September 12, 2012 - Andiamo Avanti! Let's move on!

So again this week has been a bit rough. We are teaching 20+ lessons  every week, so that's not the problem. The problem is that our number of progressors this last week was 0. Yup. Zero. Zip. It's crazy! We talk to SO many people every day. Already I've filled almost three pages of my planner with potentials. Our problem is getting our peeps to progress. We find a lot of new investigators, but about 80% of the time they don't make it to their return appointment or they just flat out give us wrong information. For example: We stopped and talked to a really nice girl and her young daughter on Monday. It was just a brief contact but she seemed really interested. She gave us a phone number and address and we had a return appointment set for yesterday at 5:30. We went yesterday, no one was there. We called her phone. Inexistent number. We rang the rest of the citofonos just to get in the building so we could find her, but it didn't seem like the citofonos were working. An older couple comes by and says no one has lived in this building for six months. What?! Why would you waste a person's time like that? Just tell us you're not interested! It was frustrating. So we walked back to the church stopping people on the way but it was in the area where I don't get excited about doing finding. And as for our baptism dates, Alam from Bangladesh told us he is moving to Rome with his cousin because there isn't work here in Milano. Benedetta we haven't heard from for a while. And as for Stefania and Luigi, I was sad because she called us on Sunday and said she didn't feel well and couldn't come to our return appointment and can't see us until at least Sunday. And she hasn't read any of the Book of Mormon... tristezza. (sadness)

So here we are. Starting at 0 basically. I am doing my best and trying to not get discouraged. But that's difficult when you are working so hard and have nothing really to show for it... But I have faith! I know there have got to be good things coming. We all have the trials of our faith. We're trying to work with the members better and we need to start getting more referrals from them, because that's where we will get our solid investigators who have already been prepared because they know members. The members are awesome. So we're hoping we'll see some miracles with that. I don't know if I've ever mentioned the Ramos family... they are bravi. They are the missionaries in this ward. Not us. They had a birthday party for Jaime (the husband) with all their friends and invited the missionaries. The Assistenti went because we had another appointment. But they shared a snippet of the Restoration and there were like 3 of their friends that were interested and became referrals. And Marisa's (the wife) sister is getting baptized at the end of this month. Sorella Ramos has a list of people she wants to share the gospel with and she prays for them individually and then is starting to invite them one by one to learn about the gospel. They are rock stars. We had a lesson with them on Wednesday and role played what she would do to invite her friend to learn about the Restoration the next day. She bore a crazy awesome testimony with her husband and I was stupita after. (astonished...) 

Yes I got your big package and the post it package! Got them yesterday. Thanks! Although I don't like thinking about how my mission is already more than half way over... thanks a lot! Jokes. That was cute. I really loved it. The chocolate suffered a bit, but it's still edible. :) And oh! Did you know the CTR rings are in danish? I haven't met any one here that speaks danish... but I'll keep a look out! ;)

As for our p days... last transfer we would always go to the duomo area, do some window shopping/real shopping, eat some gelato and kebap, and that's about it. Today we are getting together with all the Milano Sorelle and the Varese Sorelle are coming and we are going to go inside the duomo, go see the early christian baptismal font underneath in the ruins from the baptistery that was there, eat some pizza at Fratelli La Bufala, and maybe get some gelato. It's going to be a party. There are some art exhibits I would like to go see maybe next week. A free Bramantino exhibit at the Castello! And I want to try to get tickets to see the Last Supper while I'm  here in Milano. (Mom! Maybe you can look into that for me? see if there are any openings on a wednesday afternoon sometime before November?) 

Thanks for your love and support everyone! I am truly so grateful and feel your prayers pushing me along. Love you all!

Buona settimana!!! (Have a great week!)

Sorella Forbes

Ps i don't have any new pictures... i'll send you some next week!