Aloooooooooooooooooooooohaaa!!!
Buongiorno a tutti! Well it's another pday here in Milano and it's raining! It also rained last pday when all the sorelle got together to go to the Duomo...we were all a little soggy. However, I did buy a little rain jacket, so that should really come in handy. I don't know why it's taken me so long to buy one...
Updates here: I am no longer serving in the Milano 2nd Ward. I am now serving in the Milano Cimiano Ward. What does that mean? It just means that they changed the name of our ward at Stake Conference on Sunday when they divided the Milano Stake into Milano East and Milano West. Milano 1 changed to Milano Lampugnano and Milano 3 changed to Milano Naviglio. Basically the new name just corresponds with the closest major public transportation stop to the church building. Giovanna, who is getting baptized on Saturday if everything works out, told us that the renaming of the wards was her favorite thing about the Conference because the new names are much less confusing...Haha. And I'm just realizing that this paragraph is probably only worth reading by people who are familiar with Milano...aka ex-missionari. Oh well!
I feel like my life here in Milano is so hectic! And also a little stressful. We spend all day dashing around the city trying to make appointments and hardly have any time to stop and catch our breaths. We've been meeting all kinds of different people and this week we've really been focusing on trying to get people to become new investigators. A lot of times we teach people and give them the BoM and then they can't/don't want to meet with us again. That's been a little bit hard. Maybe if I was a better missionary our lives wouldn't be so stressful! Geez. We're working on it! I'M working on it!
Yesterday was crazy. We had a scambio with the Milano Naviglio sorelle, Slla Forbes and Slla Mancuso (p.s. did you know that Slla F's parents are DVC members??? She and I get along very well). This was my first scambio that wasn't a blitz - we really just switched companions and I didn't see Slla Heupel for 24 hours! Anyway, I was with Slla Mancuso, from upstate NY. She came to our zone and we got to work here in the Milano Cimiano zone! (p.p.s. someone in the internet point who is sitting on the other side of the barrier in the line of computers just sneezed like three times and I am 99.999% sure he didn't cover his mouth, and if he did cover his mouth, I am 99.999% sure he sneezed into his hand. I don't want to breathe. At least the door to the internet point is open.) Anyway, yesterday morning I got a call from Anz Herrington, who is now an assistant to the president, and he said "hey, we don't have a musical number for our training meeting today in Milano 1. What are you and your ukulele doing at about 3pm?" Well, me and my ukulele we going to be at an appointment at that hour, so I told Anz H that we could make it at 1pm. So I went with my scambio companion all the way to Milano Lampugnano and, at an awkwardly placed time in the training meeting, played the mission hymn. Some of the Anziani there had already seen the video of me playing the mission hymn at the sister conference because President apparently played it at his meeting with all the zone leaders. But anyway, I played it and everyone liked it, of course. There may be an upcoming petition to replace the normal version of the mission hymn with the Sorella Soh ukulele version... I talked to one of the office elders and he said, mom, that he would email you the video. I don't know what could get better than that for you, because the song is in Italian - singing, ukulele, Italian - all in one!
Our scambio went really well, though, and I learned a lot from Slla Mancuso. She is really great. I think Slla Heupel really learned a lot from Slla Forbes, too, which isn't surprising because Slla F is a way better trainer/missionary than me. And actually, I was the scambio companion of Slla Forbes in her first transfer in Cuneo! Oh, scambio.
We've been taking Giovanna and her two younger sons to the home of a member every week for FHE. This week we went to the home of an older couple whose children are all grown and live in Peru. Their house isn't very big, but it doesn't need to be. The wife kept apologizing because "la nostra casa è piccola / our house is small", but it didn't even matter. One of my favorite things about doing FHE with different members every week is that Giovanna has been sharing her testimony of prayer and meeting the sisters and the Book of Mormon with each family every time we go. As she was sharing her testimony about prayer, she said "la mia casa è piccola, come la vostra, ma c'è tanto spazio per pregare / my house is small, like yours, but there's lots of room to pray". I was reading in Mosiah this morning about how the Lamanites wouldn't let the people of Alma pray. This is what it says:
"10 And it came to pass that so great were their afflictions that they began to cry mightily to God.
11 And Amulon commanded them that they should stop their cries; and he put guards over them to watch them, that whosoever should be found calling upon God should be put to death.
12 And Alma and his people did not raise their voices to the Lord their God, but did pour out their hearts to him; and he did know the thoughts of their hearts."
There are absolutely, positively NO LIMITATIONS to prayer. Even if there isn't room to stand, you can kneel. Even if you can't open your mouth, you can open your heart.
Anyway, outta time again! I'll try to improve this week in trying to write down beforehand what I want to say so that my emails are a little bit more structured...I think I need that in my life right now. Sheesh. Alrighty, well, I love you all! Be good! Pray for the missionaries in YOUR ward!
LOVE,
Sorella SOH
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