Sorella Williams: Roccastrada, Poggibonsi & San Gimignano

Buona Mercoledì tutti

     It's been a good and busy week! We met with Paul and Sonia again and taught them the Plan of Salvation. They asked great questions and want to continue meeting with us so we are excited about that. It was funny, we had this spiritual moment and then Rowe said the closing prayer and as she is praying the janitor of the train station comes through our little huddled circle on the benches and decides that now is a good time to start sweeping right in between us hahaha it was so awkward. We had a good laugh about that one.

     We also went to Roccastrada to teach Doris (Eunice wasn't available) and it was great! We had extra time before the bus so we walked around the town a little bit which was the best decision ever because that town is BEAUTIFUL. Best part is that it is in the middle of nowhere. A lot of Italians don't know it exists much less tourists so everyone was staring at us like "what are these Americans doing here". That whole town knows each other so windows and doors are always open with people conversing across the little rock streets to one another.

     Saturday we had an appointment with Tina, but she stood us up, wow Tina come on, but it turned out to be good because as we were walking back to the bus we ran into Irma!! It's so hard to teach her because her job is around the clock so she never has time to meet with us. She had a couple free minutes and we taught her about baptism. We invited her to be baptized on the 21st of May and she accepted! She missed church though because she had to work so we will push it back to the 28th, but that's only if she can come to church with us so we are really praying for her.

We taught Maria and the Natale's in Poggibonsi and both went really well. We were walking on the train platform about to hop on when we heard the whistle blow 10 minutes early so we walked quickly to get on (we were only a couple feet from the train door) when all the sudden the doors started to close!!!! Sorella Rowe threw herself in between the doors and I ran behind her and started to push her in all while I managed to get one leg and arm in myself. It was an automatic door so there were no levers to keep the door open. We were both screaming and freaking out because we thought those were our last minutes on earth. She finally popped in and started to pull me as hard as she could, but the doors were clamped around my waist and purse!! Just as the train started to move she pulled the door as hard as she could and I went flying into the train onto the floor. Once we realized we were OK we started laughing and couldn't stop the whole ride home. I took a couple minutes to compose myself on the floor before I stood up. It's always a good time with the Siena train. I still have the bruises.

Sunday was awesome because Eunice, Adriano, and the kids all came to church!! There was a mom and a daughter in church that day too from Washington on vacation in Italy. The daughter had just gotten back from her mission in California so we asked if they wanted to help teach gospel principles class to Eunice's family with us. It went really well and I'm excited to see Eunice this week so we can get a new baptism date with her and make sure we are still working towards that goal. I love Eunice she is the best.

Monday we finally got to meet Kelly, who is one of the Anzianis investigators they gave to us when they left. Kelly has two cousins who moved to Utah for school and were converted into the church so he knows about the church. It is honestly so crazy that of all the people for the Anziani to have gone up to in the park that day, they went up to Kelly. We taught him the restoration and he really wants to learn more. We are really excited only we have no idea how he is going to get to church (story of our lives) because he doesn't have a car and the buses don't run on Sunday mornings and the rest of the people in our branch who have a car already are picking up the rest of the branch members. So I'm really worried about that. It's so hard when you have people who really want to come to church, but just don't have the means of getting there. That is our biggest struggle right now.

Yesterday we met with Jennifer in the morning. It's hard to know exactly if she has us over because she wants to progress in the gospel or if it's just for Bible study. We reminded her our purpose and told her that as missionaries, we can spend all day teaching about what we know is true, but it doesn't mean anything unless she asks our father in heaven if it's true and receive a conformation of it for herself. She said she doesn't want to pray for anything specific right now because she isn't spiritually where she should be. I then bore my testimony to her that if I waited until I thought I was spiritually where I needed to be in order to receive God's blessings, I certainly wouldn't be here with her in Italy. As a missionary I'm probably the most spiritually sound I have ever been in my life and yet still I do not come close to where I think I should be or feel deserving of God answering my prayers. God does not care what you are doing, who you are what you have done or how lost you feel, he wants to hear from you. And he will answer you. And if you don't think so, try Him.

Later we took a bus to San Gimignano for a little fun. Today is our P day, but we had to schedule appointments for the whole day so we just took our p day yesterday for the afternoon. We had heard from others in the branch that San Gimignano was a super ancient city, we had no idea it was the worlds biggest tourist spot EVER. I haven't heard that much English being spoken in months it was weird! The city sits on this giant hill with a big defense stone wall around it with a beautiful view of Toscana. I had celestial gelato and all was well.

Sperro che tutti voi abbiate una buona settimana

con AMORE Sorella Williams