Letter 7 - 10/29/13

Hi Famiglia! How are you? Well I survived another week here! It was really good and we made some progress with some of our investigators. They are all really, really awesome, it’s just so hard to get them to church because it is so far away for them. My companion and I are over 5 cities in our area. Our Branch is super small, we have about 15-20 active members and we meet in the basement of a hotel in one of our cities called Incisa. It is super expensive for people to get to church because a lot of them don’t have a car and don’t live in Incisa so they would have to pay for the train in order to come. So that is what we are struggling with right now. The cities we are over are San Giovanni, Figline, Incisa, Arezzo and Montevarchi. The furthest from us is Arezzo and it is an hour train ride away. But it’s through the hills of Tuscany so it’s absolutely beautiful. Our branch president is awesome. He is super supportive of missionary work and is trying so hard to help us. We just love him. Our branch is called The Montevarchi Branch. So this week I tried gelato for the first time and turns out everyone was right, it is amazing. Sooo good. We have a little bit of a mosquito problem in our apartment and I woke up the other day and my eye was completely swollen. I must have gotten bitten on the eye in my sleep. haha classic. It was awesome, but it’s all better now so it’s all good. I have gotten so good at killing them though. I can literally see it on the wall and hit it with my shoe and it’s dead - pretty impressive actually. My companion can catch them in the air with her hand. We make a good team. haha. We are still living in Florence, no word on when our apartment in San Giovanni will be fixed, but we are totally fine with that because we love the other sorelle we are living with in Florence. We taught a lady that lives up on the top of this hill outside of the city the other day and when we came out of the lesson the sun was setting and it was literally one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen; you could just see all of Tuscany and the houses and the hills and it was just so pretty. And then we stopped to visit one of our investigators in Incisa on our way home before the train came and we literally had to run to catch the train to get home. It was so funny, we were booking it because if we missed the train we would have been stuck for at least like 40 minutes in Incisa and been late getting home. Since some of our cities are pretty small trains don’t go in and out too often so we have to really plan it out and check the train schedule. I am sending your letter out tomorrow so you should get it next week! and I haven’t got your package yet but we have training tomorrow so I might get it then. Thank you so much! :) I think that is it for this week. I love being a missionary. It is so hard but so rewarding. I am learning so much and have so much more to learn. I don’t know Italian super well so I am learning to rely on the Spirit more than ever before. Our investigators are progressing; we just have to get them to church. Thanks for everything you do for me, I love and miss you!

Sorella Alli

 

View from our apartment in Florence.

 

 

My bedroom and bed.