As you know, I am in the city of Cuneo. It's a pretty small city. We call it the wedge. You'd understand if you saw pictures. I absolutely love it. No I'm not speaking french, but I've heard some pretty awesome accents here.
Let me start from the first day: You already know the basics from the phone call from the President, but when we were proselyting we met some awesome people. One had been given a book of mormon by her member sister for Christmas, but hadn't read it yet. One was a very faithful Evangelist who wanted the missionaries to visit her son. Then we met a woman who started reading the Book of Mormon a few years ago, but stopped. But she said she would meet with missionaries again. That was all in the Piazza del Duomo and the metro! It was awesome. Then dinner at the Mission home was great. I absolutely love President and Sister Wolfgramm. They both are truly inspired and I love them so much. Thursday morning we were taken to one of the Milano chapels, told a little bit about the mission, told who our companions would be and where we would be going, had some lunch, and then were on our way.
I LOVE CUNEO! It is really the perfect place to start. I'll send pictures of our apartment next week, but I love it. It's big. We have a room where we keep all our book of mormons, pass along cards, etc, our bedroom, a room where our closets are, a kitchen, and a bathroom. I'll send pictures. We started on bikes on Friday and ran to the edge of the wedge for exercise Friday morning, but Saturday the snow started coming down and now were are on foot, trudging through the snow. literally. We have had a good 2-3 feet of snow since Saturday. It's insane! But yes, mother, I'm staying warm. Thank goodness for Anna's advice on how to stay warm. But Cuneo is so pretty and even though I still haven't seen all of it, I already love it.
The people! Oh my, I already am in love with the people in Cuneo. Especially our investigators. I'll tell you a little bit about them. First, we have a 42 year old woman who is an absolute miracle. The missionaries have been teaching her for about 5 weeks now I think? She's set to be baptized March 3. She has had a rough life. She was really heaviily in to drugs for a long time. Her husband is a fugitive that nobody knows where he is. she's trying to get a divorce but they say it will take probably 3 years. She lives with Salvatore, a recently reactivated member who introduced her to the church. I love our visits with them. Salvatore is from Napoli, so his accent is really hard for me to understand, but I'm getting the hang of it. My first lesson I taught in Italy was the law of chastity. It went really well and they said they are going to do all they can to figure out their situation, because if this divorce would just go through they would be married tomorrow. And a miracle that happened, after we taught this lesson, she said she understood and the blessings from it were ones that she wanted. She had met with several missionaries before us and she said she always dropped them after this lesson with them. But she said she would continue and they're figuring it out. Monday night we had a very emotional lesson. We watched "together forever" and after she bore a very powerful testimony about how she had nothing before she met Salvatore and started learning about the church. How she had absolutely nothing. But now she has all she needs. THAT is the Doctrine of Christ. To see someone change from where she was to where she is now, bearing that testimony, it was amazing. There were some tears all around. I love her!!!
We were supposed to have a baptism on Saturday, but he came to us Friday night and said that something had happened and he had to postpone. We talked with him for 3 hours about repentance and the Doctrine of Christ, but still he said he needed to wait. We haven't heard from him since... but we have hope.
Oh my Giulia! We are teaching a little 9 year old girl who lives across the hall from a member family. We took the bus out to them to teach her about the ten commanments on Sunday. She wants to be baptized and could be tomorrow, but her mom says she's too young to decide. So sad! She came into the members' home crying because her mom had told her she only had a little bit of time with us. It broke my heart. I started to well up. She's so adorable!!! I love her so much. She knows everything and gets everything that she's been taught. And at the end of the lesson she said the prayer and prayed that her mom would stop smoking. Broke my heart again! We're praying her mom will soften her heart and she can be baptized. Oh and at this lesson the 6 little kids from the member family saw a picture of my family that I have in my scriptures! So I went through and told them who you all were and they just looked and Miriam, who I think is 4 went through "sorella, mama, sorella, sorella, fratello, papa, nipotini..." it was the cutest things. My children will speak italian! haha.
I wish I could tell you about every moment of every day! I absolutely love this work. It was awkward the first day going up to random people, knocking on their doors and stopping them on the street, and wanting to talk about Jesus with them, ha! But as everyone keeps reminding me, this is our calling! To be awkward! So embrace it! I'm doing that and it gets easier every time. The joy I feel at the end of the day makes up for everything. Because I know I'm doing the right thing and the Lord wants me to talk to everyone I can, no matter how uncomfortable I may feel. I'm learning so much every day!
My companion, Sorella Willey, is amazing! I'm learning so much from her about following the spirit to know what should be said and how to know what people need...she is so inspired and I'm so grateful to have her as a companion. She's also helping me a lot with the language. I love her!
Crazy week, but so great. I already crashed on my bike (my first night here...) I got the front brake and the back mixed up and went flying over the handlebars. Luckily I'm protected! It should have been a lot worse than it was. All I've got are some small bruises here and there. And I also had an encounter with my first African bible basher. That was scary. Sorella Willey handled it very well. I bore my testimony in sacrament on Sunday. That was scary. But I think it went well. I got some nice compliments on my italian from the members. I love them. They're too nice. We have a branch of about 30.
I have so much to tell but I must go! I love you all family and friends! Hope all is well at home! Oh and here are some pictures too. I didn't take a whole lot, but maybe you can understand the mass amounts of snow we have...ha!
Love you! THe church is true!!!
Sorella Forbes
PHotos: first day in Milano at the Duomo, our street we live on in Cuneo (behold the snow), My collega! Sorella Willey!
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