Week 46 - Broken Screen

by Unknown 9:00 PM 0 comments

Visiting Lucca, Italy

The new president and his wife gave us a slideshow presentation of their lives at zone conference and they definitely come from an adventurous background! President Allen is really optimistic, talks a lot about love (a principle I think we need more of), and has a super strong testimony of our Savior. I'm definitely really stoked to see how he shakes up the mission. Interesting fact: our mission is being dominated by sisters and for this upcoming transfer, there will only be 2 normal companionships of sisters (the rest will be sister training leaders, bottle breaking, or training)! It's a little funny seeing him and Sister Allen interact because they are a lot more publicly affectionate than President and Sister Dibb! ;p 

And oh, as for the England wanting to leave European Union, we heard a little bit about it at English class and that's about it. I'm not sure if it's because it's what people are focused on or because it's a lot easier to bring up when talking about God, but I've been hearing about all the bombings and terrorist attacks from people we meet on the street.

In other news, we found a cool couple named Riccardo and Francesca this past week after going to a member's house and having them pray for an area where we can do finding work! :) The only problem is that they live in a ritzy area of Livorno and the only way to get to their house is by passing a really popular Livorno beach with lots of sketchily dressed people walking around at our viewing disclosure. So, it's going to be a battle making our way to their house for our next appointment! 

Furthermore, we all know that dumb things happen and this week, a particularly dumb thing happened to me. My iPad has been my little baby thus far in my mission and earlier this week, my baby's crib (my iPad case) came tumbling to the ground and my baby got hurt. Yes, I cracked my iPad screen! It was a pretty sad moment because it totally could've been avoided if my hands hadn't been so slippery! But, even though this dumb, expensive thing happened to me, it's always easy to put life in perspective here on the mission!

This past week, at our African family home evening, we had a little sharing time where we asked people to share stories about how they've seen the hand of God in their lives. We had three new investigators at this family home evening that have only been in Italy for a month and they shared some really fresh stories from their journey to Italy. I am 100% the general news does not fully understand what's going on over there in parts of Nigeria/Libya, but there's some really messed up things happening. However, despite the evil, these men have all had some powerful God-sent experiences. When I hear their stories I can rationally draw two mental conclusions, one, I am stupid if I'm complaining over a broken iPad screen considering the absolute HECK that is going on in Africa. And two, we live in a period of miracles. People can deny the existence of God or they can just talk to some men living in Italy that have come from Nigeria.