First of all, today for p-day we went to Fratelli la Bufala with the other Milano Sorelle, and Sorella Bishop and I went to the Duomo. So much fun! It's just a 15 minute metro ride away! That pizza was to DIE for. Thanks for sending the info, pops. P-days in italy are fun times.
It's been a pretty good week. We set two baptism dates last week. One with Nickel and one with Stephen. I'll tell you more about Stephen in a little bit. Nickel is a professional soccer player from Cameroon so he plays on Sunday and can't come to church usually, so that's a problem. But we're working on it!
I forgot to tell you about something that happened last Sunday. We went to lunch at a home of a family from the Phillipines. The daughter is getting married in the Phillipines this week so they had a big lunch and invited us to celebrate. SO MUCH FUN! I LOVE Phillipinos. They are so nice and funny and hilarious... The older sister and her husband and the grandma of this girl getting married sang "From this moment" by Shania Twain and while they did the one getting married just like strutted back and forth waving her hair and it was just so funny! If you can picture it... you might have had to been there... "Fwom dis momeeent!!!" Hilarious. I love them.
I had to do translation this Sunday!!! So hard!!! It was the first time for me. There are a lot of english speakers in this ward so every week the missionaries switch off translating and they have headphones. I had to talk into a little microphone thing. I think I did pretty good until the speakers started reading things... then they go too fast and I got lost and it was just long periods of silence on the headset... ha. Dear Sorella Wolfgramm came up to me after "Sorella Forbes was that you?! That was sooo great!" Ha! Two seconds later Sorella Lynch (of the senior office couple) says "That's okay, you'll get better with practice." Dear Sorella Wolfgramm. She is the sweetest. Anyway, I'll have to do that more I'm sure. It's hard... a lot of pressure!
Stephen! He is our miracle this week. Stephen is a homeless man we met in the park. When we first met Stephen, he was nice, but you could tell he had some problems. He would get kind of nervous and tell us to wait for long periods of time while we were talking to him because he didn't understand everything and was very confused and needed us to go back. He told us he had an accident and since then he has problems. We think he might be bipolar because he said he gets really really mad and then he'll be fine. And things like that. And he would laugh a lot. We would ask him to pray and he said he couldn't because he would laugh. And he didn't want to. So we left him with a Book of Mormon and asked him to pray on his own. We've gone back to teach him a few times, and I can not describe to you the changes I see in him already. Miracle! He understands everything and you can tell he's really taking it in and asking questions. He's reading the Book of Mormon like a mad man. The second time we met with him he said "It says in the Bible come unto me and I will take care of you, I'm still waiting. I know if I follow God he will bless me." I felt the greatest love of God for him in that moment I think more than anyone I have thus far on my mission. I promised him that he would be blessed. The Lord is going to bless him so much and we are there to teach him how he can receive more blessings from his Heavenly Father. I KNOW it is true. I felt it when I said it and we're already seeing it. Two lessons ago he said the closing prayer. It took a minute as we waited for him to start, but he sat there kind of laughing for a second but then it went silent and I was praying so hard and he just said "okay, let's pray!" and then he said the most beautiful simple prayer. Yesterday he did the same thing and I welled up with tears while he was praying. It was so beautiful. He accepted baptism for August 25 but we might have to move it back because he is going out of town for a week before. We'll see. But I just love Stephen. He's been homeless for a month. His documents were stolen so he can't go to one of the communities they have for homeless people. Someone stole his Bible and he was so sad about it. Yesterday we brought him a brand new King James Version of the Bible, and he was so touched. He almost cried. I almost cried. I feel so blessed to be a part of it.
But after Stephen's lesson yesterday we stayed in the park and had to do our daily phone calls, and I was just watching him off in the distance in the park and thinking about the change we see in him. His whole countenance has changed. There is a light that wasn't there before. And I was just thinking about a bunch of different scriptures like "inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments, ye shall prosper in the land." And "Consider on the blessed an happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual..." It's SO TRUE! Look at where you are. Look at every blessing you have. As it says in D&C, it's because you obeyed a commandment of God. I know that that is true. We as members of Christ's church are so fortunate. We KNOW what we need to do to get blessings. We know HOW to get them. I've just been thinking about that a lot lately and there's so much I wish I could say about it but I don't have time... but It is true. God blesses his people when they make covenants with him. Stephen is just preparing to make a covenant with the Lord and already is being blessed. Ah! It's just beautiful.
Love you family. Thank you for your prayers and your love and support. Love you so much!!!
Sorella Forbes
Vi voglio bene!!! (I love you!)
Flowers from home...
Duomo on P-day with Sorella Bishop
and something inside the duomo....what? Temple? Interesting...haha
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