AHHHHH HELLO EVERYONE!!!!!!!
I would say "hello from Savona!", but at the present moment I am in Genova!!! Genova (Genoa, in English) is only a 45 min or so train ride away from Savona, so we decided to come here to spend our pday with the sorelle here. Pictures next week :)
First of all, I LOVE SAVONA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE IT love it love it!!! It is such a beautiful city - right on the sea. It is absolutely incredible! It is a pretty small city, and most of the members live in little towns around Savona, which means we spend a LOT of time on the bus and on the train going back and forth to appointments. We have bikes, but we don't use them nearly as much as we did in Torino. That's probably a good thing, though, because it means my apetite has gone down so hopefully now I won't feel like a fatty mcfatfat all the time.
I'm feeling a little bit lost today because I didn't write down any notes this week of things I needed to email home about...so you're all just going to have to bear with me today. I apologize in advance.
So! Savona! I love it! And I love Sorella Jones! She and her companion from last transfer (Sor Burgoyne, who I had an exchange with in Torino last transfer and just went home) were the first sisters in the city in 30 years. THIRTY!!! They basically had to start from square zero when they got here because there were no progressing investigators or anything from the Elders that were here before. Most of our time is spent visiting less-active members, which always blows my mind because in Torino we had tons of people who didn't ever come to church and didn't want to/couldn't ever see us, but here they actually let us stop by. Just yesterday we went to visit a woman who hasn't been to church since she got married 10 years ago (to a non member) and it was the most crazy miracle. She lives pretty far away - about a 30 min train ride from our house - and we got pretty confused on which train to take, so we ended up missing our train, then taking another train and then missing the stop and having to take a bus to get to her house. Yeah, we were pretty late. But we went and had a message about prayer that we wanted to share. We read the story from President Monson about the 5 dollars he left in his pocket (from Conference in November) and then all of a sudden she just opened up and told us about why she stopped coming to church and how she's over it and has been thinking about coming back and how she's always had a testimony and how she's basically just been waiting for 10 years for someone to come find her. Yeah. Remember how there haven't been sisters in this city for 30 years? Welcome to my life. Oh! AND THEN later on yesterday night we get a phone call from this guy and we have no idea who it is, so Sor J asks him how he knows the missionaries. Come to find out, he's a member of the church, on our ward list (less/inactive) and HE called US and wants to meet with us and start coming back to church. WHAT??? Yeah. Savona - the NEW city of miracles!!!
There is a senior couple here in Savona that are in charge of the Young Adult Center, the Robinsons, and I think I mentioned something about them last week. They don't speak Italian (which I can only imagine is THE most frustrating thing), and so we translate for them. I've never had to translate before, but man is it hard!!! It requires good listening, no thinking, and quick speaking. Too bad I'm a thinker by nature, so that trips me up a little bit. But with all the translating I'm going to have to do this transfer, I'll hopefully be semi-kinda-okay at it by the end. There is so much work to do here in Savona! We don't even have enough time to see all the people that we want to see - it's so crazy! It feels like a completely different mission than Torino. I did get a call on Saturday from the Torino sorelle, though, asking me where the spare keys to the apartment are...yeah, they locked themselves out, haha. I don't know how they got back in, but I will say that I didn't have the spare keys! I left them on the shelf by the door before I left.
I don't know what else to say, but I'll keep typing this sentence so that I feel like I'm not wasting my internet time...
Oh, Dad, you'd be so proud of me, the first thing I did when I got here (pretty much) was fix up my bike. Sorelle Jones and Burgoyne had to buy new bikes, so they're fine, but the first time I rode my new bike I felt like I had to be careful about not kneeing myself in the forehead - it is not a very big bike! So I basically just raised the seat about 4 inches and adjusted the handlebars to make it work, and then we went to the gas station on Monday to put air in the tires. Remember how I'm the tallest sister in the mission? Whoever has my bike next will for sure have to readjust everything to fit them (let's hope it's not my friend Sor Bishop who inherits my bike next).
Well, I feel like this is a super short email, but I'm out of time! Just know that I'm LOVING Savona and all is well! You are in my prayers and I love you all so much (especially my braintwin! pee ess thanks for the email!)!!!!
Lots and lots and lots of love from Savona (via Genova),
Sorella Soh
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