Letter #68 - 12/30/14

Ciao Famiglia!

Sorry I have like basically no time today because we have to be in by 5pm for New Year’s Eve but here’s just a short email to say hi :) Skype was so fun last week and it was so good to see everyone! Sorry again about the chaos....just more memories right? ;)

And funny story, President Dibb let us watch one Disney movie each year on Christmas and we got to watch Finding Nemo courtesy of Anziano Hubbard and we were going to save it to watch when we got home at night but then we ended up getting home late and were so tired and I was totally fine after Skype and everything but then with the stress of getting home late and everything else that was going on, we started talking about watching Finding Nemo and when I realized I was so tired and wouldn’t even be able to keep myself awake to see Crush in the turtle part of the movie...I completely lost it and started crying, haha it was so funny. I was just crying I was so tired. I just kept telling Sorella Hawks I just wanted to see Nemo and the turtles. She was so supportive, haha we were so tired. It was crazy. So once i regained control of myself we got ready for bed super quick and put on Nemo and I fell asleep literally like 5 minutes into it. Like I’m talking right after Nemo’s mom dies, haha. It was so depressing. so yeah, that will probably be the first movie I watch when I get home, just a heads up. i want to see the turtles!!

Also I ate duck innards this week, and we had the most amazing Christmas ever. We made like 70 cookies and went out caroling and handing out cookies to investigators and a few less-actives on Christmas eve and Christmas and it was just so special and fun. Definitely a Christmas I will never forget.

Hope all is well back home and that you have a happy new year! Thanks for everything! I love and miss you all!

Buon nuovo anno! :)

Sorella Yost

Letter #67 - 12/23/14

Ciao Famiglia!

So today’s email is going to be super short because we are SKYPING tomorrow!!!!!! I’m soooooo excited :)

We acted out the nativity with a little family in our ward on Monday and it was super fun and super cute :) They loved it! We did it in honor of the Yost tradition to do it every year! And one of the little girls made me a homemade Christmas tree at school and its soooo cute. I didn’t find a cute nativity on our shopping trip to Luino, but i got a cute little one in Gallarate, it’s really small though but its super cute and Italian looking. I’ll send a picture of it next week! Oh and I got it really cheap since its right before Christmas and it was missing one little sheep so it was only 18 euro! So i thought that would make dad happy :) haha, Oh and the Siena Sorella slept over last night because of permesso problems so we all opened the last story (from the 12 days of Christmas) together this morning around the Christmas tree and drank Starbucks hot chocolate and we all loved it! It was so fun ::) so thank you mom!

I just wanted to send a little email about how amazing this Christmas has been for me. I feel like I have truly learned the true meaning of Christmas and why we celebrate such a momentous day. We are celebrating the beginning of something so great, something so grand, that is the life of our Savior Jesus Christ. It’s the day Heavenly Father let Him go and come down here to earth, fully aware of His earthly mission and fully aware of the price that was to be paid. It truly was the greatest gift of all and each year we have the opportunity and blessing of celebrating the hope and peace of the plan of happiness through our Christ the Lord. We have so much to be grateful for and so much to celebrate. That is the true meaning of Christmas. We are so blessed that we get to come together each year and celebrate it as a family and remember that because of this great Christmas gift, we can be together forever.

Christmas is about peace, and it’s about gratitude. Nothing else matters. It’s just our job to honor Christ and His unwavering gift to the world by striving to be more like Him and completely forget ourselves for the sake of all those around us, our brothers and sisters. All in all, we are really just giving back to Him what he has already given us. I’m so grateful for my mission and for the many opportunities I’ve had to come closer and to better know my Savior.

My mission has changed my life and I will be forever grateful for the chance to be here in Italy. I know my time is running short so I must make every day count while I can :) He truly is the gift.

Vi voglio benissimo e mi mancate tantissimo! ci vediamo domani! BUON NATALE!

Love,

Sorella Yost

Letter #66 - 12/16/14

Ciao Famiglia! :)

Hope all is well back home! Congrats Will on being ordained a deacon! That’s so awesome and you looked super classy with your Italian tie ;) glad you liked it!

This week has been super great. Literally full of miracles. Our investigator with a baptismal date is doing so well and literally so elect. We are so excited about him and his family. We teach them all together every Sunday and they are just one of the sweetest families every. We love them so much. It’s so crazy to think that we found them on our 21 lesson week at like 8 pm on Sunday night, trying to get our last few lessons for the week.

Sorella Hawks and I look back on our first few weeks here in Busto and how hard we were trying to figure out a brand new area and everything we were going through and we can see that the Lord was just preparing us to be blessed with such a huge miracle after the trail of our faith. We are so grateful for the situation we were put in because we had to solely depend on the Lord because we knew nothing, and because we did that he led us to exactly where we needed to be in the right moment. The hardest trials always bring forth the biggest miracles. I believe that with all my heart.

Also, this transfer I found out I’m going to be Sister training leader over Como now, as well as Lugano and Varese so that will be really fun :) I love all the Sorelle I work with so much, they are all such rock stars.

Also this week we got to experience sciopero...aka train and bus strikes. So yeah. That was fun. But we saw a huge miracle from it! We were waiting at the train station in Busto just looking up at the board with all the trains cancelled freaking out because we needed to get to Gallarate for our lesson with our bap date and his family. So Sorella Hawks and I went behind the corner and just said a little prayer that we would be able to get a train diretto to Varese and be able to get to Gallarate. When we finished the prayer the thought came to my mind that there was someone there we needed to meet. So we go back by the board and we noticed this woman that had been standing close by us before and we went over and started talking to her and she invited us to sit down by her. So we did and she asked us to say a prayer with her that the train to Varese wouldn’t get cancelled because she really needed to get home. So I said a prayer and then we talked with her for a couple seconds and then all of a sudden... the only train to Varese that hadn’t been cancelled yet...was cancelled. My heart just sank. And so I just started praying and asking Heavenly Father to show this woman the power of prayer and help her get a train. I didn’t want her to lose her faith because the train got cancelled. Then all of a sudden...a different train that had earlier been cancelled automatically came back up. Saying that instead it was now just going to be 15 minutes late instead of cancelled, aka it would be there in about 10 minutes!!!! I looked at the lady and she looked at me and was like: 'Hey! it’s because of your prayer!' and she was like 'wow...this one’s going to come.' And i just smiled and looked at her and was like' yea, this one’s going to come' :) and it did. We rode the train together and as we were sitting by here the three of us said another prayer together of gratitude and it was so awesome. Then this lady realizes that her umbrella was broken (it had been raining pretty much all night) and she was going all the way up to Varese where it was probably raining harder and that same voice came back into my head and told me "give her your umbrella" and I was like, uhhh okay, so i turned to her and offered her my umbrella, and she very gratefully accepted it and gave us her number and we gave her our number and she said she wants to see us again before Christmas so she can return it to me. it was such a huge miracle and I’m so grateful for the spirit and how He helps us know exactly what we need to do. it’s such a blessing in our lives. I know we will see her again and I know she’s the reason there was a sciopero and that God has his hand in all we do because this is truly his work!

Hope all is well back home! Thanks for all your love and support! I love and miss you!

See you next week on SKYPE! :)

Sorella Yost

Letter #65 - 12/9/14

CIAO Famiglia! :)

Hope all is well! Glad to hear Grandma and Grandpa are doing well! Tell them “hi” from their favorite granddaughter ;) also, glad Will had a great birthday! Hope everything goes well this weekend with his ordination! I’ll be thinking of him on Sunday!

So here in Busto everything is going really well! It’s getting dang cold though, haha, I’m not in Tuscany this winter, that’s for sure, haha. But this past Monday we had our Zone Training and got to sing some Christmas carols and eat panettone so it was super fun :)

And i got your packages! Thank you so much! You guys are the best. Oh and I showed Sorella Dibb the picture of Mom and Cynthia and she loved it, she said to tell Cynthia hi :) I love the Dibbs so much and will forever be grateful they were my mission parents. They are so bravi (good).

Also fun fact, Sorella Hawks said I she woke up the other night and I was speaking in Italian in my sleep. So heads up Anna, that’s what you have to look forward to in just 12 weeks ;) haha!  

We finally got to do scambio with the Sorelle in Lugano, Switzerland! It went really well too! I just love the girls I work with. They are so sweet. I stayed in Busto with Sorella back from Germany and Sorella Hawks went up to Lugano with Sorella Boscia from Sicilia. So both of us spoke  A LOT of Italian those 24 hours. But it was really good for us :) and it was such a fun scambio! Loved it.

Then we went up to Lugano to rescambio and so I got to see a little bit of Switzerland and it was super pretty! I thought of dad a lot on the train ride :) and we talked to this couple the whole way who are from the Bahamas and they told us a lot about Switzerland. Super cool.

Then Sorella Hawks and I were reunited and we headed back down to Busto, she got her permesso (blessed be the day) and we then had one of the best lessons I’ve had on my mission. It was such a cool lesson. It was with our 17 year old investigator who comes to church every week on his bike in a button up white shirt and sweater vest, and we are teaching his sister too. She’s reading the book of Mormon and told us she will pray and ask if it’s true and she wants us to call her Sunday morning to help her wake up in time for church, haha, so awesome. They are seriously so elect. I love them so much. But anyways we taught him in the church in the primary room with all the Christmas lights on and we read 2 Nephi 31 and the spirit was so strong and we were all just so happy. Sorella Hawks was so awesome and gave him the baptismal invite like a total champ and he accepted the date and knows it’s the right thing to do. We are so excited. He is such a miracle.

We love our heavily decorated apartment and we love listening to our new Christmas music and life is just good. We still have hard moments but at the end of the day we always have so many miracles to count. It’s so blessed. I love it.

Also my first born Sorella Nilsen is getting transferred to Torino!!! So tell her good luck for me and that I love her and she going to totally rock it :)

I think that’s all for this week, hope all is well back home! Can’t wait to skypeeeee! Love and miss you! 

Sorella Yost 

Letter #64 - 12/2/14

Ciao Famiglia!

Come state?! :) Sounds like you had a crazy Thanksgiving?! Is grandma okay?? I’ll be praying for her! Wish I was there to help! Tell grandma and grandpa hi for me! At least that means Grandma can spend more time with Charlie; I know how good of friends they are ;)

This week we had a huge miracle! You know the 17 year old boy I talked about last week that Sorella Hawks and I found during 21 lesson weeks? Well he came to church AGAIN this week and even wore a button up shirt and white sweater vest! It was so awesome. And he came to the young men’s activity and turns out to be friends with an inactive young man from our ward and now they are coming together to everything! It’s so cool. And he introduced us to his family and we’ve started teaching them and committed the 16 year old sister to come to church this Sunday and everything! The parents aren't super interested for themselves but they are super interested for their children. They are so cool. So we are super happy and excited about them :) huge miracle!

Thanksgiving was good here! We got hot chocolate to celebrate and finished decorating our house! You will love it mom :) we went to the market and got 5 boxes of the cheap Christmas lights and decorated our whole house. The ladder Christmas tree is back and it’s a little ghetto this year but still super awesome :) ha-ha we have lights all over our house and it’s so great. I love it.

Tell will happy birthday for me! I hope he has an awesome 12 birthday tomorrow :) also if you haven’t seen “He is the Gift” yet....do so now. christmas.mormon.org and if you want to be cool and watch it in Italian....go to mormon.org/ita/natale    :) so awesome.

I think that’s all for this week, sorry it’s a short letter today! We are heading out to Como! So I should have some pretty pictures next week :) We are hoping it snows soon here, it’s been pretty cold and we are looking super fly in our huge rain boots, haha - love and miss you all!

c'è la fai mamma! :)

Vi voglio bene!

Sorella Alli