Busy Week

This past week has been really busy.  Last Saturday we had a branch activity which the young missionaries organized and carried through successfully.  They called all the Inactives and active members to tell them about it.  They invited their investigators and our English class students.  They planned three games, a spiritual message with a video, and great food.  We were very happy with the 30 people who came.  There were 8 active branch members, two totally inactive members who came,  us six missionaries and the other 14 people were all non members.  We all had a very fun evening.  Everyone stayed until the party was over.  We played the baby picture guessing game, and the cookie on the forehead that you have to wiggle down to your mouth with out using your hands game. We sang and mingled and the missionaries did such a good job with their spiritual message.  

Sunday, I gave the 50 minute primary lesson, on Noah and the flood, all in Italian.  That is slightly stressful to me.  We have one little boy who is 9 years old who wants to move around and hit people constantly.  So that is the most difficult thing for me, because I love to have a perfect environment for me to give a lesson in my very bad Italian.  But we got through it!  

Monday, was Pday and the missionaries went on a beautiful hike and picnic, in the morning at our nearby mountain and medival castle ruins.  It's so close to our home that it only takes a couple hours to get there and hike it and take pictures.  This allows the missionaries to get their email, their shopping, and laundry all done and get to do some recreating all on the same day.  

Monday evening, we took the sisters up to the mountains above Avelinno to Flavia's house.  She is a darling young woman who joined the church last year.  She lives with her non member relatives; her aunt, uncle, cousin and nonna.  We pray and pray that they will have a desire to join the church too.  We have taught them many lessons, and they feel the spirit, but don't have a desire to change religions.  We feel that her cousin does have a desire to learn more, but his mother won't allow him to come to church.  He is only 12.  But when he gets older, we pray he will chooses to be baptized.  For now, we visit and teach a little more.  "Piano piano," as they say in Italian, which means "slowly slowly"

Her whole family loves us and the missionaries, and they listen to everything we say.  This week, even her uncle stayed for our message and read and reread the scriptures we were going over.

Wednesday, we got up at 4:30 am to get ready to leave by 5:15 so we could drive to ?Salerno and catch a train to Rome at 6:00 am.  We had a good conference in Rome and hurried back for an appointment in Salerno with a non member.  We were challenged to talk to everybody we meet about the gospel.  Sister Mitzvotai talked to the girl she was sitting next to on the metro, and got her number and gave her a pass a long card, and sent the referral to the Rome sisters.  Both sisters talked to a man on the train that they sent his referral to Tatanto missionaries.  I sat next to a lovely young lady who I hope to connect with again.  I gave her my email and she said that she would email me.  

Thursday, we had the missionaries over to lunch, and planned the graduation party for English class for that evening.  We got the certificates signed and games set up.  The party went well and we had a good turnout.

Yesterday, we took the sisters to get their permissos started.  Last night, we had about 10 investigators over to our house for a discussion about our church.  These were all students from our English course.  Several have had one or two discussions with the missionaries, one has had many lessons, but more than half have not agreed to have the lessons before, but they agreed to come all together to hear more about our church.  Anziano Scherbel gave a very good lesson. The spirit was there and more questions were asked by everyone.  We ended the night with a pancake dinner along with the egg and sausage casserole I make for Christmas morning.  They stayed for a total of three hours and all would like to come again.