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

Letter #63 - 11/25/14

Ciao Famiglia! Come State?!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

This week has been crazy. So as I write you...I’M BACK IN RAVENNA! Yeah. Weird, haha. We got the call yesterday that we had to be in Ravenna this morning for me to pick up my permesso (paperwork). So since Busto and Ravenna are literally on opposite sides of the mission we had to leave last night and spend the night in Milano which was super fun and then leave bright and early on the first train we could make to Ravenna. I got my permesso and now since its pday I get to hang out with Sorella Nilsen a little bit too!!!! Blessed be the day. I’M WITH MY TWO GREENIES ALL TOGETHER, so fantastic!

Last week we had the Fingerle conference and it was sooooo good. We learned so much! and I got to see Sorella Woods! And she is training Sorella Burt! Becca’s roommate! So tell aunt Tamera that I finally met her and we are already best friends :)

Also I got your packages! Thank you so much! We LOVED them! and i got the envelopes from Landon and it totally made my day, I LOVE them! So thank you Landon! love you! :)

On Saturday we had our big ward Thanksgiving Dinner and it was such a huge success! We had 105 people there in total and a ton of part member families and less actives which was awesome. We had some investigators and people from English class there too! It was awesome, we were really happy. I have to say, Thanksgiving dinner Italian style isn’t too bad :) It was really good! not as good as Grandmas’ though ;)

Also, this Sunday in church between us and the Anziani we had 5 investigators in church! It was a huge miracle, especially with how big of a hassle it is for people to get out to the church since the buses don’t run on Sunday. So we were super excited and so was the ward. It was so awesome. One of those investigators was someone that Sorella Hawks and I found on our 21^st lesson week and he is so awesome. He’s 17 years old and rode his bike to church all by himself...stayed for all three hours....and LOVED it...and he’s bringing his sister with him this next Sunday. #elect. We are so excited. So hopefully we can get the whole family involved.

Sorella Hawks, the Anziani and I are singing at a Catholic funeral tomorrow for the cousin of a member who passed away; and I have also been asked to give a short talk after we sing....so yeah. Hopefully that goes well and I will be able to speak in Italian in front of a huge room of random strangers at a funeral.

Well...I thinks that’s all for this week! Love and miss you so much! I’m so thankful for my family, tell everyone hi for me tomorrow and eat pumpkin pie for me...PLEASE. LOVE YOU!!! :)

Vi voglio bene!

Sorella Yost

Letter #62 - 11/18/14

Ciao Famiglia!

HOLY COW - seriously such a crazy week. First of all... we taught 21 lessons!!!!!! Huge miracle. It’s a challenge President gives to all the new missionaries their second week in the mission and by some miracle we did it. It was so crazy. We were out talking to people allllll day. We had so many of our appointments fall through and so we were out doing finding from 3-9 a lot of the days. But it was so cool and my Greenie definitely has a ton of Greenie power.

We found 4 new investigators and two lessons we taught we looked down at the clock afterwards and it was 8:59PM. perseveranza sino alla fine (endure to the end), haha. So it was awesome :) we are so tired though, haha.  Sunday night we got home, did nightly planning and then weren’t able to move for like 30 minutes, haha!! It was so funny. I feel like I’m becoming a Grandma. I’m literally so tired all the time, haha. So weird.

Also, my poor little greenie got to experience me having one of my random crying attacks, haha. I think it was like Thursday during lunch or something and I was just tired for some reason and she went upstairs to get something and I was like" hey where are you going?" and she was like "I just have to go grab some socks" and I was like "don’t leave me..." and she was laughing and was like "it’s okay, I’ll be right back!" thinking I was just kidding...and then I randomly started crying and she came back down the stairs and was like "I’m so sorry! I didn’t think you were serious!" and I was half-laughing and half-crying and explained to her that sometimes when I’m really tired I just randomly cry, haha. It was so funny. We laughed for like 15 minutes afterwards. I get lonely really easily apparently, haha, so weird.

Also this week our ward got a new bishopric! We absolutely love our new Bishop already. He’s so fantastic and served a mission in England and is like 28 years old. He’s super cool. This week i did my first scambio (exchange) with the Sorelle in Varese! It was super fun. I stayed here in Busto with a Sorella from Sorella Nilsens group and Sorella Hawks went to Varese. We had a lesson with an el Salvadorian family and learned how to make pupusas – they are super good! Then we found out our villa has a spider problem and killed spiders for like 40 minutes before bed. NOT super fun, but we think we killed most of them, ahha.

Oh and Sorella Hawks and I almost broke the church last week. We tried making cookies and the breaker went out in the church building, haha classic. Never doing that again. We were supposed to have an appointment with a girl and make cookies with her and become best friends but she didn’t show up and while it is a 20 minute bus ride to get out to the church and it only comes like once an hour so we had to wait for the bus and were sad she didn’t show up so we decided to make the cookies anyways and yeah, we tripped the breaker - power out. So funny.

Also, we were doing strada (street contacting) on Sunday in one of our cities called Gallarate and this like 17 year old kid came up and started talking to us and he was asking us about missionaries and what we do and stuff like that.  And then he asked us where we live and we told him we live in Busto and he was like so it’s just you two that live there? and we were like yeah.... and he was like "so it’s just you two...and Jesus?" Oh my gosh we started laughing so hard. It was one of the funniest questions ever. People think we are nuns all the time, which is so funny. But this kid was super legit and I think the Anziani (elders) are going to go try teaching him.

Well I think that’s all for this week! Busto is awesome and we are finding our way around. I was actually able to give someone directions somewhere today so we were super excited about that. We are figuring it all out with a ton of help from Heavenly Father and seeing miracles every day.

Hope all is well back home! Have a safe trip to Utah! I love and miss you! :)

Sorella Alli Yost

Letter #61 - 11/11/14

Ciao Famiglia! Come State?!

We are going to Milano for pday today so we had to email early!

What?! you have frost on the ground in Redmond?!! It’s just POURING rain here, haha, luckily we got Sorella Hawks some rain boots last week on pday so now we are surviving the weather a lot better, haha. Our boots are actually super cute, we are totally matching, haha – oh and we got little sock inserts for them too to make it warmer and they are like the most blessed things ever. We love them and are never cold.

This week has been a lot better, we are starting to figure our way out around the city and aren’t getting lost as much. However, we almost got separated on the train the other day which was SO scary, hahah - the doors closed after Sorella Hawks got on the train and so only I got locked out of the train when the doors closed. I had to quickly run to the front of the train to get let on by the conductor - ha it was so scary. After the doors closed we just were standing there staring at each other with pure horror on our faces through the window for like 3 seconds, haha - it was so scary... and now funny. . . #italymilanmissionprobs

We have probably lost like 5 kilo this week from all the running we’ve had to do in our big coats, haha, it’s been great. We are always worried about missing trains or buses in this city. We have a lot of little cities that we have to travel to quite a bit that are in our area so that keeps us in shape.

This city isn’t very bike friendly so we never ride them, sadly, but it’s okay. Also this Sunday in church it was the primary program and it was the cutest thing ever. Little kids singing in Italian is so precious. Oh and we taught Gospel Principles on Sunday, reminded me of the Montevarchi days. We only had like 20 minutes to prepare though, which was funny. A year ago that probably would have given me a heart attack to even think about doing but now it’s just so common it doesn’t even phase me. Miracles of the mission am I right?

I finally cut my hair! Well i asked my companion do it, haha - she was freaking out, but she did so well! I just looked at her and was like have you ever cut hair Sorella? and she was like, uhhh, I trimmed my mom’s hair a couple times in the back, does that count? And i was like yeah, good enough for me. Just cut like 6 inches off, hahahahaha so funny. But it’s so much better now - goodbye braid.

It’s been a good week :) we are working hard and seeing a ton of miracles. One of which being we are always thankful to make it back home each night. We finally got in contact with some of the old Sorelles investigators and are finding some new ones of our own too. The Lord’s hand truly is in everything we do.

I’m so glad to be here and am so thankful for my Greenie, she is so great and is so patient, even whenever I get us lost. We are definitely getting it all figured out together :)

Love and miss you so much! Talk to you soon! :)

Love Sorella Alli

Letter #60 - 11/4/14

Ciao Famiglia Mia!

Oh man. This week has been insane. We have been travelling all over the place for consiglio (training) in Milano and district meeting in Varese. As we are both brand new to this area, we have been going on an adventure all over Busto and Varese for Sorella Hawks permesso (registration), this is my fourth time doing this process and it’s never been this complicated. 

Tomorrow we are heading back to Milano for new missionary training and then I do my first scambio (companion exchange) in like a week and a half. I’m the sister training leader over the Varese Sorelle and the Lugano Switzerland Sorelle. So that should be fun :) My new greenie is Sorella Hawks! She is from New York, went to BYU, 19 years old, and super awesome. I love her so much already. She actually is from the ward where my cousin Kieonah is serving right now! How ironic is that? haha so funny!

This week has been a little hard because of everything we’ve had going on and trying to figure out the new area together. I’ve never been so tired in my whole life, haha - we have just been getting lost around the city all week in the rain, haha.  We’ve been sent on multiple scavenger hunts for her permesso and have had to go to Milano for consiglio and Varese for district meeting etc.. so basically we are doing a ton of train and bus-type finding, because we have no other choice, haha. But it’s so fun and we are seeing miracles from it for sure.

The other day we were on a train and we found this super awesome girl who is like 24 and lives here in Busto and she talked to us for the entire 40 minute train ride (big deal). She’s super awesome and gave us her phone number and so hopefully something comes of that. Greenie power, it’s a real thing.

On a sad note all of the simps (investigators) that the Sorelle had before we got here won’t answer our phone calls or texts and when we go to pass by they are never home – soooooo, we are basically starting all over, which is hard but good because it means there are new people out there we need to be finding.

I’m just glad my greenie is just so hard working and great. She’s just going with everything and super positive even though I’m like totally freaking out on the inside, haha. Yesterday we were running from place to place all day and didn’t get to eat lunch until 8:30 at night (remember how we don’t have dinner in our mission? haha still hard for me) and we kind of had a break down, haha. We were so exhausted.

Then today we got a call from the Anziani (Elders) here in busto who is also training a new missionary – right in the middle of studies, saying that we had to run to the train station so we could make the train to go to Varese because they just found out we have to go there for something for the permesso. So we literally RAN the 20 minute walk to the station in the pouring rain to make the train, go to Varese, and sit in the post office on our pday, haha. It was a little rough, but we are almost done with the process now - meno male (thank heavens).

But i think that’s everything for the week. It’s been crazy but we love being companions, are doing our best and seeing some miracles :)

Thanks for everything! love and miss you! :)

Sorella Yost