Letter #53 - 9/16/14

Ciao Famiglia!

How are you all?? Mom, how was your birthday?? :) Well this week has been nuts here in Ravenna.

One of our branch members passed away after being in the hospital for 104 days, so we had his funeral last Saturday. It was a really peaceful day; he suffered for a really long time and was 80 something years old, I believe. But I played the piano at the funeral and we did it in our little church building and then went to the cemetery. The cemeteries here are so different; all the tombstones are huge, literally like little houses. So crazy.

And then also the mom of another one of our branch members passed away this week so we went to her funeral in a Catholic church on Monday morning before district meeting. She was older as well and had been sick for quite some time; it was a really peaceful service for her as well. It was really cool to see all of our members really coming together to support each other. I just love this little branch with all my heart. Good thing I’m here for 6 more weeks :) also.

Guess what? Sorella Jarvis is getting transferred to Rimini! So she is going to be my sister training leader for the last 6 weeks of her mission!!!!! I’M sooooooooo excited! ahhh I love her so much - so that will be fun :)

Also, scary story form the week... remind me to tell you that one when I get home mom ;) haha

But yeah we are doing well :) Sorella Nilsen and I are excited we get to stay together for 6 more weeks :) We just love each other, it’s great. The other day I climbed out of the bathroom window to get on the balcony and scare her from the kitchen window, it was priceless, haha so much fun. My daughter is such a good sport for putting up with me ;) haha.

Also we are starting up our English class again next week so we have been doing a TON of publicity for that and have seen so much success. We are so excited for it to restart, like literally one lady we went up to give her a flyer threw down her cigarette (big deal) and jumped up and hugged us she was so excited. She said it was a birthday gift from God that we were teaching a free English class, haha, so yeah, it’s going to be fantastic. can’t wait.

Also, yesterday I saw one of the biggest miracles so far on the mission. Sorella Nilsen and I were having a little bit of a tough day and just weren’t feeling too good, and our appointments cancelled, and we just had literally an entire day of finding. So we were just feeling super discouraged and just felt really alone and like no one really cared. As the end of the night came along and we were doing casa and getting rejected house after house, our phone randomly rang and it was our branch mission leader - literally one of my favorite people in the whole world. So I answered and he was like Ciao Sorella! Can you be at the church by 7pm? and we were like of course, we will be there, thinking he wanted to have correlation or something, - he said okay perfect – meet you there, I have something for you. And we were like okay so we got on our bikes and rode over to the church, having no idea what to expect. So we get there and wait a couple minutes and then in comes our branch mission leader with a huge smile on his face carrying...a bag of chicken. Literally, a big rotisserie chicken. He shook our hands, and handed it over to us and told us he got us some pollo. We were just kind of shocked, haha, he said he bought two and thought he should give us one. Then he shook our hands again and told us to have a great night and left just like that. It was so crazy. He just randomly brought us a chicken, on the day we were struggling the most and feeling so useless. Fratello Pogg brought us a chicken. It was like in 17 miracles when that lady doesn’t know how she’s going to keep going and then a pie appeared. Such a huge miracle. We knew that Heavenly Father was watching over us and heard our prayers. He sent us Fratello Pogg and the chicken so that we would know that everything was going to be okay and that he is aware of us. The miracle of the chicken, I will never forget it.

Hope all is well! Love and miss you so much! I hope you have a fun week with Grandma and Grandpa!

Vi voglio bene! (I love you!)

Sorella Yost