Letter #11 - 11/27/13

Hi Family!

We had to go to the Questura in Florence early today to get my permesso to stay in the country so we are early for email today.  They had to take my fingerprints and everything, it was super exciting and it lasts for year, so I will be back there in a year to check back in.

This week has been so good here in Montevarchi. We had 5 investigators in church on Sunday which was literally a miracle. We were so happy. Two of them have baptismal dates and another one decided she wanted to be baptized while she was sitting in Sacrament meeting! She is super awesome. Then after church our branch had a big lunch together and everyone was talking and getting to know the investigators and it was just super awesome. They have made some friends and really love church which is so important.

Oh and so here there are not a lot of youth in the church and the few they have live really far away from each other so they have to do seminary each morning over Skype. Ask Abbi how she feels about that haha, I thought she might like the idea of that.

It is freeeeeeezing here now. This week it seriously got so cold. It is crazy. Last night I literally slept in my big winter coat with my hat, gloves and mittens and scarf on. It was hilarious, haha, but so worth it. Sorella Lopez was sick for a few days this week so I got to do a lot of studying in the morning. I finished the entire D&C! haha. It has tried to snow a couple times but not enough to stick. I wear my big coat mom got me from Nordstrom with layers underneath, my hat, my gloves with mittens overtop and then those really thick under armor tights with the tall black boots.

We are moving apartments but are staying in our area and city; they just want us to move into the apartment they got for the Elders because they think it is a little safer for us because it is on the fourth floor instead of the first. So that will be fun! Yayyyy moving again, haha, but we are so excited to have Elders in our area now. It will help so much.

Okay quick funny story, on Sunday night we were in a super amazing lesson and we just couldn’t leave. It was just such a good lesson. So when it was over, we ran to the train station afterwards but ended up missing our train and the next one didn’t leave for another hour and 15 minutes – we weren’t leaving Arezzo until 10:07pm which meant we wouldn’t get home until right before 11. We are supposed to be in every night by 9 and asleep by 1030, haha, soooo we had to call our mission president and explain to him why we weren’t going to be home on time that night. Always fun. So we called him and were like "hi president! How are you? So we have a miracle to tell you and also a problem. Which one do you want to hear first?" haha, he was really nice about it and loved our miracle story about our lesson. He is super awesome.

We do mostly train contacting for finding and it is fun. We went to an art museum this week – see the picture below.  I really loved it – Europe is really one big, fantastic museum.  I have lots of food! Sorella Lopez really likes the fruit leather you sent me, so I share those with her a lot. I am craving Ritz chicken right now, haha, but I can have that when I get home ;) haha Sorella Lopez introduced me to rice milk and it really isn’t that bad! And one of our members makes this really good chicken and rice curry thing that I really like, it is so good. Italian hot chocolate is super weird, it is really, really thick, so no where near as good as Mom’s. We drink pear juice here, it is really quite good. I eat this generic brand of SpecialK every morning with rice milk, because the normal milk here is weird and super fattening. 

Well I Hope you have an amazing Thanksgiving! They don’t celebrate it here but I will definitely be thinking about you and everything for which I am grateful! Eat some chocolate cream pie for me :) I am so grateful for my family, thank you for everything! Love you so much! Happy Thanksgiving! :)

Sorella Alli