Email from August 28, 2013

Hey family, 

If you send a package to where I live, I still have to pay the fee. But then I could pay it and that might be better. I am not sure. I am pretty much the same size as I was when I left the house. Maybe a medium or maybe a small, I do not know (But I want to wait to give you my address, until we know what is happening the next week). 

Today we went to a funeral in the morning. A less active of the church Died. The ceremony was held in a catholic church. I am so glad to be a Mormon. It was so completely strange. The memorized prayers, the wailing of the people. I did not know that they believed that their loved ones remain sleeping until the resurrection. I just felt really bad for his daughter. She was baptized a year ago and she is 11 years old. I just hope this does not bring them even further away from the church. 

For you: D was having a hard time living the word of wisdom. We taught D the other day about fasting and D said that D will fasting for help with the word of wisdom. So this Saturday with one of our members we are doing a fast together. We said we might have to change D's baptism date and D became really said. The member called us after the lesson and said that D did not want to change his date, he really wants to make it. We told him that he had two weeks up until his baptism and that he needs to come to church and he needs to stop smoking and he is trying everything. We are working with a lot of potentials that could have the priesthood someday and we are so excited!! We started teaching these two 16 year old boys. I did a split with a member and my companions went to teach G.  It was weird not being with my companions. Lately we have been in contact with people that we taught at least a month ago and they are showing interest again. 

The work in Savona is going well! 

Sorella Bringas Speaks Spanish, Italian, french and a little bit of English. She is trying to help me with my Spanish, but we have not had a lot of time to practice. 

I love you all and I hope that your week will go well. 

Love, 

Ali 

Sorella Pace, Sorella Hanson, Sorella Bringas

Email from August 21, 2013

Hello,

Parker got into an accident. Was it his fault? 

Last Wednesday after we exited the internet point it was pouring. We had no umbrellas because it had been sunny an hour ago. We needed to go shopping still so we decided to go to the grocery store and hopefully after it would be sunny. We started our 15 minute run or so in the rain to the store. There were flash waves and everywhere was covered in water. The puddles went up to our ankles. While we were running this car passed and a wave of water from the street drenches me. It was pretty funny. We had to wring out our clothes in the bathroom at IPERCOOP with our hands. The beginning part of the store there was so much water inside. The water was so high it had gone inside the building. After we finished shopping the rain was gone and we were still soaked. 

I will try that remedy for sleeping. Last week I finally found oatmeal in one of the store. I had not seen it. It probably was there, but I was a little blind. I have been kind of lazy lately and have been wearing my glasses for the past two months. I will blame it on that. :) 

Random side note: Did I tell you how much I miss carpet? Because everywhere is tile or wood. I do not know if anyone in Italy has carpet. Lately here in Savona there seems to be a lot of power outages. We had one the other night right as we were going to bed. I hope we do not have them in the night, the fan is my life at night. We have two fans that we use as air conditioning in our apartment and they save us from the heat at night. 

We taught one of our investigators about the temple the other day and that investigator loved it. The investigator said that it makes sense. It was actually really cool (i forgot what letter this investigator was, I will have list the next time and I will remember).  I do not know if there is a letter g but so we are teaching someone new. And G came to church. G loved church and said that G is looking to be closer to God. And I would like to tell you about how we met G. Sorella Pace and I were doing a pass by and we saw G waiting for the bus; so we gave G a pass along card, bore testimony and headed off. We felt we should turn around and we started talking and got G info and set up a time to pass by. We had the first appointment and then we could not see G for about a month. We saw G and then G came to church. G told a member that when we turned back to see G it was like we were two angels sent from God to G. G said that G was in need at that point for help. 

Well that was what I could think about. I love you all, yes I received the slip and the shirt. And I hope that you all have a wonderful week. I loved the photos. Sorry I have not taken any new photos. I need too. 

Love, 

Ali 

Email from August 14, 2013

Hello,

We can only visit areas in our Zone, that are not to far away on P-day. Normally we try and find different things to do here, but sometimes we are just tired. And need a little bit of sleep. So it just depends, sometimes we go out and see the city a little bit more. But Savona is small. 

The world is really small. That is kind of funny. I feel like you are finding more connections than humanly possible. And there probably will be more. 

Well this week has been interesting. D is doing good. We commited another to baptism, after 8 weeks of trying he has a baptism date.

We do two hours of knocking doors and talking to people on the street. Normally we hope to have appointments, but everyday has a bit of finding in it.  We love referrals. It is now getting to the point where we have definitely seen the same people over again. Do not worry I have hope at least someone will have a conversation with us and accept our message.

Dad did you ever find on the mission as the longer you were out the hard it is to sleep because your mind just does not shut down. It just keeps of thinking of everything you need to do? 

Well I love you all and I am glad that your week went well love you, 

Alison 

Incredible coincidence

 

This weekend we have a sister from Miami staying with us.  She is participating in the Single Adult conference here in Orlando.  When she arrived yesterday, I told her she would be staying in my daughter Alison's room and that Alison was serving in Milan, Italy.  She said she had been in Italy this past May and that in Verona she met Sorella Gomez and Sorella Bush.  I told her that Sorella Gomez had been Alison's companion!  She said that when she started talking to
Sorella Gomez they realized that she had served with Sorella Gomez' cousin when she served her mission in Riverside, California! What a coincidence! She texted me the picture she took in Verona. She gave some cookies she bought in Cinque Terre, a place that she visited. I told her that Alison had been there and that she had just sent me pictures of it (see previous post).

 

Sorella Bush, Sorella Gomez and Candace

Email from August 7, 2013

Hello family,

So today Sorella Bringas will be with us again. So we will be in three. Can I just say it still cracks me up that you look at everyone else's blogs. 

We found a few people that were interested. And when we went to our appointments that we had set up a week ago we found that the investigators actually did show up. D committed to follow the word of wisdom. We found this lady yesterday and she had told her friend that she wanted to die. And then we met her and she said that we had made her feel better and then she asked us if we could meet with her again. We did not have to ask. I am glad we were in the right place at the right time. 

Yes my companion and I cleaned up a tank. It was like a pool on land. We had buckets of soapy water and went to work. I think in the end it took an hour and a half. It had a decent amount of water in it that we had to empty out with pots (yes like the ones you use in the kitchen). We had quite a bit of fun. 

I have a funny story that happened yesterday. We got our bikes fixed and were able to us them again. And we decided to go up to this little town. We thought it would only take 20 minutes in bike. Well I guess we were off by a long shot. We start off on our journey.  We make it past the first 15 minutes and we were not there. Then the road started turning into a mountain trail. After 10 minutes it started getting harder so we needed to stop. Five minutes after we decided to pull over we knocked on someones house to find the town. This random old lady let us into her house. And she was so sweet, we had a little lesson with her, but she was not interested and she told us where to go. So we went out for about 15 minutes and made it to the city, there is no one outside. So we find this wood shop that is open and ask these men if they know the address. Turns out that we went to the wrong city. There are two cities that are almost spelled identically and we had thought wrong. So we just went down the mountain. 

Anyway our week has been quite interesting. I love you all and hope everything will continue to go well. 

Love, 

I do not know if I have sent you these photos but here they are. 

These are the pictures of Cinque terre

 

Sister Pace and Brother and Sister Hawk

Email from July 31, 2013

So just so you know I had to buy a new bag because my side bag broke and we are not allowed to use book bags. 

So it is hot, but  I guess it really just does not bother me. And maybe I am used to it. I will thank Florida for all my years there. There is a little stream from the mountains and it is completely dry and has been for about the last month and a half. But I do not know, I like the sun. I am getting darker. I would say that it is about 32 degrees Celsius. But I am right by the ocean, so we get the ocean breeze and it is not that hot. They say that there are two weeks in august that are bad or unbearable but we will see when we get there. 

In Savona there is only the branch. There were the senior coppia with us, but they are closing that apartment and we are not getting another coppia. The branch most Sundays we are 25 to 30 people. But this Sunday there was a little more.

D came to church!!! And D is doing great. D accepted a baptism date. And is reading a lot. So there is a lot of progression. E came to church on Sunday and liked it. 

We taught for the first time Gospel Principles class. It is so different teaching in Italian. I did not realize how much I love talking until this week. Or more the last half of the week. I just feel this urge to continue to talk, even to myself. I remember my last companion telling how sometimes I would just talk to talk about nothing. 

I remember mom telling me that they were there and when they are leaving, but I like that part about the princess. Haha she is funny. 

I do not need anything. Do not worry. If I did I would tell you. But anything I can find I have that here. 

I want to tell you about this cool experience that happened the other day. We were going to an appointment and it was cancelled. So we sat in the park for a few minutes and then this lady passed by us and asked if she could sit by us. We said yes but she could not hear us and asked again and then we said us. She sat down and said would you like one (pointing to this bag of faccacia) . We said sure and it was good. She said oh you are not Italians and we were like no. We started talking about who we were and why we are here. She said the only reason I wanted to sit by you is because I could tell you were good people. You see all the young people smoking, but there was something different about you. I could tell by your eyes. It was nice. (I am not sure if I told you that story before).

Well I hope you guys have a wonderful day. Love you 

Ali 

Alison's zone with their new mission president.  President Dibb and his wife.

Email from July 24, 2013

Hello Family, 

So I am staying in Savona another transfer with sorella Pace and then in two weeks sorella Bringas will be back with us. So yeah transfers are this week, but nothing is happening so we are good. We ended up not going to Florence, but she went straight from Florence to Madrid.

So we still do not have a branch president and someone told us the we would not get one until October. I could be wrong but that is what I heard. It is a little hard because we have not had ward council ever and we have only had one meeting with our ward mission leader. But we can only go up. So when ever we do finding now we think that this man could be the next new president. Because we are in need of priesthood holders.

We have been having miracles like crazy! We met a man the other day. Let's call him D. He had met the missionaries a couple years ago and they had left him a book of Mormon. We met with him the other day and he was like I could not find my book of Mormon and he was saying how this was interesting to him. But he is going to read the book of Mormon and continue meeting with us. I will tell you how it goes. Now I will tell you about E she is awesome (a member referral from one of our awesome members, who does everything for us) and she is truly trying to find the truth. We have been seeing her for about a month now. She is reading and it is just amazing. Anyway, lately we have just been blessed with wonderful people to teach.

I forgot to answer a question from last week. You asked me if I hear from anyone that I baptized. And I hear from Jeremy. I do not have the right email address to Kevin and Vivian, so I am trying to work on getting their info. I have a girl who was less active that I was working with who now lives in America who was reactivated who write me. She went through the temple a couple weeks ago to do baptisms and now she is getting her patriarchal blessing.

Anyways I am trying to think of more, sorry I really am bad at remembering more. But I love you all and hope you all have a wonderful day. 

love 

Ali