December 3, 2008

Hello!

How are you all doing? How was Thanksgiving? Ours was really good! We ate dinner as a district at the church. The elders cooked, and it actually turned out pretty well. Except that they bought chicken, thinking it was turkey. We informed them that it was in fact chicken, and they had no idea! We were in charge of dessert. We made apple cobbler, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, and pumpkin pie from scratch. And when I say from scratch, I mean we had to cut up pieces of pumpkin and boil it, then put it into a blender. It was a fun adventure! And our oven doesn't have a temperature guage on it, you just have to kind of guess and hope it doesn't burn.Today for pday we are just running around town trying to get stuff done. We went shopping this morning and bought some warm clothes, which I'm really excited about! It's getting cold here! We also printed pictures, which I'll send you today. After this we're grocery shopping, and then hanging out at home to get some rest. Grocery shopping here is so fun! At the store we go to, they have these little things that look kind of like remote controls, but they scan all the items. You scan everything as you go throughout the store, and then when you're done, you just take the machine up to the cash register and pay. It's super fast and really fun to scan stuff!When Kyle did baptisms the other day, did he do grandpa White's name? Also, my trainer is in the conference ensign on page 6, which you should look at! It's pretty cool!The work here continues to go well! The branch is awesome. We're starting a family home evening at the church every Wednesday night for investigators and families to come to. We're going to have a lesson and treats and play games. It will be really fun and a lot of investigators have expressed interest in coming. We're also planning a Christmas party! Our branch is doing a challenge in the month of December, and I would like to challenge my family to do it also. It is to give a Book of Mormon to someone this month. We came up with 5 steps to do. First, come up with an objective, or why you want to give away a Book of Mormon. Then prayerfully brainstorm who you would like to give it to. Then prayerfully select one person, and come up with a specific plan on how you would like to give it to them. Like if you want to invite them over for dinner with the missionaries, family home evening, or whatever. Then give it to them! The missionaries are going around to all the active families in the branch (which is about 8) and giving them a copy of the Book of Mormon and The Nativity DVD to give out. So I would like to challenge you to do that also.Last week we went to visit with Judy, a less active member in our branch. We visited her a couple weeks ago, and she's wonderful! She went on a mission, but then married a non member and stopped going to church. She came last week, though! And she told us that after we came last time, she has been praying and reading the Book of Mormon again. She's so great and I'm so happy for her!We also met an "investigator" family, who are more like friends of the missionaries than actually investigators, but they are awesome! They're from Napoli, and I have never seen a more animated, loud family in my life! It's like the family on My Big Fat Greek Wedding times 10, and it's only 5 people creating that much chaos! They are so wonderful! The people from Napoli are very welcoming and friendly, and they kept offering us food and drinks, and things to take home with us. I love them!Saturday night was a crazy night. It was pouring down rain! And when it rains here, it really rains! The streets turn into rivers and the wind gets blowing so hard that your umbrella doesn't even work that well, because rain is coming at you from all directions. So we were trying to find this house, but the map was way wrong! It had the street we were trying to find on a completely wrong section of town, but we didn't know that, so we were wandering through this neighborhood trying to find the house. And then my companion's umbrella broke. All the wires were pointing in different directions. We were both trying to fit under mine, but ended up getting drenched. Then we got lost again, and ended up wandering through this muddy road. It was so much fun, though! It really is true that the more I forget myself and get lost in the work, the happier I am. It could have been such a miserable experience for both of us, but instead we chose to laugh about it and enjoy it. We made some nice warm hot chocolate when we got home that night. By the way, the hot chocolate in Italy is amazing!The other day we were doing house, and 2 little old ladies were watching us at the citofono (the intercom type thing at the front of each palazzo). They kept poking their heads out the window, and were obviously wondering what we were doing. As soon as we would look in their direction, they would duck behind the window, and slowly poke their heads back up again. They watched us for a good 20 minutes before we were done. It was really funny.Also doing house in the same area, I saw a cocker spaniel with a mullet! It was gross. He had long ears, which were cute, but then the top of his head was spiky and it seriously looked like a mullet. Never cut Gizmo's hair like that!We met with Joanna yesterday. She's still progressing and doing great! Sister Margheritti, the branch president's wife came with us. She's a convert herself, and I think it really helped Joanna to hear her conversion story. It was a really great experience! Joanna is amazing! We're meeting with her again this weekend. She still hasn't received an answer, but she keeps trying and hasn't given up. The Margheritti family is also amazing. We're going over to their house for dinner on Friday, and I'm excited. They have one daughter, who's 17 and super cute, and a cute puppy! I don't remember if I already told you this, but they don't have a car, because instead they save up money to be able to go to the temple once a year. Such an amazing sacrifice. The temple in Rome will be such a blessing to them.We got a call from this girl the other day, who wants to meet with us! She called us from out of the blue. She has a friend who comes to english class and got our number from them. It was so cool to actually have someone call us for a change! Then we were looking through the area book that night, and found out that this same girl took the lessons 2 years ago, but wasn't ready at the time. But now she's the one calling us, so we're really excited to meet with her!Another cool story. We were on our way to an appointment, and when we got there, the investigator was confused about what time the appointment was. We thought it was in the morning, but she thought it was in the afternoon, so she asked if we could come back that afternoon. We were on the bus back home, and we met a wonderful lady! We talked to her for a little while and she asked if we could talk more later. She gave us her number, and we're meeting with her this week. It's so amazing how the Lord puts us exactly where we need to be!I love you all so much! I hope you're all doing well. You're always in my prayers and hope you feel my love for you. I know I feel your love for me and your prayers.

Vi voglio bene!

Sorella Hawkey