C-N-ah

Ciaooooo!!!!

WE'RE IN SIENA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So much has happened in the past week I don't even know where to start. Let me get some things out of the way first, though. One, thanks mom and dad and nana for the letters you wrote! I got them at zone conference last Friday. Nana, I met the Calls! I didn't really talk with them a ton, though, because we were at church and I was too busy talking with the branch members. BUT, I did meet them, so that was cool.

Also, mom, when I saw Slla Jones at the transfer circle two weeks ago she gave me 20 bucks...she said YOU had sent it to her so that she could send ME all the birthday cards that got sent to Savona. Haha. You are so cute! In reality she just put them all in zone mail and so it didn't cost her anything.

Uh, what else...oh, as for a package, Slla Nilson and I came up with a few ideas ;) other than lucky charms (oh man I LOVE lucky charms!!!), more peanut butter because I'm almost all out (just regular red creamy...my mission has stripped me of all of my pickiness/peculiarities...almost), syrup for pancakes! and fruit snacks. Oh man, making that list is making me so hungry...

And dad, Slla Nilson is dead set on us having a ward party luau. I think it's a little tacky, but in all honesty, I think the members would absolutely love it. I still have those hawaiian music CDs, but if you have any advice/suggestions about little luau things that the members here might like, I would willingly accept them. Slla N and I also decided that we want to send all of the members here Christmas cards with a picture of us in it...we'll see how that goes! We have all kinds of crazy ideas that we want to put into practice.

But enough about those things, let's talk about SIENA!!!! Well, we got here on Wednesday...and spent the rest of the week CLEANING. We lost two full days of work and then some because we were cleaning our apartment. The Elders left it pretty neat, but ohmyheavens it was filthy. There were tiny bugs crawling all over in the food cabinet, in the flour and in the food. The cabinet was on top of the fridge (which was purchased 2 weeks ago), but under the cabinet and on top of the fridge there were those tiny bugs EVERYWHERE, in the folds of the rubber sealing on the door of the fridge and even FROZEN INTO THE ICE IN THE FRIDGE. Anything we moved had giant, half-dollar sized spiders living there, and as Slla N was pulling BoMs off the shelf, silverfish started running out in every direction. Every 5 min or so I would hear her say "OH MY GOSH, SORELLA!!!!!!". It was pretty gross. I killed more spiders last week than I've ever killed in my entire life. We destroyed and threw out our couch, and as we did so, bugs, spiders and more silverfish started running everywhere. Our apartment was a bug-killing war zone. We couldn't even stand to eat in our own apartment. It was bad. Really bad. The senior couples that were down helping us were just disgusted. They helped us move old stuff out and then they went to IKEA and got us a bunch of new stuff - chairs, cabinets, dressers, light fixtures - the whole lot. Our apartment looks really nice now, actually, and best of all - IT'S CLEAN! I feel like if any of the mothers of the Elders who have lived in that apartment the past year could've seen the state of their apartment, they would've had a heart attack. I mean, I'm not even that picky about cleanliness and I was just appalled. It was bad.

So! Basically Sunday was our first time out in the Italian-speaking world for more than 2 minutes! We went to church and Anz Capece was sustained as the new branch president. It was cool. And we as the new sorelle got to bear our testimonies. Guess what? THEY REMEMBERED ME!!!!!!!! I couldn't believe it!!! They were like, "what are YOU doing here ???" They totally recognized me and knew who I was. It was SO COOL! They remembered that I had gotten up to give my testimony while I was there as a student. They were like "yeah, you were the one that got up there and said 'ALOHA!!!'" It was so awesome. Slla N and I were like on the brink of tears while we were up there bearing our testimonies, and I saw at least two of the members wipe tears from their eyes while I was up at the pulpit. It was the coolest thing of all time. I have never been more conscious of the Lord's hand in planning my entire life. So cool.

There are two sisters that are new converts here in Siena, and their story is incredible. One of them got baptized last November, and the other got baptized in April. The older sister, Lorena, told us about how she met the missionaries. One day she was sitting at the bus stop waiting to take the bus home from Siena, and the Elders came up and started talking to her. She was tired and not really interested, but she had read "Gesù Cristo" on their nametags and that caught her eye. She was raised in a Muslim environment (she's Albanian and has ice-blue eyes). Anyway, her bus comes, so all the Elders can do is give her a pass along card. A few days later, the Elders get a call from the mission office saying that someone has requested free material from off the church website, and sure enough, it's Lorena. But get this, when she came to Italy seven years ago, she brought along a book in Italian that her dad just happened to have (they have no idea where he got it from because it's in Italian and they're in Albania). The name of this book? The Book of Mormon. Yeah. So she brings this book to Italy with her, hoping that maybe it'll help her practice her Italian even though she has no idea what it is. AND THEN she tells us (and this is the point where she started crying as she's relating her story back to us) that there were pictures in the front of this Italian book, and she had ripped out the picture of Christ that's in the front of the BoM and carried it with her wherever she went. When the Elders handed her the pass along card, guess which one they gave her? Oh, just the one that has THE SAME PICTURE OF JESUS on it. She goes home, looks at the picture of Jesus on the pass along card, then looks at her picture of Jesus that she pulled out of the BoM and just starts crying and crying and can't stop. And then she got baptized. THIS IS A TRUE STORY AND IT HAPPENED NOT EVEN A YEAR AGO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Incredible. I just can't even wait for more of the miracles that this city has.

Well, time is up. My testimony has really been strengthened lately about the the perfect sense that God's plan makes. It's awesome. Read about it. Check it out. Say your prayers and don't forget to pray for President Monson!!! I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!

Love from the BEST city in all of Italy,

Sorella Soh

p.s. I do have pictures to send! I just don't have a way to get them on the computer